Peter Feld counted nine separate references to The Flintstones (a primetime tv cartoon from the 1960s) in Maureen Dowd's op-ed columns of the 2000s. But what other tv shows did Maureen compare everything to, in this decade?

We randomly plugged in a couple TV shows and movies that we feel like we remembered her mentioning every week into the New York Times search engine, in order to get a hopefully accurate idea of the limits of MoDo's cultural awareness.

Only a couple items beat The Flintstones! But those that did did so by a large margin.

  • 16 Sopranos references.
  • 15 Sex & the City references (possibly missing some as we did not search for every reference to drinking Cosmopolitans or calling someone "Carrie" or "Samantha").
  • 11 terrible, terrible Godfather references.
  • 9 Desperate Housewives references.
  • 8 Survivor references.
  • 7 Law & Order references.
  • 6 Dr Strangelove references
  • 6 Ally McBeal references.
  • 3 Grey's Anatomy references
  • 3 Taming of the Shrew references
  • 3 Fatal Attraction references
  • 1 Basic Instinct reference
  • 0 Single White Female references
  • 0 Keyboard Cat references

Bonus: "Your search for kanye in all fields and dowd in byline returned 0 results."