Maureen Dowd Gets a Wink from Dubya, then Ponders Sex Change

The Gridiron Dinner in Washington must have been the place to be on Saturday. Maureen Dowd, NY Times Op-Ed Columnist, got a 'wink' from the president.

Suddenly, W. turned around, stopped and looked right at me. Then he flashed a wink, not a flirty wink but a mischievous Clark Gable "I've got your number and you think you've got mine but I win" wink.

Then Bush compares John McCain to a disobedient puppy:

Mr. Bush slyly joked that he had the "dangedest puppy" who would roll over on command - but only some of the time. "I renamed him 'John McCain.' "

And then Maureen Dowd ponders becoming a male escort:

I may have gotten a presidential wink, but I still don't have my regular White House pass back. (Maybe I'd get it back if I became a male escort?)

Maybe if they keep joking and keep us laughing we'll forget all this stuff:

The Bushies created their own reality to convince the country that Iraq was a threat to U.S. security. So even though the war has given birth to some of the very evils it was supposed to fix - like more recruits for Osama, and Saddam's formerly sealed weapons' falling into terrorists' hands - Bushies like the results of their war.

Now the White House has its own gulag: C.I.A. agents snatch suspects and fly them to places like Egypt and Syria to be strung up in chains and tortured. And The Times reported yesterday that at least 26 deaths of prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan may be criminal homicides. So it also has its own Soviet-style propaganda campaign.

At his news conference yesterday, the president bristled a bit when a reporter reminded him that after it was revealed that his administration was paying columnists to shill for agency programs, Mr. Bush had ordered that such tactics cease.

But, as the reporter noted, the administration is still using government money to produce stories about the government that are broadcast with no disclosure that the government is producing them.