No Duh

Media Matters, the liberal watchdog group aimed at exposing conservative bias and founded by several Clinton supporters, has come out with a shocking revelation:

A Media Matters for America review of Maureen Dowd's New York Times columns between January 1, 2007, and June 8, 2008, reveals that Dowd has frequently characterized this election cycle's leading Democratic candidates -- Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards (NC) -- using gendered language, specifically characterizing Clinton as masculine, and Obama and Edwards as feminine.

Shocking, huh? They could have read my blog and figured that out. For two entries I even went to the trouble of highlighting the effeminizing words in pink.

Their "expose" then goes on and highlights every instance where Obama is portrayed as anything less than John Wayne macho and every case of Hillary being called The Man or anything remotely masculine.

And the point of this seemingly pointless exercise? I'm not quite sure. They do note that Dowd discussed Republican candidates far less often and, except for Rudy Giuliani's penchant for dressing in women's clothes, in less gender stereotyped terms. John McCain did get called McDiva and Mike Huckabee escaped her dress-up games altogether.

I have bookmarked the article as a useful shortcut to all sorts of perceived slurs and innuendos that they were nice enough to footnote in small print by candidate and column date. Or you could just keep reading Dowd Report and we will keep you abreast of all the sexist tirades that continue to drive the humorless Media Matters mavens insane.