Right-wing sex columnist Maureen Dowd of The New York Times starts off her regular Wednesday exploration of political libido with the usual defilement of Hillary Clinton. I could almost picture the swaggering Obama supporters for whom the columnist's conspicuously concupiscent columns have undoubtedly become such a guilty pleasure sipping their coffee and reading approvingly down the page.
Yes. Yes. That Ickes fellow is a ruffian. "Distorted and personal attacks." Quite so. The "unplugged spouse." Terrible thing. The "garroting" style of the evil Clinton camp, the lies about Bosnia, the blackguards actually mentioning the rhetoric of a certain Reverend Wright to undecided superdelegates (how polarizing...will you pass the cream, darling?) - yes, good old Maureen understands "the monster" so well. Old MoDo's on our side. Let's just take a peek below the fold...
Pffttzzttskkkt! What's this?! What is Ms. Dowd suggesting about the Democratic frontrunner for President?
Obama has been less adept at absorbing the lesson of Hillary’s metamorphosis from entitled queen of the party to scrappy blue-collar mama. His strenuous and inadvertently hilarious efforts to woo working-class folk in Pennsylvania have only made him seem more effete. Keeping his tie firmly in place, he genteelly sipped his pint of Yuengling beer at Sharky’s sports cafe in Latrobe and bowled badly in Altoona. Challenging Obama to a bowl-off, Hillary kindly offered to “spot him two frames.”
At the Wilbur chocolate shop in Lititz Monday, he spent most of his time skittering away from chocolate goodies, as though he were a starlet obsessing on a svelte waistline.
“Oh, now,” the woman managing the shop told him with a frown, “you don’t worry about calories in a chocolate factory.”
See Obama fans (and I like him too), did you catch it after the spit-take this morning? The tall, thin, neatly-dressed guy with the Ivy League diction is "effete." Never loosens his tie, does he? Can't bowl. Sips his beer as if he'd never chugged a few on a Friday night. You know what she's saying don't you? Obama's attractive wife and cute giggling progeny don't really signify. But then again, neither did John Kerry's combat medals - hell, Kerry's offshore athletics in the pounding surf actually made him more effete. And so damned genteel.
We've seen this flick before, and although Senator McCain's aged and gnarled hands will never touch this tactic directly, his testosterone-addicted chorus in the media - led by the chief copulation critic of the Sulzbergers - is already laying the pipe, ahem, er, sorry, putting down the meme.
Liberals are just so gay. Wink freaking wink. Hillary's been a lesbian since she first came to public attention. Gore and Kerry - well, a couple of sissy boys. Now it's Obama's turn. Ugly? Yep. Effective? Less so, we'd all hope. But it's out there - the old macho Republican as tough guy leader routine. A sad tactic of a dying breed perhaps. Lance Mannion caught a couple of MSNBC's manly men at it again this week:
Is there a DC Insider Journalist bowling league where all these fat-faced, fat-assed old white gasbags get together on Tuesday nights to toss back the Buds and bowl in the 200s, with Scarborough and Matthews routinely battling it out to see which one of them's going to get the perfect game tonight and this is why these guys who look as though their last great athletic achievement was putting up the shelf for their grandkids' soccer trophies feel entitled to make fun of Barack Obama's bowling form?
Short memo to Barack: don't do it. No clomping through the woods with a 12-gauge. Keep your tie tied if you want. Skip all the chocolate you don't feel like eating. Sip that brewskie. And when they call you gay, do what Hillary Clinton alway has - don't correct 'em. Stay svelte, baby.
UPDATE: Digby, who has been tracking it relentlessly, calls this the media's "Barack ain't quite right" theme.
