"You'd be surprised at how much attention these press-plane encounters attract from other reporters..." -- Noam Scheiber

Not really. TNR notwithstanding, much of the media seems like they are covering a student council campaign while co-equally having spent too much time at band camp.

"MoDowd" intersects on the upside of the arc between sensationalism and substance, she has a keen knack for honing in on the gist of aura.  In other words, she is (well too) so much more than a well-to-do fluffer.

No wonder Obama strives to garner her to a good side.

Obama as Eddie Haskell. Clarifying.

Surely it's relevant that she is significantly hotter than most of the pasties on the press-plane.

Is this "backstory" or is it a Famous Person Sighting breathlessly reported on wonkette?  There wasn't much substance in that exchange.

Maureen Dowd supporting Mr Obama is one thing.  But Dowd is practically gaga.  The usually vigorously self-possessed Ms Dowd is not only star struck, she's thrown off-key.  Her obsession with what she believes are Mrs. Clinton's shortcomings, turns to poison on the page.  I actually skipped the column yesterday (I read it today) because I just couldn't summon the emotional energy to take it.  So much lately has she really annoyed me with this.  

And have you noticed the crypto-eroticism of the post, indeed of the encounter it describes?  I mean picture it; it's quite intimate: Barack in the aisle , towering over her, calling her by a pet name; messy liquids are featured.  

Frank Rich is just as bad.  The thing about it that I guess is most annoying is that they can't stick to praising Obama.  In fact, he's hardly mentioned.  Like Andrew Sullivan, they are somehow able to discern, from a phrase or two, a "transformation" of American politics.

I like both candidates, but I like Clinton more:  I've got a crush on her.

I wonder what Freud would have made of Dowd's description of their encounter.

smleod420,

I have the same reaction to Rich and Dowd, especially their poisonous and gratuitous attacks on Clinton. I also think that they are both psychologically odd.

For example, Frank Rich is absolutely obsessed with the fact that he went to Harvard. He refers to it a lot and has written columns about it. I think he associates it with a mythology of being so extremely elite that one is transcendant (I catch some whiff of this around TNR also). The fact that Obama, in his self-presentation and in the minds of his supporters, is so elite that he is transcendant (which is why he'll never get the economically struggling class to vote for him) and the fact that Obama went to Harvard,  both make him so narcissistically appealing to Rich that he does a late-middle-age-male version of a swoon.

The element of narcissistic identification for both Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd (and for some TNR folks, as well) would also explain the compulsive and venomous devaluation of Clintont. The psychological jargon for it is "splitting," and in this case it means that the only way to preserve an unrealistic idealization of one thing is to unrealistically devalue another.

Yes.  Or possibly they just support Obama and think he'd make a good president.  It happens.

irony--yeah, someitnes a cigar is just a cigar, and all that. but i don't think so.

It would take two Maureen Dowds to match the affection that CNN's Candy Crowley has for her girl Hill.

CC's favorite technique is to cite any innuendo, tactic (suspect) and  hope (false)/strategy (dubious)  of the Clinton campaign with the same conviction of Terry McAuliffe.

(Just the facts, ma'am?)

Wait! Candy fails to provide a hint that she's reporting (repeating) talking-points and only when pressed will she offer a, "Well, that's the message from the the Clinton campaign and they're convinced that _______ ."

So, Candy...is it so? (No, few challenge her package.)

There is a not small difference in positive coverage each candidate receives.

Yes, Mr. Obama draws attention because no one can deny that he has impressive skills that engage, attract and persuade.

That is not the same as the several weeks of "If anyone can do it, the Clinton's can..." which is near propaganda when compared to the facts.

Personality is part of politics and Obama has 'it'.

The horse race is also part of politics but this time around the Clinton's lost 'it'.

Obama is smart to flirt with Maureen.

She is inordinately excellent at skewering Democrats.  No no, but NO ONE, had Bill Clinton's number like Maureen did and does.  She mauled him better than anyone on the Right ever was able to do.

The reason why, is that Maureen, being essentially of the Left, and also being long single and having had many bad dates-- she gets guys like Bill and knows how to do them dirty.

If Obama ever gets on Maureen's shit list, she'll turn him into a lampshade.  And the media being the media, will pick up on it and echo chamber her stuff all over the place.

Obama may be inexperienced, but he ain't no dummy.

Besides, maybe he's into her.

" possibly they just support Obama and think he'd make a good president"

They're not doing their guy any favors by writing these puff pieces. At a minimum, if they were clever about it they'd create at least the illusion of distance from him by attacking some of his sillier surrogates, like Samantha Power. A hatchet job from Frank Rich on the woman who urged sending in the marines against Big Bully Israel would have turned more than a few heads, and delivered more than a few votes.

But hey, no one said our professional snobbetariat had any political savvy.

pccostello writes, "...For example, Frank Rich is absolutely obsessed with the fact that he went to Harvard. He refers to it a lot and has written columns about it."

It is pretty much common knowledge that anyone who either went to Harvard or was once a Marine will find a way to allude to that in a first meeting, pretty early on.

The variation on that is when you ask a Harvard grad where he went to school, some will say, "a college in Boston".  So you immediately know he's pretending to be modest and went to Harvard.

Actually, despite my disdain for the Harvard Liberal Arts faculty, and all the stupid stuff that comes out of that school, I have a soft spot for the place nonetheless.  It is the neatest of the Ivies.  And, I'll encourage my 12 year old son, a very good student, to apply there.  Even though they'll try totally screw up his intelligence.

smcleod420, your commentary on Maureen's big cruss on Obama is apt.

Truth is, a strain of horniness has run through her columns for nearly 20 years.  Which is one reason why I like her.  She seems kinda hot.

Rich's Obama bias doesn't bug me quite as much as Dowd's.  If anyone's read his last book, which is great by the way, his antipathy to Clinton (whose candidacy I support) is predicated by a long preoccupation with the those duping and being willfully duped in the leadup to the war.  Dowd on the other hand just seems to have this vitriol directed toward Clinton which I can barely stand and which seems completely personal.

Steady there, Chan old boy

The regulation response is actually "a college in the Boston area."  I used to live with a Harvard grad, so I know.  But the joke continues that when you ask a Yalie where he goes to school, he looks at you somewhat bemusedly and says "er . . . Yale?"

Dowd is hot? You guys spent far too much time in the stacks. And on the right they think Coulter is hot? Now the French have it right - Carla Bruni, president seducteur...

pc, The psychological jargon for it is "splitting," and in this case it means that the only way to preserve an unrealistic idealization of one thing is to unrealistically devalue another.

Is that how your shrink diagnosed your condition? Well, your shrink is worth the money because that explains you exactly.

As to me I don't idealize Obama, would be happy with McCain, but think Hillary is this generations Walter Mondale, but far more divisive.

I said "kinda hot," fougasseu.  And, it's sorta hidden there in the writing.  

You know, foug, I've been in prison a long time.

Now, Carla Burni, OK.  Does she write a column?

She _commands_ columns. I believe the French term of choice for man-eater is _devoreuse_

"Backstory", you call it?

Sounds just like gossip to me...

as bob somerby correctly points out, dowd is an insane harlot - a barely more acceptable version of ann kultur [sic] (&sick). her presence anywhere near obama or clinton or any democracy, including this one, is just bad news.

bloodnok, now Maureen may be a swashbuckling redhead with a rapier pen.  And she likes to write in wounding couplets.

But she is hardly the agent provocateur that Ms. Coulter is.  Though Coulter clearly says much of what she does because its so much fun to watch the sanctimonious and Left writhe in agony and turn purple in impotent rage.

If you guys wanted to hurt Ann Coulter, you'd just ignore here.  But, you just can't, can you?

<snip>The psychological jargon for it is "splitting," and in this case it means that the only way to preserve an unrealistic idealization of one thing is to unrealistically devalue another.</snip>

.....And in Hillary's case, not just devalue but dehumanize. Monster, zombie, vampire, living dead, witch, frankenstein, queen of evil ...  they go on and on. I can deal with fraudulent, liar, two-faced, hypocrite, power hungry and the like but I find something very peculiar about the need to dehumanize.

I really do have a crush on Hillary.  Maybe deep down I want her to be my stepmother.

Sean Wilentz: &quot;Disputations: The '3 A.M.' Fight Continues&quot; On Geraldine Ferraro: Alex Koppelman (Salon.com): &quot;Reexamining the Ferraro Fracas&quot; Bob Somerby: &quot;This Is Your Party On Rectitude! And this is how Rove Wins Elections&quot;