Maureen Dowd is a predatory owl,

who can hear a field mouse rustling in the grass 100's of yards away...that is a field mouse (and here I wax metaphorical de trop) of Inconsequentiality, Insignificance or Petty Irrelevancy.  

She swoops down and chides Obama for a bit of his snark directed at Joe Biden, snark that Dowd regards as unmannerly,  and compares Obama to Emma Woodhull in Pride and Prejudice who rudely belittles a poor relation, one Miss Bates,  at one of them upper class Brit picnics.  I don't presume to know Biden's feelings about the matter, but Biden does not seem quite as hapless as Miss Bates.  

Obama was questioned by Fox News, no less, about Biden's remark there was still a 30% chance of failure for the Administration's immediate plans for the economy.  Obama laughed the comment off with (words to the effect), well, you know Joe, he's always shooting off his mouth about something or other & I don't know what 30% he was talking about any way...

Well, this little mouse of an incident, given especially that the question came from Fox News, could easily have turned into an elephantine story about Democrat Disharmony and Disarray, if Obama had not defanged it (ah, a mixed metaphor) with a little joshin'. 

Perhaps I shouldn't read so much James Wolcott.  Or any Maureen Dowd.
 
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