New York Times' Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman Headline Fox Business Network

The New York Times and the Obama White House are involved in another of those touchy-feely moments which are bound to set the liberal blog twittering classes ablaze. The occasion this time around was that President Obama played a September round of golf with New York Times writer Thomas L. Friedman. Since many reporters for publications like the New York Times think that the most significant "news" coming out of the White House involves their own glittering presence in the media spotlight, it was only natural that Maureen Dowd would jump forward in her column to bang the gong for her "pal Tom Friedman."

Dowd begins her New York Times column today by saying that she "felt a twinge of envy" that Friedman got to spend five hours playing golf with Obama. Of course, you need an angle when you present such "content" and the angle in Maureen Dowd's column is evident in the title of her piece: "Oval Man Cave." That refers to Obama's male bonding issues and exercises in White House basketball games, and the twittering classes' latest preoccupation in wondering why there were no women included in the games. This mutually affectionate game of contretemps is liberal semaphore vital to the New York Times' obsession with explaining Obama in sympathetic rather than journalistic terms. Maureen Dowd's ambivalent message to her colleagues is to let this president do whatever he wants and don't hold him up to the same journalistic standards by which other presidents have been judged. Maureen Dowd's tone reflects the usual liberal patronage trotted out where Democrat African American politicians are concerned.

Across the page from Maureen Dowd's column is the column of her pal, Thomas Friedman. Friedman's column is more reasoned and more in depth. While I don't agree with it, Friedman's surrender monkey platform is persuasively packaged and buttressed with facts. Facts are important, but we all know that an identical set of facts can lead to altogether different conclusions. Obviously, the White House feels that golfing buddy Friedman and Obama are on the same page in interpreting the facts. The Obama camp doesn't talk to "hostiles," let alone play golf with them. Friedman's a definite "friendly" and provides vital intellectual political cover. For weeks, the Obama team has been conscripting liberal press members into preparing the public for some sort of Afghanistan pull-back.

The most telling fact about Friedman's editorial in this morning's New York Times, is that Friedman appeared this morning on Fox Business Network's "Imus in the Morning." In spite of the appropriate humbling noises he was obliged to make on Imus' show regarding his special treatment at the White House, Friedman gloated over his reportorial slash golfing-with-the-president coup. Freed of serious pundit protocol, broadcast entertainer Imus did a better job of cross-examination of Friedman than the White House press corps does of President Obama. Sure, Friedman pretended to secret the inevitable golf course chatter but he also told Imus that the president didn't want "Afghanistan to be his Vietnam."

That's the sort of statement that means one thing to liberal-left anti-war Obama supporters and another to conservatives, who may understand it to mean they don't again want to see national defense and brave troops sacrificed on the altar of opinion polls and mercenary politics. For his part, Don Imus seemed a bit more kind to Friedman than he was on Maureen Dowd whom he took to task for "dragging in Fox News" to the whole dialogue.

Maureen Dowd's insertion of Fox was an odd editorial flourish, no doubt, as the mention of Fox occurred in only a single line and apropos of nothing. Dowd is not wielding a surgeon's steady hand in writing that "they (the Obamas) know that Fox News is always ready to pounce with that "radical" label." Clumsy, transparent, and ham-fisted are the adjectives that come to mind. If Maureen Dowd's column today were a patient, the patient would have died.

While constructing her elaborate Obama apologia, Dowd writes that "the First Couple is trying to let America digest the huge change that they signify." That "huge change" appears to be more cosmetic in some administration activities and to cause heartburn, indigestion, and possibly projectile vomit in other areas.

Frankly, there is an easy remedy which can stem the flow of vitriol in both directions. Barack Obama invites Chris Wallace, Roger Ailes, and Rupert Murdoch to the links for a round of golf. But I would advise that the President shouldn't dither for very long in choosing that healing strategy. The all-male retinue of golfing buddies only works for Maureen Dowd when Barack Obama is president.