BARACKALYPSE NOW

Maureen Dowd wrote an opinion piece mocking President Obama as just a man and not the one we have been waiting for to heal the planet, and whatnot.

But what you don't know is the background to how Ms. Dowd came to this mission.

The opening scene :

Rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan:

                                DOWD (voice over)
"New York City, piffle. I'm still only in New York City. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back in  Washington, D.C.  When I was in WDC after my first column, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing...

I hardly said a word to my editor until I said yes to inauguration tickets.

When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into that spirit of Hope and Change. I've been here a week now. Waiting for a story idea, getting softer.

Every minute I stay in this apartment I get weaker. And every minute Teabaggers vote in the House they get stronger.

Each time I look around the walls move in a little tighter.

Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a story, and for my sins they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service."

Two unpaid interns approach the apartment door:

                                INTERN

"Maureen Dowd ? Are you in there?"

                                DOWD
"Yeah."

                                DOWD (voice over)
"It was a real choice story, and when it was over, I'd never want another."

                                DOWD
"Whaddya want ?"

                                INTERN
"Are you all right Ms. Dowd?"

                                DOWD
"How does it look like?"

                                INTERN
"Maureen Dowd of Opinion Page, Mainstream Media, assigned NYT?"

                                DOWD
"Hey buddy, are you gonna shut the door?"

                                INTERN
"We have orders to escort you to the studio."

                                DOWD
"What’s my expense account?"

                                INTERN
"Ma’am?"

                                DOWD
"What can I spend?"

                                INTERN
"There's no expense account, Ms. Dowd. You have orders to report to the MSNBC conference room in Rockefeller Center."

                                DOWD
"Rockefeller Center?"

                                INTERN
"That's right. Come on Ms. Dowd, you still have a few hours to get cleaned up.

Ms. Dowd?

Dave, give me a hand.

Come on Ms. Dowd, let's take a bubble bath. We're gonna take a bath, in we go ..."

In Rockefeller Center:

                                DOWD (voice over)
"I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didn't even know it yet. Weeks away and metaphorically hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through Beltway country like a feather boa and wrapped right around Obama. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Candidate Barrack H. Obama’s memory of Hope and Change, any more than being back in New York was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story is really a confession, then so is mine."

In the briefing room:

                                JAMES CARVILLE
"Come on in. At ease. Want a Mimosa?"

                                DOWD
"No, thank you sir."

                                CARVILLE
"Ms. Dowd, have you ever seen this gentleman before? Met the writer or myself ?"

                                DOWD
"No, sir. Not personally."

                                CARVILLE
"You have written a lot on your own, haven't you?"

                                DOWD
"Yes, sir. I have."

                                CARVILLE
"Your report specifies snark, counter-snark, with NYT OpEd."

                                DOWD
"I'm not presently disposed to discuss these operations, sir."

                                CARVILLE
"Did you not work for the DNC in Manhattan?"

                                DOWD
"No, sir."

                                CARVILLE
"Did you not character assassinate the government’s president from Texas state, June 19th, 2003? Ms. Dowd?"

                                DOWD
"Sir, I am unaware of any such activity or column - nor would I be disposed to discuss such a column if it did in fact exist, sir."

                                FRANK RICH
"I thought we'd have a bite of lunch while we talk. I hope you brought a good appetite with you.

You have a bad hand there, are you wounded?"

                                DOWD
"A little typing accident on Martha’s Vineyard, sir."

                                RICH
"Typing  on the Vineyard... But you're feeling fit, ready for duty?"

                                DOWD
"Yes. Very much so, sir."

                                RICH
"Let's see what we have here... roast beef and..., usually is not bad. Try some Jimmy, pass it around. Save a little time when we'll pass both ways.

Ms. Dowd, I don't know how you feel about this arugula, but if you'll eat it, you never have to prove your courage in any other way... I'll take a piece here ..."

                                CARVILLE
"Ms. Dowd, you heard of President Barack H. Obama?"

                                DOWD
"Yes, sir, I've heard of The One."

                                CARVILLE
"Community organizer, Chicago social forces."

                                RICH
"Luke, would you play that tape for Ms. Dowd, please. Listen carefully."

                                ON TAPE
"October 9th, noonish, sector PBS."

                                CARVILLE
"This was monitored out of K Street. This has been verified as President Obama’s voice."

                                PRESIDENT OBAMA (on tape)
"I watched a 1,000-page bill crawl along the edge of a straight party-line vote. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a party-line vote, and surviving."

                                ON TAPE

"11th transmission, December 30th, mid-morning, sector NPR."

                                OBAMA (on tape)
"We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Teabagger after Teabagger, NASCAR fan after NASCAR fan, red state after red state, candidate after candidate. And they call me a politician. What do you call it when the politicians accuse the politician? They lie. They lie and we have to be merciful for those who lie. Those nabobs. I hate them. How I hate them..."

                                RICH
"Candidate Obama was one of the most outstanding politicians this party has ever produced. He was brilliant and outstanding in every way and he was a good man, too. Humanitarian man, man of progressive policies, of hope. And change. Mustn’t forget the change. But he won’t fight the Rethuglicans he knows must be beaten. The words are there. But the methods?

He entered the White House. After that his ideas, methods have become unsound... Unsound."

                                CARVILLE
"Now he's crossed to Crystal City with his MoveOn.org mailing list, who worship the man, like a god, and follow every Tweet however ridiculous."

                                RICH
"Well, I have some other shocking news to tell you. President Obama is about to be challenged in the primary."

                                DOWD
"I don't follow, sir. Challenged by who?"

                                CARVILLE
"Obama had ordered some Chicago campaign staff out to the nonprofits. Men he believed were double agents from Hillary Clinton. So he took matters into his own hands. He continues to cave to the Rethuglicans and won’t fight back against their lies and smears."

                                RICH
"Well, you see Ms. Dowd... In this campaign, things get confused out there, power, ideals, the old morality, and practical political necessity. Out there with these Obamabots it must be a temptation to be god. Because there's a conflict in every human heart between the candidate and the president, between good and evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every candidate has got a breaking point. You and I have. President Obama has reached his.

And very obviously, he has gone insane."

                                DOWD
"Yes sir, very much so, sir. Obviously insane."

                                CARVILLE
"Your mission is to proceed up to Crystal City in a Soros-paid press pool. Pick up President Obama’s path at the Marriott, follow it, learn what you can along the way. When you find the president, infiltrate his team by whatever means available and ridicule the president's campaign."

                                DOWD
"Ridicule? The One?"

                                RICH
"He's out there operating without any decent anger or backbone. Totally beyond the pale of any acceptable political conduct if he wants to be reelected. And he is still in the bus commanding his election campaign."

                                DNC EMPLOYEE
"Ridicule with extreme prejudice."

                                CARVILLE
"You understand Ms. Dowd... , that this operation does not exist, nor will it ever exist."

In limo:

                                DOWD (voice over)
"How many people had I already ridiculed? There were those six hundred that I know about for sure. Close enough to blow their last chance for Broadway tickets in my face. But this time it was a Democrat and a liberal. That wasn't supposed to make any difference to me, but it did.

Piffle...charging a man with being too political in this place was like handing out minor in possession tickets in a Organizing for America meeting. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do? But I didn't know what I'd do when I found him. Every instinct screamed out that I should never get out of the effing bubble. I was about to learn the pain of mocking The One.  I’d do one piece—and then I’d be done."

[This is the End]

With thanks to these lads for the transcript.

NOTE: I cleaned up the formatting to condense it.

UPDATE: Dowd has returned to the effing bubble, happy that Candidate Obama has emerged from her mission up the Potomac River to ridicule President Obama.