Salon smartypants Rebecca Traister takes a look at the Amazon.com reviews for Times columnist Maureen Dowd and finds the worst possible scenario: a big bucket of misogynistic scariness. Writes John F. Ross of St. Louis, MO (Amherst Class of '79):

She thinks the fact that she's a columnist at the New York Times is the reason she's never been married. She turns 54 in January. As other reviewers have pointed out, she talks about her own family's history of working as domestics and comes to the self-pitying conclusion that "being a maid would have enhanced my chances with men."



Maureen, Columnist Fred Reed has taken you to task for being a disagreeable shrew and failing to see that that is the reason no man will marry you, not your professional success.

[...]

When it comes to the thing that makes women most desirable to men, WOMEN HAVE AN EXPIRATION DATE. MEN DON'T. That's the elephant in your living room, Maureen. You may not like to hear this, but it's true. Men produce fresh sperm all their lives. Women produce a finite amount of eggs at puberty, and these eggs age until they are no longer usable. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

And as Mr. Ross pounded out this screed from the public library, his barely-legal wife, barefoot and pregnant, was back at the trailer preparing her husband some instant rice pilaf.

Scary Screeds About Maureen Dowd, Written by Threatened Men [Broadsheet]

Are Men Necessary?