Media

Is the election starting to wear you down? Never fear, because you've got Maureen Dowd twice a week to boil the entire thing down to harmless wordplay. Sunday Maureen made the point that Hillary Clinton is like Dorothy and Barack Obama is black. That's right, it was high-level Dowd, which is why we present: Maureen Dowd: Explained.

Below, selections from her most recent column, along with commentary for those that aren't yet Advanced Dowd Certified:

By MAUREEN DOWD

It's all about the magic, really. And whether we can take a flier on this skinny guy with the strange name and braided ancestry to help us get it back.

Dowd's talking about Obama here. Not sure what she means by "braided ancestry." Maybe some kind of African thing. Because Obama's ancestry is African, black people wear braids sometimes, and Dowd has seen an African wearing braids in D.C.

Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France and a strong supporter of the United States, recently observed that President Bush has done such a number on our image in the world that no one will be able to restore the luster. "I think the magic is over," he said.

Pas si vite, mon vieux.

This is French. It means "which way is the first class compartment, sir?" We're not sure why she wrote that.

In terms of style, the Obamas could give Carla Bruni-Sarkozy a run for her euros.

Carla Bruni is the new wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. She hasn't changed her name to Sarkozy, so it's funny that Dowd pretended she did.

Bruni lives in Europe where they use euros instead of dollars. "...a run for her dollar" would not have been funny. But "...a run for her euros," that's funny.

Also, Bruni wears much less makeup than Maureen. That's not funny, just true.

Many voters decided last week to stick with Obama despite his less-than-convincing explanations about the Rev. Wright—even as many soured on Hillary, casting her as Lady Voldemort.

Lord Voldemort is a character in the "Harry Potter" series. He is bad. Hillary is bad. Giving Hillary his name is funny.

Despite Bill Clinton's saying it was "a bunch of bull" that his wife should drop out, Democrats are trying to sneak up on Hillary, throw a burlap sack over her head, carry her off the field and stick her in a Saddam spider hole until after the Denver convention.

Dowd is connecting a thing currently in the news (Hillary) with something completely unrelated that was in news a long time ago (Saddam's spider hole). This illustrates that a) Dowd reads the news, b) the news is just one long series of meaningless references, and c) a + b = hilarious.

One Obama adviser moaned that the race was "beginning to feel like a hostage crisis" and would probably go on for another month to six weeks. And Obama said that the "God, when will this be over?" primary season was like "a good movie that lasted about a half an hour too long."

Much of Dowd's columns are simply summaries of things we all know. It's hard to fill out a column twice a week, which is why this is known as "filler." It may seem boring, but it's helpful for those people who don't have internet access or those who have just come out of comas.

Hillary sunnily riposted that she likes long movies. Her favorite as a girl was "The Wizard of Oz," so surely she spots the "Surrender Dorothy" sign in the sky and the bad portent of the ladies of "The View" burbling to Obama about how sexy he is.

This is known as a "LSOMPCR," or, a Long String of Meaningless Pop Culture References.

Obama, like the preternaturally gifted young heroes in mythical tales, is still learning to channel his force.

One of Dowd's favorite ways of describing an election is to use a science fiction or entertainment narrative as a metaphor. Metaphors are a way of increasing insight or understanding through the comparison of seemingly unrelated things. Or they can serve to fill space when you're on deadline and make you seem very knowing to someone like George Will or Sally Quinn.

He can ensorcell when he has to, and he has viral appeal.

Dowd has a dictionary.

Who else could alchemize a nuanced 40-minute speech on race into must-see YouTube viewing for 20-year-olds?

Dowd has discovered YouTube. Be on the lookout for references to "Facebook" in early '09.

Obama has social engineering plans as ambitious, in their own way, as the Bush administration's failed social engineering plans to change the psyche of America and the Middle East.

The CLADPAW. Unless Obama does, indeed, plan on destroying the United States, in which case we apologize for implying that this was a pointless, lazy analogy.

He wants to make government "cool" again.

We have no idea what this means. But it's hilarious.

Using his preacher voice, he urged a black audience in Beaumont, Tex., to be better parents...

Obama is black. So when he speaks he's like a "preacher." Dowd knows about things having to do with people of braided ancestry (black), so shut up.

It's not certain that Obama could bring about an American renaissance.

This is why Dowd is on the op-ed page and you're not. Everyone else thought it was certain. Dowd was able to see that is it not certain.

As the L.A. entertainment lawyer Nancy McCullough, who was on the Harvard Law Review with Obama, told Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum, he tended to wallow in words. She said he was so intent on letting everyone have a say that "I actually would have been happier for him to say sometimes, 'This is how we're doing this, and shut up!' "

When not summarizing the news, throwing in LSOMPCR's or CLADPAW's, Dowd loves to make a quasi-point by quoting other people making actual points. Why doesn't the Times just ask those people to write a column instead of paying Dowd to cut and paste? Well, because, obviously, Lady Voldemort got pushed in the Saddam's spider hole by the braided ancestry preacher before Joy Behar and the Tin Man could warn her.

The pollster Peter Hart says the central questions are: "Is Hillary honest?" and "Is Obama safe?"

Her foreign affairs plumping-up has hurt her, while his exotic and unorthodox narrative stirs doubt.

Obama is black. Black people are "exotic."