Dowd: More Big Macs for Barack
Not sure why I bother, but what is it about Maureen Dowd, Barack Obama, and food? Dowd has repeatedly mocked Obama's "abstemious" tastes and how these set him apart from the great, fat, American mainstream:
July 16: He's already in danger of seeming too prissy about food...
July 13: He looked frustrated when Sasha revealed that "my dad doesn't like sweets" and that he preferred "minty gum" to bubble gum. She then began singsonging "Everybody should like ice cream" before pointing a finger at the person who doesn't: "Except Daddy!"As Margaret Carlson told Mike Barnicle on Hardball, in a segment called "Is Obama Too Cool?," about whether he relates to average Americans, sometimes you just want to tell the guy, "Eat the doughnut."
Whether Obama was irritated that he had slipped up and exposed his daughters or was annoyed that his kids were exposing more delicious details about his finicky, abstemious tastes, we'll never know.
May 21: "Oh, you're so witty with all your stupid rallies with 75,000 people and spending $100 million on ads to promote one puny word: Change. I've made sacrifices in this campaign. While you've been fake-eating and losing weight, I've had to stuff myself with all that greasy working-class junk food and chase it with Boilermakers."
May 4: Checking out what the vets were drinking, he announced, "I'm going to have a Bud." Then, showing he's a smart guy who can learn and assimilate, he took big swigs from his beer can, a marked improvement on the delicate sip he took at a brewery in Bethlehem, Pa.
April 27: Hillary is not getting much sleep or exercise, and doesn't, like the ascetic Obama, abstain from junk food and coffee and get up at dawn to work out on the road...He dutifully enthused about carbs, assuring reporters that when he had dinner as a child with his Kansas grandparents, the food "would have been very familiar to anybody here in Indiana. A lot of pot roast, potatoes and Jell-O molds."
April 23: In the final days in Pennsylvania, he dutifully logged time at diners and force-fed himself waffles, pancakes, sausage and a Philly cheese steak. He split the pancakes with Michelle, left some of the waffle and sausage behind, and gave away the French fries that came with the cheese steak.
But this is clearly a man who can't wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites.
April 2: At the Wilbur chocolate shop in Lititz Monday, he spent most of his time skittering away from chocolate goodies, as though he were a starlet obsessing on a svelte waistline.
"Oh, now," the woman managing the shop told him with a frown, "you don't worry about calories in a chocolate factory."
The Times's Michael Powell reports that, after watching five plump, white-haired women in plastic hairnets spin the chocolate into such confections as Phantom of the Opera masks and pink high heels, he ventured: "Do you actually eat the chocolate or do you get sick of it?" They giggled at his silliness.
He looked even more concerned when he was offered a chocolate cake with white chocolate frosting. "Oh, man." he said. "That's too decadent for me."
Of course, this is all meaningless nonsense having nothing to do with what Obama might do as president, how he might do it, or even whom he might hire as White House chef. But even on its own terms -- as an attempted insight into Obama's alleged finickiness or his supposed distance from the Applebee's set -- it doesn't make sense. A presidential candidate is apparently attempting to eat right while having a mix of fried road food and catered campaign meals shoved at him eight times a day. He should be hailed as a role model, not damned for failing to wolf down every last fry.
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yeah yeah,...I remember one of her articles where she was eating BBQ on the plane.....
LOL....may
So, the writer notices Dowd obsession with Obama's diet as well. I just wonder why she is so concerned with his diet.
My father rarely eats sweets and just doesn't care for them. does that make him some elitist? hardly.
Or the fact that Sen. Obama may want to eat alot of fish, like salmon, over steak because, let me see, he was raised on islands like indonesia and hawaii?
my best friends loves to bake but she only eats a little bit of chocolate during pms.
I read in one of my fitness magazines that men don't like sweets as much as men so I don't see any problems there either with Obama.
Good for Obama setting an example. Why is he being treated like someone from another planet/ The man works out, eats right and loves his family. Why are people so weird about it?
He's a male in his late 40s, for cryin' out loud. When you turn 40, your doctors start leaning on you to lower the levels of saturated fat in your die, if they haven't done so prior to that.
Yeesh. That's not effete....
wearyvoter:
Hey I am with you. Frankly I wish I had Obama's discipline of eating right and exercising. Ever since I turned forty- five (17 years ago) my doctor has been after me about loosing weight and cutting down on red meat. But bad habits keep interfering. Obama should be praised for setting an example for people to pursue a healthy life style. It is not only good for increasing his energy level, but it also helps in minimizing heath expenses as he grows older. Instead of being ridiculed, he should be a commended. I don't know if my Doctor will vote for him or not, but I know that he would, at least, commend him for setting a good example for how to eat healthy.
It's pretty safe to say she'll do her best to paint O as an effete elitist just as she did to Gore and Kerry. I've lost respect for her these last eight years.
Far be it from me to defend Maureen Dowd, who produces a steady stream of trivial nonsense, but I don't see any bias. She's pretty much relentless on Bush and the Clintons and, well, basically everyone. That's her job. Her job is not to paint a favorable portrait of O bama or help him get elected.
Besides, I always got the sense that most of this food stuff was more of a shot at the idiot electorate that thinks the most important qualification anyone running for president should have is an ability to be low brow - someone you'd want to have a beer with - and the idiots in the media that focus on it. She's not a newswoman. She's a commentator.
You may never see an ego more delicately teetering between megalomania (everyone must care what I think every week) and desperate, depressive fear-of-mediocrity (I am nobody, just as I feared, and everyone can see it). She doesn't appear to ever look anyone in the eye, so insecure. But to attack another--that's the ticket to self-agrandisement.
The ego can spin very clever tales, be very entertainig, even charming. And the ultimate sucess is having yourself discussed in print (and, ideally, the in-group's cocktail party circuit) as if you deserved the attention. Ms. Dowd is a classic. Poor girl.
I like egg whites and I do not like philly cheese steak. By the way, I am african american and I am trying to maintain a healthy diet. For one who travels a lot ,it takes a lot of restraint to maintain a healthy diet while traveling! Way to go Obama!
I am sure Dowd does not mean any harm.
Would that I had his discipline.
IS DOWD PUSHING A PRO JUNKFOOD NARRATIVE?
Someone ought to see if Dowd's doing this with other candidates.
If it could become a criteria that you're not American enough if you don't eat junk food, it would be an incredible boon to the junk food industry and it makes me wonder if Dowd might just be pushing the talking point that her corporate mentors would like to see in the campaign.
Gee, sure sounds like it could be a great way to bring in a little extra cash to supplement a reporter's salary?? Remember when the Armstrong Williams was getting paid to push the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind agenda? Sounds like it's possible that a good investigative blogger might have a real story if Dowd carries this narrative through to a lot of her reporting.
You might really be on to something here!
Just like the New Yorker she seems to think she has to try and take Obama down a peg.
She's that person leaning on the wall at the country club making snide comments about everyone.
This is acerbic and irreverent par for the course for Dowd.
Specifically, the food fixation seems to be a popular theme for the bullyish Boston Catholic-on-paper clique and their cronies, otherwise known as the blue-collar Nantucket bunch. Most members are men but women with a male connection (ie Kennedys) or powerful women who dislike the politicians they do and tow the line (ie Dowd) are also welcome. Burgers, fries and ballgames are badges of honor for this crowd. Therefore there's no way Dowd's going to give Obama a pass. The only dem I can think of that might get one would be Pat Moynihan. Or maybe Boss Tweed, too?
For those who don't know, the "Applebee's" reference comes from Dowd's neo-con buddy from the NYTimes David Brooks.
On NewsHour, Brooks explained the Obama has a problem because regular Joes can't see him as a down to earth guy they could rub elbows with "at the AppleBee's salad bar."
That may be because there are no salad bars at AppleBee's ... a fact that "faux Joes" like Brooks and Dowd would never know.
Keep exposing the MSM's obsession with falsely painting Obama as an elitist while John Sidney McCain III flies around on the jet of his multimillionaire wife!
Amen! Well done!
Well, I guess what you eat is very subjective to personal circumstance. Our household is made up with Vegetarians and Vegans, so when I watch Obama eating hot dogs, fried chicken, McDonalds Whoppers..
Maureen, catty queen, there's just so much more fodder on the Cindy and John ranch to go with than the silliness you keep putting out there on Obama. For once in a long, long, too long time we have a candidate with the qualities we should want in a President and you take him to task on trying not to bloat out, bulge out, pig out on the crap these guys are handed on the campaign trail. What is it, you secretly lust for the McCain pugilistic manly man? or you just want to help Obama crash?
Not to mention, what's with the "Barack has no sense of humor"? I have seen him give maybe 3 speeches in person, and he came across as very funny and relaxed.
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