Betwixt and Between

Camus Fired Up
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 30, 2010

One of Albert Camus's works is translated into English as either Betwixt and Between or The Wrong Side and the Right Side. The latter would seen to be appropriate for the recent upbraiding President Obama gave congressional Republicans.

In today's post-mortem of Barack's foray into Baltimore (where yours truly spent a half hour stuck in traffic as the motorcade went by) Maureen Dowd gives us a double dose of Alliteration Alerts™:

He may lapse back into his Camus coma at any moment. But on Friday he dropped the diffident debutante act and offered, as he did at the State of the Union, some welcome gumption.

And if that second phrase sounds familiar, it's because she originated the phrase in May of 2008:

Obama is acting the diffident debutante, pretending not to care that he was given a raspberry by a state he will need in the fall.

And while it is a stretch to call it true alliteration, we do get a plethora of p's in this passage:

When Peter Roskam of Illinois complained that they’d been “stiff-armed” by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the president promised to bring the Republican and Democratic House leadership together for more play dates.

Say "promised Presidential play dates" three times fast.

And Maureen liked the show so much, she suggested making it a regular series.

Obama’s advisers must wish they could do this every week for the cameras.

Perhaps NBC can give them a slot at 10 p.m. I understand they have some dead air to fill.