In the spring of 2008, NYT columnist Maureen Dowd fixed up Helena Andrews, a black former NYT assistant, on a blind date with Obama aide Reggie Love.
Two years later, the woman is now accusing Dowd of "racial profiling" in arranging the unsuccessful date -- to which Love showed up an hour late and in his gym clothes.
By the time of the fix-up, Andrews -- who had met Dowd one day when assigned to help the columnist with her computer -- had gone on to become a reporter for Politico. The two women were covering an Obama campaign event in Philadelphia when Dowd had the idea to fix the two up.
"I've got a guy for you," Dowd told Andrews. "He's so hot, it's perfect." A few days later, Dowd's assistant called to confirm the connection.
Now, in a brief recollection published in the latest issue of Marie Claire, Andrews has placed the event in the context of "racial profiling" by white people like Dowd, who assumed she wanted to date only black men. She even notes that her own mother tried to fix her up with a black man she met at Ikea. The nerve of her!
"Suddenly everyone seemed determined to cast me as Michelle redux," Andrews recalled of that period during the campaign, when race was frequently discussed, "and all that was missing was my very own Barack."
In the essay, Andrews cites statistics showing that college-educated black women outnumber black men with a degree in big cities -- "leaving a very limited dating pool for anyone looking for a black boyfriend," she writes.
And so, when Dowd followed up with Love's number, Andrews recalled that it struck her as "statistically ill-advised" to pass up the chance.
But that hasn't stopped Andrews from now seeing Dowd's act of friendship through a prism of race, and as her sole concrete example of what she observes as an unfortunate trend.
"My matchmakers used simple math: Black professional + black professional = Huxtables," Andrews writes. "I'm not saying that my colleagues and neighbors should have set me up with white friends, necessarily. I was just disappointed that, despite all my more awesome qualities, the main thing they all saw was my skin."
Andrews has since joined the staff of AOL's Politics Daily website, and has a book coming out now from HarperCollins called "Bitch is the New Black." She also writes a culture column for Slate's "The Root."
Responding to our email, Dowd declined to comment on the story.
Frankly, we don't see what Dowd did to warrant this public suggestion, however benign, of racial profiling. Reggie Love was, by all accounts, a catch -- a handsome personal aide to a Presidential candidate, with a great future in government service.
It strikes us as unfair to take Dowd's act of kindness, done as a personal gesture, and turn it into a public example of anything other than that. Dowd's an easy and popular target, but that doesn't give people the right to invade her privacy for the sake of making a point.
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19 comments:
this seems a bit gossipy to me
That's just silly. Really...
Good to see NYTPicker on the right side of this one.
This is the kind of nonstory you would have ripped the nYt for publishing. Yeeks.
In the cosmic sweep of events, this will go down as significant as the lifespan of a quark. Funny, though, that the woman now works for Politico. The item comes across as emblematic of so much of the content on that site.
Not so trivial at all, considering the history of interbreeding and the quest for racial purity and bloodline segregation in this country.
This is not evidence to say that Dowd's motive was to keep the black gene pool black, anymore than it was to infiltrate Whitehouse personnel, but nonetheless, it does raise the question, are cluelessness and insensitivity the new bitches?
An hour late and in his gym clothes? Well, Reggie "Teabags" Love did go to Dook!
If he went to "Dook," was he on the lacrosse team?
Oh shut up Andrews.
Many other black people PREFER only dating other black people.
Guys, this one is fucking dumb. Sorry, but: No.
Marie Claire, huh?
Implying that there are stories too dumb and too trivial for even The Root.
Marie Claire is a pretty fucking major magazine, folks. I actually thought this was vaguely interesting.
Amazing, the shutup patrol is on the loose again. Next thing you know some loonie little PR clown will come and wish lou gehrig's disease on everyone.
An absurdity.
The most noteworthy aspect of this story to me is Helena's own hypocrisy. She decries racial profiling but is blind to her own financial profiling of prospective mates. She writes like they have to possess an impressive resume and credit score before she'll even consider them. Whatever happened to just finding a nice guy and falling in love?
The average Marie Claire reader has to be conditioned as a predictable consumer of circus gear, prepped so that by the time she has the expendable income she'll fall in step with the tolerated program. Don't tell her about muons cuz she might betray type.
I didn't take the Marie Claire article as a slap in the face to Dowd at all (especially given her last paragraph). It's merely an observation, and a somewhat accurate one at that. I remember when I was attending a private school on the east coast--- for some reason, everyone there wanted to see me (a black sophomore female) and the only black male (a senior) get together. Gee. I wonder why...? We had NOTHING in common except the color of our skin.
If anything, I think this is a call for people to stop trying to set up people with someone they think is "PERFECT for you" no matter what their race. Inevitably, the person doing the setup is going to make some assumptions. And we all know what happens when you assume...
As much as I believe Maureen Dowd is a Liberal Racist. We all know she is..with her cushy job at the white owned, white run, white editorial board New York Times..I believe just this once MoDo was doing something nice for a friend. Yes, she does have racist tunnel vision, but she's a liberal and liberals can't help themselves. Cuz you know they all know whats best for us Black folk, right?
I am jumping on this story a little late...but I totally agree with what Anonymous said on June 22, 2010 10:08 AM. Well said
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