Columnist
Maureen Dowd
Notes from Evan Smith
"When the President of the United States nicknames you The Cobra, you know you've made it -- not that Maureen Dowd needs any validation.
Long before George W. Bush won the presidency -- long before he was governor of Texas -- the 53-year-old New York Times columnist's reputation for skewering power players inside the Beltway, and in New York and Hollywood, was well established -- and it has won her loyal readers of every stripe.
Born in Washington, D.C., Dowd earned a degree in English from Catholic University and began her career at the now defunct Washington Star -- first as editorial assistant and later as a sports columnist, metro reporter, and feature writer.
After two years at Time magazine, she went to work for the Times, where she began writing about politics out of the paper's Washington bureau in 1986. In addition to covering every presidential campaign in the intervening years, she has been, since 1995, a twice a week Op-Ed columnist, winning the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1999.
She is also the author of two books -- Bushworld, a collection of her columns about you know who, and just released, Are Men Necessary?, a controversial meditation on war and peace between the sexes.
Speaking of war and peace, Dowd's place inside the troubled Times, and her perch on the observation desk overlooking the embattled White House, makes her an especially interesting person to talk to right now, as you're about to see." - Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 11.17.05
