November 22, 2005

Fred Reed on Maureen Dowd

Fred Reed on Maureen Dowd:

I read with ashen resignation that Maureen Dowd, the professional spinster of the New York Times, will soon birth a book, no doubt parthenogenetically, called Are Men Necessary? The problem apparently is that men have not found Maureen necessary. Hell hath…. Clearly there is something wrong with men.

I weary of the self-absorbed clucking of aging poultry.

Why is Maureen hermetically single? For starters, she is not just now your classic hot ticket. She’s not just over the hill, but into the mountains, to Grandmother’s house we go. She probably gets more daily maintenance than a 747, but she still looks as though a vocational school held an injection-molding contest and everyone lost. That leaves her with only her personality as bait. The prognosis is grim. [More, and there's lots more where this came from!]

We've all had a lot of fun at Maureen's expense lately, but nobody's going to top Fred's evisceration of her.

Now, that reminds me of something I wanted to mention about how the book publishing industry works these days. Maureen Dowd can get vast amounts of attention (and some sales, but mostly generating lecture circuit big bucks) for a book that is partly retread newspaper columns. How does she do it? By claiming to be a hot babe (see 53-year-old Maureen's fantasy image of herself on the book's cover above).

In contrast, the world's greatest living writer can't get his two most recent books published in America. But, what I want to talk about is a book that did manage to get published a half year ago, had something new, important, and true to say about the sexes, and nobody noticed. Zip. Nada.

Peter Frost's short book Fair Women, Dark Men: The Forgotten Roots of Racial Prejudice explained a striking aspect of our celebrity culture, and much else, but it dropped like a pebble into the deepest well in the world. It currently ranks #458,674 in Books on Amazon.com. My review in VDARE.com was the only extended analysis it has received since it was published last March, according to Google.

Now, what is the vaunted blogosphere for if it takes its cues about what to talk about from the New York Times and is afraid of any truly new ideas? If Nicholas Wade, the NYT's ace genetics reporter, got hit by a bus tomorrow, the blogosphere would ignore the human sciences.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

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