Maureen Dowd

American award-winning columnist for the New York Times. Her study of the Bush family and her caricatures of George W. Bush are acerbically witty,and admittedly biased. Dowd won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1999. She began her newspaper career in 1974, when, fresh out of college, she landed a job with the Washington Star as assistant editorial page editor. She covered sports as well for the paper,moving on to cover city news and to produce feature columns. In 1981 the paper closed its doors and Dowd joined the staff of Time magazine. Two years later, in 1983, she joined the NY Times as a correspondent in the paper's Washington bureau. She covered four presidential campaign and was a White House correspondent during the administration of George H.W. Bush. Her column "On Washington," written for The New York Times Magazine was well-regarded. One of five children of an Irish-Catholic family, Dowd earned her bachelor's degree in English from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. in 1973. She was early-on exposed to stories about Washington politics as her father was a Washington police officer whose beat included the Senate and one of her uncles was a local politician. She is the author of two books, "Bushworld" in 2004 and "Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide" in 2005. Among her many awards and distinctions is the Damon Runyan Award for outstanding contributions to journalism (in 2000). She is a sometime-guest on news talk shows like "Meet the Press" where, with her red hair and tight-lipped descriptions of political and newsworthy figures, she offers her insights with humorous barbs directed at the newsworthy figures of the day. Her mother, an influential figure in her life, died in 2005 at age 97. Never married, Dowd has dated high-profile men like Alan Sorkin and Michael Douglas (before he married Zeta-Jones) Link to Wikipedia biography