I tend to prefer pushy broads that challenge my assumptions and aren't afraid to call me a dope if I'm acting like one. Maybe that means I'm a latent homosexual (like Orrin), but somehow I don't think so.

Latent?

My heart goes out to menopausal spinsters. I know I don't show my softer caring side at this blog very often, but it brings tears to my eyes, to watch them slowly shrivel and become harden stones, repulsive to look at.. well you get the idea.

drek informed solely by whatever happens to be going on in the life of one whiny woman

Sure, but you left out the requirement for cute wordplay. She's built entire columns around clever phrases, regardless of how well they actually fit the real circumstances she was attempting (ah, or perhaps pretending) to comment on.

I don't know if this proves or disproves the point, but both of my high IQ sons married women whose IQ's are decidedly lower than their own and that of their mother, me. One stays home and is a mom, the other aspires far above her abilibies and not surprisingly hasn't made much of a mark in the world.

Are either happy with their choice? I really don't know, but their children are gorgeous, talented and brilliant, and that's enough for me.

Before the snide remarks about the high IQ mom and her grammar, spelling and typing, see above. I had surgery on my right hand and am typing lefty.

Maureen Dowd is obviously trying to explain to family why she isn't married yet and why there's no hope on the horizon.

Intelligent men want to date and procreate with intelligent women. They also understand that after you've finished with the sex, and you've gotten older that you're stuck with each other so you better be able to communicate on some level. The only women I date are fellow Mensans or have graduate degrees in the sciences or serious business fields like accounting or finance.

If I'm any indication, what intelligent, educated men do not want is a harridan, someone hyper-critical and hyper-sensitive all at the same time, who can dish it out but can't take it. The modern workplace is flooded with them, obnoxious women who think their you-know-what does not stink and that they are better than any man when in fact for the most part they wouldn't be out of the secretarial pool if it weren't for quotas. when you come home you really don't need it in your off-hours, it's much better to just pop open a beer and watch the Simpsons.

Well, she's not too bitter...
I'm not a guy, but I would think that one part of the equation is that it's really great to have one parent home with the kids and that's a lot less likely with 2 high-power career people. That's why I married down, er , rather a non-high-power career oriented person...

Dowd judges the feminist movement by a decidedly un-feminist criterion, as though its goal were to turn her into a dude-magnet. By that standard, yes, it may just be a cruel hoax.

Dowdy should start checking out the lefty bloggers. Many of them are undoubtedly smarter than she is.

"Powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less-accomplished women."

I think Ms. Dowd and Dr. Steph might ponder why many men avoid women who think "powerful" and "less-accomplished" are antonyms.

I would like to know why anyone would want to take the bait and get involved with a woman who complained that she was still paying off the expensive Christmas gifts she bought for all the men she was dating who married someone else. Sounds like she should try to figure why they all left her after the gifts. Calling Michael Douglas.

Women, by contrast, did not show a marked difference in their attraction to men who might work above or below them.

Hogwash. It has long since been proven that women prefer to marry up. Unfortunately for powerful, wordly-successful women, they reflexively limit themselves to a very small part of the male population.

Take a look at who some leading feminists have married--they all showed a distinct preference for men "above" them.

I still hold to my theory about Maureen from four years ago -- a huge amount of her blind hostility to Bush stems as much from his refusal to continue to have the White House serve as "Washington Celebrity Central" as it does with Bush's actual political policies.

Her hayday during the second Clinton term was due to her ability to mix celebrity names and pop-culture refrences into her columns to explain things in D.C., which worked for the time because Bill Clinton was as much into celebrity worship and pop culture as MoDo is. Even before Sept. 11 Bush didn't play that celebrity worship game, unless you want to count big names that would be of more interest to the New York Times' sports department than to Maureen or the Arts and Leisure section. And Mo's heart isn't going to go pitter-patter if Curt Shilling and the Boston Red Sox show up in the Rose Garden.

Dulling down the D.C. social scene by Bush is as much of a crime against humanity to Ms. Dowd as any invasion or Iraq or Social Security reform plan could ever be. Her columns next week on the plain vanilla inauguration events and parties are going to be scathing from a woman seeking to recapture the highs she got from dating Michael Douglas back in the 1990s and feeling that even though she was living in the nation's capital, she was a part of the Hollywood scene.

Can anyone imagine a worse fate than being married to Maureen O'Dowd?

Josh:

Having Dr. Laura as your mother.

Josh:

Hillary. All the downside, and no compensating arm-candy effect.