Thursday, April 3, 2008

Dowd: On PA campaign trail, Obama needs to become more macho than Hillary




Maureen Dowd, NY Times:


"Obama has been less adept at absorbing the lesson of Hillary’s metamorphosis from entitled queen of the party to scrappy blue-collar mama. His strenuous and inadvertently hilarious efforts to woo working-class folk in Pennsylvania have only made him seem more effete. Keeping his tie firmly in place, he genteelly sipped his pint of Yuengling beer at Sharky’s sports cafe in Latrobe and bowled badly in Altoona. Challenging Obama to a bowl-off, Hillary kindly offered to 'spot him two frames.'

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.'

One of the most valuable lessons the gritty Hillary can teach the languid Obama — and the timid Democrats — is that the whole point of a presidential race is to win."

"The Hillary Waltz" - Maureen Dowd, NY Times

No comments: