I Complain, Therefore I am
July 17, 2003
by Bernard Chapin
I
opened the webpages of the New York Times today, because there’s
no way I’d ever buy that paper, and saw that our dear friend
and columnist had penned a piece called "Where
Have You Gone, Tess Harding?". At a glance I gathered it
concerned the late and great Katharine Hepburn so I figured I might
have a chance to “stand down” for the day as I initially
mistook it for a tribute piece. However, shortly into reading it I
knew serious keyboard clacking would be in my future as Dowd took
Hepburn’s wonderful life and used it a mechanism to propagate
more of her radical feminist mumbo jumbo. Familiar themes are presented,
like men being intimidated by successful women and that males feel
threatened in today’s society. Her insights on Hepburn are based
on a book that Dowd has just recently read or had read to her.
Today she begins the column by saying that she used to admire people like Hepburn but no longer does because the actress was occasionally docile in her dealings with her love, Spencer Tracy. Then she ends the column by wishing that today’s women would be more like Katherine Hepburn. Miss Dowd appears to be as mentally stable as a suitcase full of plutonium.
She writes that Hepburn was “brainy and snappy, yet sexy and stylish” but a “doormat she became in her romanticized romance with ‘Spence.’” So here we have a case of a person who fell madly in love with another and acted in unusual ways. This is not unheard of for either gender. It’s happened to everyone on both sides of the fence. Love can make one act in strange ways and this is accepted by everyone accept Maureen Dowd.
Then she states that Hepburn, while with Tracy, had to change a good many things about herself to please him. All of Dowd’s information comes from one source which was based on conversations with Hepburn. Most people would accept such accounts with a little caution, but not Dowd, to her Hepburn’s words are the gospel. Regardless, being with another person sometimes involves sacrifice and mature adults have reconciled themselves to this fact but not Miss Dowd. She is member of that brown acid, sixties utopian generation who expects life and relationships to be absolutely perfect.
Dowd states, “Biographies of Katharine Hepburn have expanded on how Spencer Tracy's darkness dragged on her lightness, how she cleaned up after him when he got smashed (once he hit her).” Well, sometimes things like that happened 50 years ago and the police weren’t always called. So what? The politically correct mind only accepts one type of relationship and assumes that everyone will follow it. Dowd should familiarize herself with all the offers for marriage that the female serial murderer, Ted Bundy, received while awaiting execution if she wants to know the true “diversity” of female sexuality.
At work we often say that “sometimes, two crooked trees run together.” Meaning that, no matter how odd one is there may be another out there with whom they mesh like yarn in a sweater. The fact that Hepburn cleaned Tracy up says much about where she stood in Spencer’s eyes. I’d suggest that Miss Dowd review the movie “The Secretary” just so she could be offended by the possibilities of the varied emotional needs of others.
Dowd examines, Tess Harding, Hepburn’s character in the film “Woman of the Year,” and finds an opportunity to do some male bashing. She critiques the ending by saying that after cooking her man’s breakfast, Hepburn had to burn the toast or, otherwise, it would be “a little too strong an image to put out there for men, a little too threatening.” Where does she come up with this stuff? Dowd must have led a very privileged life indeed. Most men would be overjoyed to find a woman who cooked. I have had numerous women actually ask me whether I can cook. When I affirmed that I could, they’d often confide that they could not (although they are not always satisfied by my one course offerings and my mentality of “food is good– particularly when there’s a lot of it”).
To Dowd, the character Tess Harding embodied the view that, “…the world's changing, and boys, you better get used to Tess Harding because the world will be full of Tess Hardings in 50 years.” Well, she’s right there, we all know tons of women who can torch toast. That’s a great achievement. Tell Betty Friedan.
Dowd observes that Hepburn “…succeeded with the buccaneering Hollywood studio chiefs by sugarcoating her demands with femininity.” Our columnist should try it sometime. Unfortunately, it works quite well. Presenting as a butch radical feminist would have untoward effects in the business world, if it were not for all the ridiculous government overregulation and the sexual harassment industry that protects women as a cottage industry.
Then Dowd irrationally alters her direction and wishes there were more Hepburn’s today. She ponders the question of role models. “Hillary Clinton got to be a senator playing the victim card. Martha Stewart exploded in hubris.” She’s right about Hillary. The last thing she could have done was get anywhere on merit. Hillary had never occupied a public office before the leftists in Manhattan gave her the keys to the Senate. Having a wicked disposition, no achievements, and still getting everything you want may in fact make Hillary the PC role model for today’s women. It’s far more difficult to succeed without gimmicks or outraged claims that you’ve been discriminated against.
Dowd expresses sorrow over Hepburn succeeding in the mental arts whereby today’s females succeed in the martial and physical arts (like the stars of “Charlie’s Angels”). “No fear that men will be threatened. The new film goddesses can kick with their gams, but can they kick with their cerebra?” Here she does not notice the potentially lethal sandbar that underlies the issue and runs aground. Women don’t need to practice the mental arts in film because it is a foregone conclusion of producers and directors that women are superior to men and don’t have to compete at all. To Hollywood, having a woman contend with a man would be as pointless as inviting the Packers to play a high school team.
Further, the cerebrum is the seat of the brain that houses the faculty to reason and if Miss Dowd is any indication, then the answer as to whether women will, in the future, kick with their cerebra is a resounding “no.” How could anyone be expected to reason nowadays when our universities are infested with post-modernists who deny there is such a thing as objectivity at all. In Maureen’s case, readers have complained for years that her columns are devoid of rationality but, as Dowd has a doctorate in the art of feminist compliant, the leftist anti-elite will not stop consuming them.
This piece is yet another train wreck full of incoherency and bitterness. It’s hard to imagine that the NYT could find someone batty enough to replace her, should Dowd ever retire.
Bernard Chapin is a writer in Chicago.
