Over at OpenLeft.com, Natasha Chart recounts her effort to get a quote out of Maureen Dowd at the Democratic debate Wednesday night -- an exchange I witnessed in its entirety. It all went down the way Chart says, including the contrast between MoDo, who minced around the press room in an expensive-looking (if oddly bedazzled) sweater, and Candy Crowley, who spent the debate tapping away on her keyboard and prepping for her live shot by fixing her makeup in a compact mirror.
Then Valania suggested that I ask Maureen Dowd what she thought, since she was coming our way. I scanned the direction I was more or less facing, a he indicated, spotted her, then looked back at him. She wasn't that far away, our eyes briefly met, she must have gotten a load of my bleached
buzzcut or something, and then she pretty much kept staring most the rest of the way over to where she'd have to file past me in our narrow confines. It made me kind of twitchy.
I once heard Sean Penn described as a person who seemed like he was always looking at a menu in a restaurant where he didn't like the food. That does well to describe the expression on Dowd's face as she looked at me. It wasn't hard to catch her eye when she got close and I turned from my conversation with Valania to ask if she had time for a couple questions, because she was still staring at me sideways like she couldn't believe her eyes.
"I've got to go to the spin room," she said, raising a warding hand with haughty languor. She sauntered off with her entourage, surveilled the back section of the room for a scosh, and then headed off to be spun. Well.
I wonder what Maureen Dowd would write about someone who acted like that towards her?
(For contrast, I also didn't get to ask Candy Crowley even a single question. But that's because she was intently working the whole time I was anywhere near her, barely noticing anyone at all who wasn't staffed with her. When I have the look on my face that she did, I can't stand being interrupted, so I didn't interrupt her. And I don't feel snubbed in the slightest thereby.)
In fairness, I would point out to Chart that Dowd wasn't on deadline last night, and Crowley was, hence the difference in the kind of work they were doing at the debate site. And also, I'm certain Dowd has been snubbed like that any number of times in her career -- it comes with the job -- but there's no excuse for bad manners.
Photo by Jonathan Valania
