Over at BuzzFeed, McKay Coppins rounds up a bunch of reactions to Gail Collins' most recent New York Times column, and how much people hate her for writing it. Why are they dogging out Collins? Because on Thursday she returns to one of her favorite topics -- that time Mitt Romney strapped a dog kennel to the roof of his car, shoved his dog Seamus into it, and then embarked on a road trip to Canada, whereupon Seamus promptly lathered the Romney family vehicle in liquified dog feces, because of the mortal terror it understandably experienced screaming down the highway.
Collins has basically made a little cottage industry for herself in mentioning this story again and again when she writes about Romney. And it's not like Collins doesn't have a good reason to revisit the matter in full this week -- when the most recent New Yorker hit the stands with a cover that commemorated Seamus' wild ride by casting Rick Santorum as the cage-bound cur at the mercy of Romney's driving, Dylan Byers penned a piece for Politico titled, "Gail Collins, eat your heart out."
So it seems only natural that Collins would gamely note the New Yorker cover, take Politico's troll-bait with good cheer, and revisit the story with which she's come to be associated. She notes Thursday that the matter is apparently important enough for Chris Wallace -- who's always begging Romney to come on "Fox News Sunday" -- to have asked the candidate about. She also notes that the Obama campaign has been only too happy to bring this story up again and again.
How happy is the campaign, by the way? Well, consider the fact that Obama For America has managed to get a banner ad for "Pet Lovers For Obama" placed alongside Collins' column today.
Collins readily admits that she does this as "a kind of game" because "the Republican primary campaign has been an extremely long and depressing slog, and we need all the diversion we can get." Many Republicans watching the primary campaign would readily agree with that.
But apparently, twittering twitterers do not agree. Dave Weigel rates the effort as "lazier than phoning it in." Brian Dawson says Collins is "the worst, laziest writer in human history." Ben White says he doesn't find it "funny anymore," and as Ben White goes, so go the cultural mores of America, no one denies this! And Byron York takes issue with the fact that Collins has limited her coverage of Jeremiah Wright to a mere three occasions as compared to the 45 times she's riffed on Seamus, totally overlooking the fact that it would be an amazing story if President Barack Obama strapped Jeremiah Wright to the roof of a car and drove him around until he pooped himself.
Well, piss it, scolds! Collins returning to this story is really not nearly as bad as her colleague David Brooks endlessly going on about how everything that's gone wrong in America -- from Haitian earthquakes to the Jerry Sandusky scandal -- is the result of some 1960s-era moral breakdown. And as my colleague Arthur Delaney quips, "I'd rather read over & over about Seamus Romney than 'the disappearing center.'" Exactly. You know, at least Gail Collins didn't include a lede that leaned heavily on a conversation she had with a livery driver or the front-desk clerk at the Cairo Marriott.
At any rate, I guess the takeaway is that Gail Collins isn't allowed to have any fun anymore, so happy International Women's Day!
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