Campaign Desk

MoDowd’s Obama Fixation

First his diet, now his sense of humor. She’s wasting her space and our time

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Another day, another shockingly dumb column by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times.

Dowd starts out by complaining that Obama had an “icy reaction” to the infamous New Yorker cover. “If Obama keeps being stingy with his quips and smiles,” she writes, “and if the dominant perception of him is that you can’t make jokes about him, it might infect his campaign with an airless quality.”

First of all, Dowd shows not even the slightest recognition that if “the dominant perception” of Obama becomes that you can’t make jokes about him, it’ll likely be thanks in part to Maureen Dowd.

The only evidence presented in the column that Obama has been “stingy with his quips and smiles,” by the way, is that he didn’t laugh at a drawing depicting him as a Muslim supporter of Bin Laden and his wife as a gun-toting Black Panther. Meanwhile, John McCain, who once reportedly called his wife a “cunt” after she joshed him, in front of reporters, about going bald, strikes Dowd as “a guy who can be teased harmlessly.”

But Dowd has another concern about Obama. He’s “in danger of seeming too prissy about food.”

In reality, it would be more accurate to say that he already seems this way…to Maureen Dowd. During the primaries, Dowd began to sense that Obama might not be a big fan of junk food. Since then, she has elevated this observation to the status of a brilliant character-revealing aperçu. She has mined every available piece of evidence in a dogged campaign to turn Obama’s eating habits into a proxy for his alleged inability to relate to those white working-class Americans for whom, from her Georgetown townhouse, she claims to speak.

In last week’s column, titled “No Ice Cream, Senator?”, she criticized his “finicky, abstemious tastes,” and highlighted the fact that his daughter had revealed he doesn’t like sweets or ice cream.

In April, she noted that, after Obama “force-fed” himself waffles, pancakes, sausage, and a Philly cheese steak, he was “clearly a man who can’t wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites.”

The previous week, she had described him as “resisting as the natives tried to fatten him up like a foie-gras goose.”

And two weeks before that, she had revealed to readers that, at a Pennsylvania chocolate shop, Obama “spent most of his time skittering away from chocolate goodies, as though he were a starlet obsessing on a svelte waistline,” and that he declined a chocolate cake with frosting, saying “that’s too decadent for me.”

Is it just me, or is there something a bit sad about using your New York Times column to pay this level of attention to a candidate’s eating habits?

Dowd concludes today’s column with perhaps her most revealing observation: “If Obama gets elected and there is nothing funny about him, it won’t be the economy that’s depressed. It’ll be the rest of us.”

Really? It’s definitely true that a president who’s hard to make fun of would make Maureen Dowd’s life more difficult—which is what seems to be the concern here. Still, most Americans don’t write shallow political commentary for a living. And, call me crazy, but I kind of think that after eight disastrous years under a president who got into office in part because he seemed like an easy-going guy, they’d settle for a president who was, you know, good at being president.

CJR

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Comments

TDC

Wed 16 Jul 2008 05:57 PM

Another day, another shockingly dumb column by Zack Roth in Colombia Journalism Review.

Mr Roth, as much of a trite little harpy as Down might be from time to time, she is hardly the only one who thinks that Obama has an elitism problem, more and more Americans, you know those of us who cling to our guns and bibles, are waking up to this reality.

Or maybe that’s not your problem at all. After reading some of your other columns on Down, you seem to have taken issue with reporters who focus on politicians character and persona rather than competence on the issues, (except naturally when Down’s column is berating anyone to the right of Ted Kennedy). This, naturally enough, must have led you to insert the McCain called his wife a cunt comment by former DNC operative Cliff Schecter, but perhaps this bit of two-facedness that you display in every article you write is lost on you.

Zack, you really need to take a break and reevaluate your “journalistic impartiality and style”.

Kevin

Wed 16 Jul 2008 06:30 PM

What's wrong, TDC, are you confused as to why Obama doesn't talk in "jive"?

TDC

Wed 16 Jul 2008 07:34 PM

Obama-mama’s no Jive talking turkey husla? I suppose there are a lot of things that us imbred, poorly educated, American flag waving, domestic beer swilling, deer huntin, pickup truck drivin, Monday night football watching Midwestern white boys don’t get about “the lightworker” his hollyness reincarnate the Obamessiah. I guess I’ll just have to cling to my guns and bible to help me when I cant understand these complexities.

Tom_Tildrum

Thu 17 Jul 2008 08:23 AM

Dowd has been doing this her entire career. You're just discovering this now?

jamzo

Thu 17 Jul 2008 12:15 PM

"Another day, another shockingly dumb column by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times."

congratulations you are now aware of maureen dowd's "thing"

the articles you cite are what she does

her work does not get any more meaningful

you ought to go back and see what she wrote about al gore

she had surprisingly little to say about still-president gw

go check ms dowd's writing as discussed on the blog "the daily howler"

Jamesjr54

Thu 17 Jul 2008 02:11 PM

Dowd is a tool in the Reich Wing echo chamber's ongoing campaign to feminize and emasculate Democratic men. That she would be aware of the Freudian implications here would demand a level of irony clearly beyond her class status.
The majority of Americans actually favor Liberal positions. Since the wingnuts can't win on the issues, they attack the candidates. Conservative men, especially, fear being labeled as wanting in masculinity. So they project it onto those they hate, like Dems. And their attack dogs and tools, like Dowd, happily frame it and name for them. It worked with Dukakis, Gore, Kerry. It's all they got: a dog whistle meant to activate the lizard brain in insecure white males. It doesn't have to be true, and usually isn't when it comes to neo-con nutjobs and their water carriers like the disgusting and pathetic Dowd.