“I have long been puzzled by the fact that the Times gives such prominence to Ms. Dowd. Her columns almost always have the snide, “I know more than you,” parochialism that haunts Manhattan alongside an astonishing ignorance.

She called me once about a Catholic question, not to verify anything in her column which clearly is not fact-checked very well but about her boyfriend’s television drama.

She spoke with that excessive familiarity that famous people sometimes use with the rest of us, as if her fame was such that she would not dream of thinking it was not a high honor to be speaking with her on the phone, and that such an honor as she was bestowing warranted her speaking to me as I would only with a familiar. It was creepy.

And, so was her column yesterday (The Nun’s Story I referred to above). It is not that she is wrong, it is that she is so contentedly wrong, so confident in her ignorance, so comprehensively prejudiced against the Church. Why doesn’t she just become a Protestant and have done with it?

If you heard her rant on the street, you would give her a dollar and hope she doesn’t spend it on booze. Reading her rant in the Times, you can just flip the page.”

Ouch.