I had a good laugh over this, because any time a liberal journalist feels the least bit slighted in any way by a conservative candidate, the world is about to end, because the First Amendment is on the chopping block.  Vic brought this piece in Newsbusters to my attention, and I urgently felt the need to blog about it – because I’m a writer, because I was once a professional journalist, because I understand the Bill of Rights, and because I’m avoiding work as I write this. 

And if the above aren’t enough reasons to whip out the blogging “pen,” the fact that Maureen Dowd has the balls to snivel about infringements to her First Amendment rights just makes me giggle hysterically – almost as much as the nekkid guy with the pot, who I’m betting is probably more appealing than Dowd.  And come on, people!  It’s Maureen Dowd!  How could you NOT laugh at the image of her standing dejectedly at the airport, watching all the cool reporter kids board the McCain plane, while she’s denied?



It all started when Maureen covered an Aug. 30 McCain-Palin rally in Washington, Pa., then wasn’t let on the McCain plane afterward, forcing her to overnight at a Pittsburgh airport hotel while the traveling press went on without her.


“I had had a great  relationship with John McCain for 16 years, through columns he liked and didn’t like. So at first I thought it was a mistake and doublechecked with the press office. They said I was banned from both planes for ‘the foreseeable future.’ Then [McCain spokeswoman] Nicole Wallace was gloating about it to reporters on the Palin plane,” Dowd wrote in an email.


“It was disappointing because I didn’t think John McCain would ever be as dismissive of the First Amendment as Dick Cheney.”


First Amendment, eh?  Where, pray tell, in the First Amendment does the Bill of Rights specify a reporter’s right to fly on a candidate’s plane?  We’re talking about this First Amendment, right?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Nope.  Not seeing the right to ride in an airplane with McCain anywhere in the text.  Is it implied or something?  Does being booted off the plane for being an insufferable bitch somehow infringe on your right to publish shrill opinion pieces in any liberal rag that will accept them?

One would think that Dowd, as a journalist, would know and understand the meaning of the First Amendment, but then again…

…I don’t really consider her a journalist.  Having the ability to put snide, barely informed blathering in writing doesn’t really make one a journalist.  As a formal journalist and currently snide blogger, I should know.

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