Maureen Dowd On Misquote: The Coffee Shop Was Noisy

Maureen Dowd caused a bit of a controversy this morning when her New York Times column misquoted the wife of New York City mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio.

Dowd quotes Blasiow’s wife, Chirlande McCray, saying that mayoral candidate Christine Quinn was “not accessible.”

Dowd quotes McCray saying: “She’s not the kind of person I feel I can go up to and talk to about issues like taking care of children at a young age and paid sick leave.”

The “taking care of children” comment caused the most controversy as Quinn saw it as an attack for being a childless lesbian. Quinn shot back at the Blasiow campaign saying that the comment was baseless, mean and unnecessary.

Quinn said: “There are women all across the City who don’t have children for any number of reasons, whether they simply can’t, choose not to, or circumstances don’t afford them the possibility. I have taken a number of shots in this race from the men running against me, and I accept that as par for the course in a political campaign. But to criticize me as not understanding what young families go through because I might not have children, is over the line. I have spoken fondly of Ms. McCray and Mr. de Blasio’s family. It’s unfortunate that they cannot do the same about mine –no matter how different it might be from theirs.”

Maureen Dowd apologized for the misquote and the New York Times issued a correction to show that McCray’s comments were more about education than raising children.

Dowd writes: “I screwed up. The coffee shop was so noisy, my tape recorder didn’t pick up everything. I thought I had that one quote from her in my notes, but I garbled the end with a bit from her previous sentence… I’ve apologized to the DeBlasio and Quinn campaigns and I am going to buy some kind of noise-cancelling microphone for my recorder.”