Dowd Diss...

I hadn't noticed Maureen Dowd's Anti-Obama article, but Eric Boehlert put the hit out on it here. Money quote:

"As a campaigner, Sen. Barack Obama is angry and overwhelmed.

That was the unflattering takeaway from Maureen Dowd's catty column (subscription required) last week about the Illinois senator's foray onto the presidential campaign trail, as Dowd traipsed out to the heartland to watch the Democratic sensation up close. But as is her custom, Dowd fixated on personality and stagecraft, not substance, as the poison-penned, Wednesday/Saturday columnist for The New York Times painted a relentlessly unflattering portrait of the senator.

In the eyes of Dowd, Obama was out of his element on the national stage: "testy," "irritated," and "conflicted."

Dowd's attack, hyped on the Drudge Report the night before the column was published and widely seen as the first real Obama hit piece of the season by a major pundit, deserves attention not because of the (largely nonexistent) insight Dowd shed on Obama's emerging candidacy, but because Dowd included several of her now-trademark -- and highly dubious -- attacks; attacks that in the past have been embraced by the mainstream press and tripped up Democrats such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry.

The truth is, almost nothing about the Obama column rang true. In part, because Dowd provided virtually no evidence to back up her contentious claims that Obama was "testy," "irritated," and "conflicted" while campaigning in Iowa."

Personally, I have a small crush on Dowd--I find her witty, attractive, and intelligent, even if the majority of her opinion is based on Freudian methodology. Regardless Maureen, please keep of of Obama. He's going to have enough on his plate dealing with the putzes over at Fox News to have to contend with your caustic lashings. Besides don't you have your plate full with the Bush Administration. If any group of people needed a head shrinking its them.