Dowd Fires Salvo Against Anonymous Bloggers

Stung by the Perfect Sting
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: August 25, 2009

Maureen Dowd has this revelation today about here secret fantasy life:

If I read all the vile stuff about me on the Internet, I’d never come to work. I’d scamper off and live my dream of being a cocktail waitress in a militia bar in Wyoming.

As tempting as that lifestyle would be, what prompted that thought was the Battle of The Blonde Bimbo Bloggers.

It began eight months ago when Liskula Cohen, a 37-year-old model and Australian Vogue cover girl, was surprised to find herself winning a “Skankiest in NYC” award from an anonymous blogger. The online tormentor put up noxious commentary on Google’s blogger.com, calling Cohen a “skank,” a “ho” and an “old hag” who “may have been hot 10 years ago.”

Completely unaware of the Streisand Effect, Cohen lawyers up.

Once she had the e-mail address, Cohen discovered whence the smears: a cafe society acquaintance named Rosemary Port, a pretty 29-year-old Fashion Institute of Technology student.

But, according to Dowd, the bigger issue here is the nature of online anonymity.

Yet in this infinite realm of truth-telling, many want to hide. Who are these people prepared to tell you what they think, but not who they are? What is the mentality that lets them get in our face while wearing a mask? Shredding somebody’s character before the entire world and not being held accountable seems like the perfect sting.

And this point I start squirming uncomfortably. Dowd makes a brief half-hearted defense of Pseudonym-Americans as Jon Swift (the anonymous blogger one, not the Irish babies one) calls them us.

Pseudonyms have a noble history. Revolutionaries in France, founding fathers and Soviet dissidents used them. {snip}

As Hugo Black wrote in 1960, “It is plain that anonymity has sometimes been assumed for the most constructive purposes.”

But, and there is always a but, Maureen comes down hard on us poor anonymous snarkers.

But on the Internet, it’s often less about being constructive and more about being cowardly.

Ouch, that hurts. I snark because I love. So Maureen, if you want to know who I really am, don't call the legal department. Just send me an e-mail to dowdreport AT gmail.com. We'll talk.

Necessary Reading

With Maureen Dowd's long sabbatical well into it's second week, we here at Dowd Central have had to cast our nets a little wider to get the insightful yet still bitterly funny political insight that we are so addicted to. One mandatory feature of a blog that we have been remiss in deploying is the blogroll, that sidebar feature that directs traffic to other blogs far wittier and relevant that the one you are reading at the time. To rectify that situation, we have instituted one of our own featuring our favorite bloggers, bloggers that seem to have a Maureen Dowd obsession nearly as great as ours, and a few that are trainwrecks we just can't stop glancing at. You make the call about which are which. With no further ado, here we go.

Scriptoids. Grace Nearing (which is about the most sublime online moniker I have ever chanced across) always has a witty and pithy take on something or another. Never dull, frequently funny, and always thought provoking. That she is the most loyal commenter here has no bearing on her blog being placed on top of this list.

Jon Swift. While very low in Dowd-related content, Jon Swift is the preeminent conservative pundit on the web and the only one willing to make the bold pronouncements nobody else is making. He is also a leading advocate for the rights of Pseudonym-Americans. Despite the name, the blog is woefully short on recipes for Irish babies.

Bats Left/Throws Right. Doghouse Riley is one of more amusing curmudgeons on the web who is never short of an opinion about national or local politics.

Whiskey Fire. While blogmeister Thers is the ringleader, it is the Molly Ivors rants that really turn our crank. Invariably critical of the Dowdster, the label of invective Ivors muster makes one worry for her hypertension risk.

The Daily Howler. While a little long-winded, there is no greater DowdHater in the blogosphere than Bob Somerby. The depth and breadth of his decades long evisceration of Maureen is impressive in its obsession.

Shakesville. There is no more vociferous despiser of Dowd than Melissa McEwen and her viciously creative nicknames. And she has a lot to say about other topics as well.

Maureen Dowd Is Worthless. We here at Dowd Central pride ourselves on being the best blog devoted exlusively to Maureen Dowd, relying largely on our uniquity to justify the claim. Fortunately for us, newcomer MDIW is far more wide-ranging in topics than the title would imply.

As always, we are open to suggestions and commentary. Please let us know what else we should be paying attention to.

Blog Watch: MoDo Lingo

Doghouse Riley of Bats Left Throws Right has put together a MoDo Glossary for those of us emerging from two years of Times Select embargo. He puts together some recent phrases that will help re-orient yourself to the highly specialized patois of the New York Times's hottest columnist. Here are some of her verbal epithets for current characters so you can recognize them:

First Groupie, The: William Jefferson Clinton, Forty-Second President of the United States
Goracle, The: Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. , 45th Vice-President of the United States
Metrosexual In Chief: John Edwards, potentially
Obambi: Senator Barrack Obama, D-Ill.
Senator Pothole: Hillary Clinton
Smooth Jazz Senator: Barack Obama
Tough Guys: Rudy Giuliani and John McCain
W.: George Walker Bush, Forty-Third President of the United States
Warrior, The: Hillary Clinton

Riley also explains that Lazio is a verb meaning to coarsely criticize Hillary.

Thanks for the help Doghouse.

Blog Watch: Slinking Back

Hometown conservative blog Missoulapolis notes the delicious irony of the first MoDo column after the fall of Times Select to be about slinking back. She quotes the Alan (Not Atlas) Shrugged column's opening lines:

It’s a lost art, slinking away.

Now the fashion is slinking back.

Draw your own conclusion about how veiled that dig is at her NYT masters for keeping her off the pundit market for two years.