BRADY: Why I hate Maureen Dowd (Ann Coulter, too)

"It's hard to have originality with so many opinions coming at you all the time." (Maureen Dowd in an interview on NPR).

Maureen Dowd is the liberal Ann Coulter. They share the same infuriating nuttiness, self-importance, and condescension, but Dowd is wimpy and insecure while Coulter is belligerent and brash. The two combined blow enough hot air to heat the Pentagon.

But today I'm focusing on Dowd (a columnist for The New York Times) because I agree with her positions much more than with Coulter's. However, I believe that Dowd tarnishes those positions with her insipid, unoriginal writing. She blithely perpetuates bad stereotypes about women, liberals, and columnists.

Here's an example from her column last week: "Dick Cheney intimidated C.I.A. analysts before the war. And he and President Bush let North Korea and Iran race ahead with their nuclear programs, and let Osama roam free, while they indulged their idée fixe on Iraq. Their reward? A second term." There's some truth in there, but you have to wade through Dowd's distortions and generalizations to find it. She can't keep a narrative together for 700 words. It's hard to disagree with her columns because they lack a point.

There's something about a fiery, partisan hatchet job that everyone enjoys watching. When our girl attacks their girl, we're proud, but when their girl strikes back, we're insulted and bitterly defensive. Either way, we are fervent. Dowd and Coulter may not be accurate, but they inflame passions. A mildly witty but provocative one-liner always wins out over a well-reasoned argument. It's hard to find someone who agrees with a majority of what Ann Coulter says, but it's even harder to find someone who isn't talking about her. Look! I'm doing it, too. I can't help it. I know that you'll have a visceral reaction every time you see the name "Ann Coulter." The easiest way to make bullies go away is to deprive them of the attention that they crave. But we consumers of media can't deny ourselves the pleasure of partisan mud-wrestling.

Maureen Dowd is an awful columnist, but she would make a great blogger. Blogs are an implementation of the "fast, cheap, and out of control" model of Rodney Brooks, MIT's robot guru. He argues that you're out of luck if your slow, expensive, and highly controlled Mars rover breaks - sending an army of little robots would be much more efficient. Similarly, since the Internet turned everyone into a pundit, we now have an army of fast, cheap and out of control pundit-robots scouring the news for any way to strike against the opposing team. For every successful "blog kill" like Dan Rather, there are 10 completely bogus conspiracy theories. If McCarthy-esque defamation is your goal, the blog system is highly efficient.

Yet again, technology has made an ancient human practice - in this case, gossiping - more efficient. Call them columnists, bloggers, commentators, or pundits, but in the end, they're all just gossips. This may just be a weary columnist talking here, but I'm sick of it.

But wait, Mr. Brady - shouldn't that be 'we' and not 'they'? Yes, I'm all too aware of my membership in the commentariat. A column in The Daily Free Press can be a lot like a blog: amateur, annoying, and of little impact.

So perhaps I hate Maureen Dowd because I see her as the more popular, more successful version of me at my worst. I'd like to think that I'm above her, content-wise instead of career-wise (she won a Pulitzer?!), but I know that I've had the same weaknesses.

Writing this column, most likely my last, has forced me to revisit my original motivation for writing columns. When I first decided to apply for a column a year ago, I simply wanted to do better than what appeared here previously. Once I started writing, I was determined to make the most of the opportunity and write interesting and engaging pieces. I wanted to not just make a point, but make it honestly and respectfully. For the most part, I am proud about what I have written. But there have been times that I have indulged the temptation to "dowdify," which is both easier (less research) and more rewarding (more response from readers).

At their worst, opinion columns can be perpetuators of the cycle of mudslinging. But at their best, they can be gripping, honest, and eye-opening revelations. A great column makes you appreciate the author's opinion especially if you don't agree with it.

I'm sure, at some point, you have read something in this or some other column that made you exclaim, "I can write better than that!" Please, readers, I implore you to prove that contention and apply to be a columnist. If you are engaged in the world around you, can handle a deadline, and can complete a sentence, you're already overqualified to write in this space. Absorb the work of the masters (The New York Times columnists other than Dowd) and start writing. At the beginning of the semester, email three sample columns (of around 800 words) to the editorial page editor. Those columns will be judged anonymously, and if yours are judged worthy, a semester full of amateur punditry awaits.

To my editors at The Daily Free Press: I humbly beg that you allow the so-called "Harvard commas" (commas after the second-to-last item in lists, banned by this paper) that I used in this column to remain, just this one time. The policy is merely smearing a good comma with an unfortunate name. Unfortunately, I'm a big lister, and I don't think I've written a single column where I haven't been forced to excise my beloved comma. I've written 25 columns for you over the past year, roughly 20,000 Harvard-comma-less words and I think I've earned the right to punctuate a list my own way for once. You would have my eternal gratitude.

And finally (since I'm way over 800 words myself), to every reader, you already have my eternal gratitude. Thanks for reading.