Maureen Dowd

Maureen Bridgid Dowd is an American op-ed columnist and author, born on January 14, 1952, in Washington, D.C., the youngest of five children of an Irish-Catholic police inspector at the United States Capitol. She graduated from Catholic University of America in 1973 and began her journalism career at the Washington Star as an editorial assistant, moving to Time magazine after the Star folded in 1981 and joining The New York Times in 1983.

Dowd became a metropolitan reporter, then a White House correspondent during the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. Promoted to op-ed columnist in 1995, she developed a column noted for its mix of pop-culture references, biting wordplay, and personal voice that diverged from the staid conventions of the Times opinion page.

The Pulitzer Prize Board awarded her the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary for her columns on the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment of President Clinton. Her book Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk (2004) collected and expanded her columns on the George W. Bush administration, while Are Men Necessary? (2005) examined gender, dating, and feminism. Subsequent books include The Year of Voting Dangerously (2016) on the Trump-Clinton election.

Dowd's reporting on the September 1992 incident in which President Bush vomited on the Japanese prime minister, and her coining of phrases such as "Obambi" for Barack Obama and "Mitt Robot" for Mitt Romney, illustrated a column rooted in the language of late-night television as much as in policy reporting. She continues to write for The Times.

The name Maureen is the anglicized form of the Irish Máirín, a diminutive of Máire, the Irish form of Mary, from the Hebrew Miriam. She wears it as a woman whose pen has needled five presidents and counting.