When I was a child, the local taproom was a place on 57th 58th St. named Dowd’s. While they did give out much-coveted popcorn balls on Halloween night, I still didn’t like the place. It reeked of beer, even to passersby, and if the door was open, you’d hear the neighborhood’s loudest drunks holding forth on what the hell’s the matter with this goddamned country (”the coloreds,” usually).

I always think of those bloviators when I read Maureen Dowd. But I’ll give her this: She’s more ladylike, for what it’s worth.

I really don’t like Maureen Dowd’s style of Beltway inside baseball. So snide, so knowing, so seemingly indifferent to the effects public policy has on real people [i.e. people who don't travel in her circles]. Although she’s not alone in this sort of thing, I blame her in no small part for this current administration.

When her publisher sent me a review copy of her book, I gave it away almost immediately because reading it made me so angry.

So I’m very happy to read former FCC head Reed Hundt’s beautifully-done kneecapping of Little Missy today:

Suffice it for me to repeat that she says “As the White House drives its truckload of lies around the country, it becomes ever clearer that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore are just not the right people to respond to the administration’s national security scare-a-thon.”

I seek revenge by words.

Let’s start with Al Gore. He was the subject of never-ending ridicule from Ms. Dowd while he was in the White House, while he ran against George Bush, and since that date. Many of her colleagues at the Times and most other mainstream media writers have for years repeatedly disparaged Al on a variety of personal grounds, burying as deep as they could his obvious qualifications for the Presidency. They have distorted facts, exaggerated minor matters, and ignored major advantageous comparisons between Gore and his political rivals. [...]

Now this is all old news. It would be old news for Ms. Dowd if she had reported it or written it at the time or since. But instead it is, we must suppose, part of her basis to declare that Gore is not the “right” person to represent in public the views that she herself holds, although she is a representative part of the media assault that belittled Gore all along and helped produce the result in 2000. Somehow, she apparently blames Gore for not overcoming her contribution toward delivering the election to the wrong person. Gore at any rate has not pitied himself or asked for apologies from her or anyone else. But, like someone whose bad driving helped cause a car wreck for others, perhaps Ms. Dowd could at least not belittle those who were wronged, a group that includes the plurality of voters in the United States.

I fast forward to the present. Gore is now publishing a book on global warming — something that no other Presidential candidate has ever had the depth or ambition to do. He has done a documentary on it. He tours the country to address large crowds on the topic. She doesn’t mention this, or perhaps even know about it. This is leadership, but in her view he is not “right.”

Gore has given a series of speeches, more than once in Constitution Hall, on the subject of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Lawyers praise these speeches. Thousands on the Internet read them and praise them. Ms. Dowd could have attended any of them, or read them all if she so chose. The Administration took the last one so seriously that it responded immediately and vigorously, and continues to do so. But Ms. Dowd does not mention any of that; her paper scarcely mentioned Gore’s last speech; she certainly won’t quote it. Instead she blithely declares him not to be a “right” person for responding to the Administration. Just why would that be? Because she doesn’t like his jokes (too self-deprecating for her?), or the fact that he is sincere (too sincere for her?), or his deep knowledge of the issues (too much thinking, when that’s her line of work?). Maybe she doubts his motives — after all, he has nothing to gain economically and isn’t running for President, so he must be hiding something! [...]

Yes, Ms. Dowd is entitled to mock, and she’s as good at it as anyone in America, but shouldn’t she swing at all the pitches and not just those thrown by left-handers?

In its way, this sorry tale resembles that of many other erstwhile liberals in the mainstream media who, when invited to the never-ending Washington cocktail party, have chosen to smile obligingly at the contemptible remarks made about progressives rather than to express repugnance for the viciousness. Ms Dowd is famously shy in person, they say, but in writing she’s laughing it up at the bar with the rest of the crowd. The original movie version was Gentlemen’s Agreement, starring Gregory Peck.

Writing this is all the revenge I can ever have, or hope to have, and I thank the readers for granting it. I will read Ms. Dowd’s columns in the future, and enjoy the art of ridicule she displays. The thousand more injuries I will bear as best I can. But I do wish Molly Ivins had Dowd’s place in the Times.