MS DOWD'S PREROGATIVE:

Two Tough Cookies (MAUREEN DOWD, January 12, 2003, NY Times)

David Frum, a speechwriter in Mr. Bush's first year as president, puffs himself up in "The Right Man," a sequel to his wife's puffing him in e-mails to friends. The 41-year-old conservative seems oddly oblivious that his claim to fame -- putting "axis" in "axis of evil" - is now the administration's nettlesome albatross.

Lauren Weisberger, a 25-year-old Ivy League grad who worked as an assistant to Ms. Wintour, is preparing to publish a novel called "The Devil Wears Prada." It's about an Ivy League grad who works as an assistant to Miranda Priestly, the icy and fabulously successful British editor of Runway magazine.

Both authors worked in their prestigious offices for only about a year, but in our culture, which celebrates squealing on others and watching others squeal in pain, that's more than enough time for a mere staffer to land on easy street.

That's her take on it today, but here's what Ms Dowd, who also once said that whistleblower Linda Tripp "rides a broomstick", had to say about some more politically correct "snitches":
Dump dem bums (Maureen Dowd, June 3, 2002, NY Times)

Mildred Wirt Benson, the woman who wrote most of the original Nancy Drew mysteries under the pen name Carolyn Keene, died at 96 last week.

Her teen-age detective, a plucky strawberry blonde with a blue roadster, emboldened millions of little girls to think they could outwit the world. The successors of the pretty young sleuth who always tripped up the bad guys are legion: Sarah Michelle Gellar in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Jennifer Garner in "Alias," Jill Hennessy in "Crossing Jordan" and, most famously, the crackerjack FBI agent Clarice Starling, the dot-connecting nemesis of Hannibal Lecter.

If the spirited Nancy Drew had grown up, she would probably have ended up a dispirited whistle-blower.

That's what happens to women of ingenuity and integrity in macho organizations - from Sherron Watkins at Enron to Coleen Rowley at the FBI - who piece together clues and ferret out criminal behavior and management cover-ups.

First, their male superiors tell them to shut up. And if the women point fingers anyhow, they end up being painted by their status-quo colleagues as wacky, off-the-reservation snitches with dubious futures.

One need only try to follow these whiplash-inducing pivots back and forth--over whether "squealing" makes you a wicked witch or an intrepid Nancy Drew--to see that Ms Dowd's quarrel is not with "snitching" but with specific snitches. If you are a conservative or you squeal about Bill Clinton or some fashion editor who Ms Dowd seems to like, you're a rat. If you squeal about Enron or the FBI, you're a hero. If our culture really does celebrate squealing--which I'd deny, though I believe it should--you couldn't tell it from the assembled works of Maureen Dowd. Instead, what you'd find would be a general disposition to revile as snitches anyone who disagrees with you politically and to celebrate as whistleblowers anyone who agrees with you. That renders suspect her criticism of someone like David Frum, who may well deserve some opprobrium for betraying a trust, but who also deserves a critic with some kind of impartial principles. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 12, 2003 6:41 AM