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How to apologize to a feminist

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MAUREEN DOWD doesn’t like me. This is not unusual. But unlike a lot of people, the New York Times columnist has a good reason.

Despite her new book, “Are Men Necessary?” it’s not just because I’m male. And I have no argument with her book, either. The way I see it, perhaps men aren’t necessary, but we are very entertaining.

Dowd apparently doesn’t see it that way. Her hatred began with a column I wrote several years ago about singer Robert Goulet, who had sent me a letter asking to be my pen pal.

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The next time I was in Las Vegas, I visited Goulet. That’s when I discovered that I wasn’t the only columnist he enjoyed.

Goulet read Dowd’s column to me out loud, in a Broadway baritone that made it sound like the tale of the knights of the Round Table. Next to nearly every sentence he had jotted “Wow!” Unfortunately, in my column I described Goulet’s outpouring of love as “giving her more wows than Michael Douglas ever did.” Douglas is Dowd’s ex-boyfriend and current legal guardian to Catherine Zeta-Jones.

This, as you probably noticed, was not a particularly clever joke. It also was not that nice. These are things that Maureen Dowd noticed as well.

She immediately called a colleague of mine and complained. She thought it was patently sexist and revealed a long history of sexism at my thenpublication, Time magazine. I could see her point since it was a publication that, for a long time, chose a Man of the Year.

My colleague then told me to apologize to Dowd. Being a man of very little pride, I called her immediately.

It is surprisingly easy to reach Maureen Dowd. It is, however, surprisingly difficult to apologize to her. I started by admitting the joke was a cheap shot, to which she grunted in agreement.

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Mostly though, for the entire conversation, she did the reporter trick of not talking so I’d keep babbling and saying more incriminating things. By the time I hung up, I was pretty sure I’d made things worse.

Hearing how I’d struck out, my friend at Time suggested that I send her flowers. Although I don’t remember specifically reading this in Simone de Beauvoir, sending flowers to a feminist accusing you of sexism seemed to me about as good an idea as telling her she looked good in a sweater.

But when I went online to pick a fruit basket, I found out they were very expensive. Was I a $150-caliber sexist? And more important, could I expense that much guilt? I decided to ask an editor.

The editor wisely suggested a good bottle of wine. Then he called her friend, New York Times writer Alessandra Stanley, to find out what kind of wine Dowd liked.

The next sentences I heard were: “Actually, in person, he’s a really nice guy.... Well, he makes more fun of himself than anybody else.... Joel, how about you pick out a case of really good California chardonnay?”

A FEW DAYS later, the really good case showed up in my own office, returned unopened with a note that said, “Mr. Stein, keep the wine.”

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Luckily, just a few weeks later, I saw Art Cooper, then the editor of GQ, at a restaurant where, he told me, he was meeting Dowd for lunch and would straighten things out for me. She showed up nearly an hour late for their lunch; I sent a really good bottle of chardonnay to their table. Then I went over to re-re-apologize.

The GQ editor gave me a look that could have been interpreted either as “Go away as fast as you can” or “Go away as fast you can, moron.” I left. Quickly. Apparently, she did not accept the wine.

I have since employed various people in Washington and New York to call me whenever Dowd is at a restaurant so I can have a bottle of unwanted chardonnay sent to her table. I do not think a court of law could rule this as some kind of wine stalking, but I am not afraid to find out.

I will not rest until I get Dowd to stop hating me. Maybe it’s male to pursue the one who rejects you, but I think it’s just that I don’t want to be dismissed by someone I respect.

She may believe, as she says in her book, that men are put off by women in power -- that her Pulitzer cost her dates. But, to me, it just makes her hotter.

I know that’s going to cost me another bottle of chardonnay. But it’s worth it.

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