Comprehensive information and links about Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd and an author. She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for her series of columns on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Dowd was born in Washington, D.C., the youngest of five children in a Catholic family where her father worked as a police officer.

table

Career

In 1973, Dowd received a B.A. in English Literature from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. She began her career in 1974 as an editorial assistant for the where she later became a sports columnist, metropolitan reporter, and feature writer. When the newspaper closed in 1981, she went to work at Washington bureau in 1986. In 1991, Dowd received a Breakthrough Award from Columbia University. In 1992, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for national reporting, and in 1994 she won a Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications. In 1995, Dowd replaced opinion columnist Anna Quindlen, who went to work at magazine in 1996. She was the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. In 2000, she won the Damon Runyon award for outstanding contributions to journalism. In 2005, she was awarded the Mary Alice Davis Lectureship award from the College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin.

"Photo of Dowd used to illustrate her October 30, 2005 article, "What's a Modern Girl to Do?""

Most of Dowd's online columns are now only available through the subscriber-only TimesSelect program.

. Her columns often display a marked irreverence for powerful figures such as President George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton, and Pope Benedict XVI. For example, Dowd sometimes refers to President Bush as "W" or more recently "Bubble-Boy," Vice President Cheney as "Vice" or "Uncle Dick of the Underworld" (and occasionally "Lord of the Underworld"), Donald Rumsfeld as "Rummy," and Richard Perle as the "Prince of Darkness."

Criticism

Dowd was accused by James Taranto of inserting ellipses to change a quote's intended meaning and thereafter the idiom "dowdify" was sometimes used by conservative bloggers as a derogatory term to describe willful misinterpretation of a quote. [1]

Dowd's book, , received mixed reviews from both conservative and liberal sources with most skewing toward the negative (see the references below).

an interview with Maureen Dowd by Terry Gross, Fresh Air, WHYY, National Public Radio, November 9, 2005