DowdSpotting: Her Hair Was Perfect

Wednesday night, Maureen Dowd was working/stalking the Democratic Debate and drew as much attention as the candidates. Natasha Chart of Open Left was working the press room with her fellow press-credentialed bloggers and spotted Dowd. Wanting a quote, she approached her.

Then Valania suggested that I ask Maureen Dowd what she thought, since she was coming our way. I scanned the direction I was more or less facing, as he indicated, spotted her, then looked back at him. She wasn't that far away, our eyes briefly met, she must have gotten a load of my bleached buzzcut or something, and then she pretty much kept staring most the rest of the way over to where she'd have to file past me in our narrow confines. It made me kind of twitchy.

But she was rebuffed:

"I've got to go to the spin room," she said, raising a warding hand with haughty languor. She sauntered off with her entourage, surveilled the back section of the room for a scosh, and then headed off to be spun. Well.

I wonder what Maureen Dowd would write about someone who acted like that towards her?

Because Maureen really doesn't have anything better to do that chit-chat with bloggers while the fate of the Democratic Party is being decided. Which leads to some catty remarks to the effect that Dowd is too pretty to be knocking other candidates on their appearance.

Which brings up more questions for me: Why should Maureen Dowd, whose own meticulously coiffed and dyed locks seem to have been airbrushed directly into reality by some fashion photography genius (seriously, her hair is surreal in its perfection,) have ever been allowed to make a national political issue out of John Edwards' hair? And why, by contrast, shouldn't her job be given instead to a real lifestyle reporter like Booker, who still manages to care about nontrivial issues and had a reasonable, human reaction to last night's festival of horrors?

The whole incident was confirmed by Jonathon Valania of Citizen Mom who also got a picture.

It all went down the way Chart says, including the contrast between MoDo, who minced around the press room in an expensive-looking (if oddly bedazzled) sweater, and Candy Crowley, who spent the debate tapping away on her keyboard and prepping for her live shot by fixing her makeup in a compact mirror.

So we don't want any stories about Dowd sending stringers to get quotes when we have photographic proof that Maureen was working the press room and annoying her star-struck groupies with her indifference. So keep up the catty remarks about clothes and hair, fellow bloggers. That way Dowd will know you are serious journalists like her.

Photo credit: Jonathon Valania