Maureen Dowd, a national columnist of amazing emptiness, believes that Obama should have more of a sense of humor about the right's attempts to swift boat him using race. From her column of July 16 about the New Yorker cover:
John McCain’s Don Rickles routines — “Thanks for the question, you little jerk” — can fall flat. But he seems like a guy who can be teased harmlessly. If Obama offers only eat-your-arugula chiding and chilly earnestness, he becomes an otherworldly type, not the regular guy he needs to be.
This is what the New York Times and Dowd think are important enough to devote Op Ed space to:
Many of the late-night comics and their writers — nearly all white — now admit to The New York Times’s Bill Carter that because of race and because there is nothing “buffoonish” about Obama — and because many in their audiences are intoxicated by him and resistant to seeing him skewered — he has not been flayed by the sort of ridicule that diminished Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.
“There’s a weird reverse racism going on,” Jimmy Kimmel said.
Let's not forget that Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry (and before them Carter and Mondale) were all brought low by the endless lampooning of millionaire media/entertainment people, ostensible liberals in bed with Reagan and the Bushes. When they didn't have any comedic hooks they just made them up. They haven't found the way to destroy Obama yet (Dowd's frustration is palpable) but they are trying, trying.