Who cares if 46.2 million Americans are in poverty? Pulitzer Prize-winning NY Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd lives the dream and goes to the Manolo Blahnik sample sale with Vogue contributing editor Andre Leon Talley for her column today. For real. more ›

Finally, NY Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd is weighing in on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, which has turned from the authorities believing they had a strong sexual assault case against the leading international politician to revelations that the accuser has been lying a lot. She begins, "So what’s the moral of this Manhattan immorality tale? That the French are always right, even when their hauteur is irritating? They were right about Iraq and America’s rush to war. And they may be right about Dominique Strauss-Kahn and America’s rush to judgment." more ›

Oh, Mo. In her op-ed column today, NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd imagines a conversation between former president Bill Clinton and George W. Bush discussing President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize win. Here's some: "CLINTON: I guess my work with the Clinton Global Initiative saving lives in Africa and hanging with Bono and Barbra wasn’t enough. W.: Calm down, bro. You gotta take care of that ticker. CLINTON: It was a case of premature adulation. W.: Heh-heh-heh. Yeah, very pre-emptive, sort of like Cheney’s pre-emptive war policy." more ›

If a story involves the words "skank" and "ho," an anonymous blogger, a besmirched model, and lawsuits, hell, it can be a Maureen Dowd op-ed column. The imbroglio between model Liksula Cohen and "Skanks in NYC" blogger Rosemary Port—Port wrote that Cohen was a "psychotic, lying, whoring...skank," Cohen successfully sued to have Google give up Port's e-mail address—gives Dowd an opportunity to opine about anonymity on the Internet, "If I read all the vile stuff about me on the Internet, I’d never come to work. I’d scamper off and live my dream of being a cocktail waitress in a militia bar in Wyoming," and dubs the Cohen-Port affair "the Case of the Blond Model and the Malicious Blogger." more ›

Well, fancy that: A TPM Cafe blogger noticed how a passage in Maureen Dowd's Sunday op-ed column was very similar to a Talking Points Memo column, posted on Thursday, by TPM editor Josh Marshall. Dowd's passage read, "More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq." Marshall's was exactly the same, except he used "we were" instead of "the Bush crowd was." Dowd later admitted to the Huffington Post that it was a mistake—she was discussing the column with a friend "who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent -- and I assumed spontaneous -- way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column. but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me." Gawker calls it BS and Politico's Michael Calderone has emailed Dowd, asking "if it's common practice to take an entire passage from a friend and weave it into her column." In the meantime, Dowd's column is updated, acknowledging Marshall. more ›

Does anyone remember the early days of the senate replacement talk, when it seemed like Governor Paterson's toughest dilemma in filling the vacancy left by Hillary Clinton was going to be which of his constituencies he could butter up the most as he used the pick to try to win voters for his reelection? Talk was that he might be giving the call to a household name like Nydia Velazquez or Brian Higgins. Well, somewhere along the way things got a little more complicated. more ›

Vanity Fair’s January cover story is on “America’s New Sweetheart” Tina Fey and (being Vanity Fair and all) it primarily focuses on how Fey transformed from being the frumpy 25-year-old virgin who one agent assumed was having an affair with Lorne Michaels to the sexy librarian The New Yorker recently called “the sex symbol for every man who reads without moving his lips.” more ›

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is no fan of Maureen Dowd! Bill Moyers's interview with the controversial former pastor of Barack Obama will air tomorrow night. more ›

That's what Senator Hillary Clinton told Tim Russert on Meet the Press yesterday, but no matter what anyone says, race and gender are obviously factors in the hotly contested Democratic primary race. more ›

Members of the Writers Guild of America have been striking in Los Angeles and New York this past week over details of a basic contract between writers and producers - one of the biggest sticking points is the amount of residuals writers get from DVD and new media distribution. The NY Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd asked Seth Meyers (who we spoke to on Tuesday) to give her a weekend update about the strike:... more ›

Did you happen to catch Stephen Colbert announce his candidacy for President of the United States of America? The NY Times reports he's planning to run in South Carolina primaries, and that he's "serious enough about the stunt that his staff reached out to the state’s Democratic and Republican committees in advance of his declaration." The S.C. Democratic committee says they'd have no problems with him running. more ›

, humorously chronicled her pilgrimage to locales connected to three slain American presidents (Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley). Vowell will be appearing this Sunday as part of a fundraiser for 826NYC (tickets); she’ll be talking “with/to/about” comedian Eugene Mirman. (Demetri Martin hosts the event, which also features musicians Grizzly Bear, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, and Feist, among others.) Gothamist recently spoke with Vowell about 826NYC, politics and gluten. more ›

Watch out for the traffic around the Grand Hyatt tonight - Senator Barack Obama will be in town for a big fund raiser. As you may know via emails and news coverage, the response to a $100/ticket Obama fund-raiser "aimed at young people" was so overwhelming that the venue had to be changed from the Grand (former Au Bar) to the Grand Hyatt. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A pedestrian struck at 12th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan, a homicide in Brooklyn, and a water rescue in Forest Park in Queens
• Mathieu Eugene showed NY1 his new apartment and says that he was sleeping there before the election; if that's really true, why didn't he say so earlier and why won't he show NY1 the lease?
• In order to avoid any parking ticket squabbles, the city has suspended Monday alternate side of the street parking in anticipation of snow

Untitled, by Jeanettics. more ›

The New School's student speaker who spoke out against Senator John McCain during commencement exercises last Friday says she apologized to McCain afterwards. Jean Sara Rohe, whose speech about McCain drew a standing ovation, has been been in a pissing match on the Huffington Post with one of the McCain aides who wrote the senator's speech. Apparently McCain himself said he understood why Rohe had to make her remarks, and New School president Bob Kerrey noted both McCain's and Rohe's bravery for their speeches at the ceremony. What's funny is that Kerrey makes fun of McCain's friendship with President Bush in this month's Vogue (thank goodness Maureen Dowd is reading Men's Vogue to let us know that). more ›

"Let me preface this with some full-on full disclosure. I love Maureen Dowd. I love her not just for her columns and their brash, fearless intelligence. I also love her for being a woman in a man’s world, where even at her liberal Gray Lady’s office of eight columnists and one public editor, she is the only woman. I love her for knowing how to be sexy, smart, and every shade of the spectrum between the two. more ›

Forget about Bratz - photoblogger David Gallagher has found what should be what every young girl (or boy) should get this holiday season: The How to Be a Journalist kit, at KMart! The secrets of journalism are unlocked through the power of glitter, confetti flowers, lockable journal and an . Yes! Screw the Nellie Bly approach - we truly will be breeding a future generation of Mo Dowds, Judith Millers, Mary Mapeses, and Diane Sawyers! more ›

- Fernando Ferrer wants monitors at election sites next Tuesday more ›

David Rees, Cartoonist more ›

" Where can blame lie? Howard Dean, whose popular blog and "in touch with the Internet user" mystique is being copied. She rails that many candidates don't write to their blogs or worse, that their blogs are very boring. Well, Mo, that last point comes part and parcel with the Internet. Spare us. more ›

Quick question: will someone tell me what Maureen Dowd's point is? The girl needs an editor and some ritalin; she's a friggin A.D.D. mess. If there's one thing the Blair fiasco should have taught the Times, it's that they must learn how to gain, not assume they have, the public's respect. Ms. Dowd, all you can gain from the public is complete confusion. Do us all a favor: give it up.
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