At Home With Gail

I've been wondering for a long time just exactly what it is that makes me dislike Gail Collins's columns.

I admit that the wry, folksy tone is not to my taste, but I try to resist reacting on such subjective things.

But there is one thing that never fails to drive me up a wall: Nonsense.

After the first few lines of her last effort, Girls and Boys Together, I came across the line, "I got married when I was 25, and I felt as if that was extremely late in the game." I looked over at the head shot immediately to the left of this passage and saw a woman who's got to be a decade or more younger than I. I remember what she cloyingly calls the Mesozoic era quite well, and tbe reality was the exact opposite. Since she appears to be in her 50s, maybe even her 40s, her claim is pointedly nonsensical.

I checked and found that she is actually around my age. Still, she's a 60s kid. I also found that she has a good education and has worked in journalism from the beginning. She's clearly bright and liberal in politics and social values -- in other words a solid citizen of the East Coast intelligensia. And as such, this feeling weird about being an old maid when she was young is bull, unless she was completely out of it then. By 1970, the year she married, hardly anyone her age married, and the few that did split up right away. Gail and I were young at the same time and grew up in the middle of several social revolutions, all of which looked askance at marriage and other family values.

There's another too cute passage, but the rest of the column is an excellent, informative report on a federal government report on the status of women. I wish the news pages were filled with such clear, direct and economical stories.

I wondered what the readers made of all this, and I started reading the couple hundred comments. I was floored by a stylistic detail in them: Not only were they long and fulsome in their praise, almost all who addressed her, addressed her as Gail. That has such an odd ring in the Times, which may be the last English speaking place to use honorifics.

What then are her fellow columnists called? Her partner in something called "The Conversation", David Brooks. He is Mr. Brooks to his fans. Moving along to the others, Krugman is often Professor Krugman. Blow is Mr. Blow. Friedman is Mr. Friedman. Cohen is Mr. Cohen. For some reason, Douthat is Douthat. There are also variations and exceptions, but I'm not going to do a count.

Maureen Dowd, the other female columnist, would be the real test. Her fans hesitate, evade and avoid. When pressed against the wall, some call her by her full name, but it seems she isn't addressed directly very often. (Though, in truth, I noticed one Maureen in the latest batch, and there might have been one Roger among Cohen's fans.)

Maybe the readers, or at least the commenters among them, betray a subtle sexism. Maybe Gail invites familiarity with her warm and fuzzy intros. Maybe Dowd is more threatening. Not being a Times writer, I cannot read minds and cannot explain this.