Maureen Dowd, the Ann Coulter of the Left?

So, is Maureen Dowd the ultimate hack and a culturally out of touch old bag to boot?

She starts this hit piece on Hillary Clinton by a reference to Lenny and Squiggy and then goes on to further develop the Laverne and Shirley metaphor, even quoting the old opening song from that TV series. Then she talks about Barack Obama as the candidate who has sparked a "generational boom."

She knows about generational booms?

She doesn't even realize that nobody born after 1980 actually remembers who Lenny and Squiggy were or has ever seen Laverne and Shirley, which is actually a good thing. It was a dreadful show.

So anyway, you start out thinking, Oh good, at least she's going to say something nice about Obama. Well, you'd be wrong and foolish for getting up your hopes about that. Here's how Dowd actually ends her piece:

Obama is basing his campaign on his freshness and integrity and honesty, so he shouldn’t cut corners, as he seems to have done with crediting Patrick and explaining the extent of his relationship with his sleazy former fund-raiser, Tony Rezko.

The attribution problem might be small beer compared with Michelle Obama’s comment in Milwaukee on Monday: “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”

It’s a discordant note for the stylish, brainy 44-year-old Princeton and Harvard Law School grad. Cindy McCain showed that Republicans would jump right on a line like that, and twist it into something that sounded extremist and unpatriotic.

Michelle made another of these aggrieved pronouncements at a rally in Los Angeles before the California primary: “Things have gotten progressively worse, throughout my lifetime, through Democratic and Republican administrations, it hasn’t gotten better for regular folks.”

Given the way the Clintons unfairly turn the tables, we’re only moments away from Hillary asking Obama: “Can’t you control your spouse?”

And believe it or not, that was supposed to be an anti-Hillary and pro-Obama piece. With friends like that on our side, believe me, we don't need Republicans to run against. She'll do us more harm.

Maureen Dowd is the kind of whiny faux liberal that the New York Times loves to employ. Give her any chance and she'll take it - to trash any Democrat. The problem is that no living candidate would actually be pure enough or good enough to meet with Dowd's finicky approval. She's the type of pseudo liberal columnist who actually gives more aid and comfort to the Republicans.

After all, as the the logic would go, she's liberal but even she doesn't like Hillary or Obama. Maybe there really is something wrong with both of them.

Let's face it, if Ann Coulter lashes out and says John Edwards looks like a fag, progressives and Democrats would jump all over it and defend him. So would most normal people who understand that Coulter is a hard rightwing hack. But if Maureen Dowd craps all over a Democrat, it's Democrats who will sit up, notice and get discouraged about their candidates while Republicans laugh their butts off at our self-destructiveness. Why wouldn't they love that we are doing their job for them and destroying our own candidates?

In theory, Dowd is a journalist, not a partisan. Nobody expects her to tote the Democratic Party line or carry its water. If she has a fair and reasoned criticism of any candidate, Democratic or Republican, it's her job to write about it. If there is something serious to expose about somebody running for office, exposing it is also her job. Shining light on politicians is the responsibility of the press. And when its done right, it makes for better candidates and better government.

But that's not what Dowd does. Bob Somerby, who runs the Daily Howler, started that site precisely because of writers like Dowd. He has researched and exposed relentlessly the fact that she invents quotes that were never said, as she did to John Kerry in 2004 and Gore in 2000; she exaggerates and outright lies.

In fact, he once observed "It always starts with Dowd." And if you go to his site and type in Maureen Dowd's name, you'd come up with an entire list of posts Somerby has done detailing the vaccuous and harmful hit jobs she's done on Democrats over the years.

She's the left's Ann Coulter. Only unlike Coulter, she targets fellow liberals. She's that strange sort of animal that fouls its own nest. Even Coulter usually knows not to do that.