In her third consecutive New York Times opinion piece concerning same-sex marriage entitled "Happily Never After?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/opinion/dowd-happily-never-after.html?_r=0), Maureen Dowd, a would-be champion of human rights, publishes a touching short essay that she received from Max Mutchnick. Mutchnick, of course, created and wrote "Will & Grace" with David Kohan.
Mutchnick, who was married by a rabbi to entertainment lawyer Erik Hyman, writes:
"More and more people think it’s wrong to hate gays. The support for same-sex marriage now exceeds the opposition to it. According to Rick Santorum, that’s all because of 'Will & Grace.' (Thanks, cutie. DVD sales are way up!) But, if the good guys are on my side, why do I feel so depleted? I live in a place where all men are created equal, but, for some reason, I am not afforded the same rights. Should my take-away be: I am not a man? It feels as though the Supreme Court is O.K. with that notion."
My recommendation to Mr. Mutchnick: a little patience. There are the individual justices of the Supreme Court, and then there is the Supreme Court as an entirety. Rarely do Supreme Court justices vote unanimously. So before jumping up and down and beating our breasts in dismay, let's first let the Supreme Court reach a decision. I am hopeful that gays will be granted the absolute equality that they deserve.
But back to Maureen, with whom there is still unfinished business.
In a March 2010 Times op-ed entitled "Loosey Goosey Saudi" (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/opinion/03dowd.html), Maureen Dowd claimed that Saudi Arabia is upgrading the rights of women:
"But after spending 10 days here, I can confirm that, at their own galactically glacial pace, they are chipping away at gender apartheid and cultural repression."
Dowd, however, ignored an abomination involving the Saudi legal system pursuant to which a Saudi woman, who had been gang raped, was sentenced to a one-year prison term and 100 lashes for committing adultery and trying to abort the resultant fetus (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2010/03/shame-on-maureen-dowd.html). Unusual in the Desert Kingdom? No way.
Similarly, Dowd remained silent concerning the issue of "honor killings" in her host country. Had she written on this issue, her pleasure tour would have come to an abrupt end.
More recently, following a Times op-ed entitled "Neocons Slither Back" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/dowd-neocons-slither-back.html), Dowd was accused of anti-Semitism. As summarized by Politico's Dylan Byers (http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/09/maureen-dowd-meets-antisemitism-charge-135700.html):
"New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd set the Jewish political community on fire today with a column about the Republican ticket's foreign policy proposals that, according to her critics, peddled anti-Semitic imagery.
Dowd fairly observed that neither Mitt Romney nor Paul Ryan are experts in the field of foreign policy, but asserted their strategy was orchestrated by a 'neocon puppet master' who was leading the neocon effort to 'slither back' into power.
Such language, to say nothing of the questionable legitimacy of her claims, struck experts on American-Israeli relations as an inappropriate (though perhaps unintentional) appeal to anti-Semitic stereotypes, and especially offensive ahead of the first night of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah."
Observing the outrage expressed by Steven A. Cook, Jeffrey Goldberg, Blake Hounshell, Daniel Halper and Jonathan Tobin, Byers reported that Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal had defended Dowd from these charges by declaring:
"No fair-minded reading of Maureen Dowd's column supports the allegations you and others are making. She makes no reference, direct or implied, to anyone's religion."
Yeah, right. Not one of these commentators critical of Dowd, from both the left and the right, is "fair-minded." As best I know, Dowd never responded to the accusations.
But heck, why shouldn't Maureen be cut some slack? Not long ago, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/opinion/friedman-newt-mitt-bibi-and-vladimir.html?ref=opinion):
"I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby."
Is this any less horrifying than what Maureen wrote?
Then there was Roger Cohen's New York Times op-ed "Obama in Netanyahu's Web" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/opinion/28iht-edcohen.html), whose title was painfully in keeping with the anti-Semitic tradition of depicting Jews as voracious spiders. As Rosenthal later acknowledged to me, this "was not a good headline."
And let's not forget Nicholas Kristof's recent retweet of a message referring to AIPAC as one of "the 2 Most Pig Like Lobbies" (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/01/nicholas-kristof-retweets-obama-told-2.html). We never received an explanation concerning this horror from Nick, who soon thereafter took book-writing leave from The Times.
In Mutchnick's message to Dowd, he writes:
"It’s tiring being a member of the last group in America subject to official discrimination."
Max, you also say, "I’m like every other dad in this park: horn-rimmed glasses and baseball hat, New York Times folded in quarters, ignoring my kids dressed in Ralph Lauren Collection playing." Well, you might want to consider some of the vile "unofficial" intolerance being voiced against Jews in that newspaper folded under your arm.
