Scrubbing Maureen

by digby

Bob Somerby and Molly Ivors take Maureen Dowd to task for her deeply depraved column today so I won’t belabor the point here. Go read them both. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Clinton or Obama supporter, the column is equally insulting to both candidates. She writes about Clinton as if she is a dark, paranoid hermaphrodite (and Stanley Crouch called her yesterday) and Obama as a skinny little girl named Obambi. (Not that there’s anything wrong with little girls, of course, but I don’t think anyone thinks a little girl is electable to the presidency of the United States.) This is a disturbed column, even by Dowd’s low standards.

But Somerby points out something very strange. Like me, his dead tree version of the New York Times has this nasty line:

Even though Obama stopped smoking when he started running for president, he has lost five pounds racing around the country. Just like Hollywood starlets, he works out religiously and he can make a three-course meal out of a Nicorette.

It’s missing from the online version. Somerby says it’s also missing from Lexis- Nexis. How did that happen? And why?

I should point out that it doesn’t make any difference. She still portrays him as a silly naive lightweight up against the cunning gorgon. But this paragraph was removed for a reason and it would be interesting to hear what it was. Did her editors finally step in and say she’d gone too far? Can we hope for more?

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