Maureen Dowd's Exquisite Timing

The doyenne of the state-controlled media is aghast that Rush Limbaugh would call the man-child in the White House a man-child. The usual drivel--he's a chickenhawk, Oxycontin jokes, cheap shots at Sarah Palin. Most amusing is she goes on to tut-tut Limbaugh for calling Obama a narcissist.

So what does Obama do on election night?

Uh, he re-watches a documentary about himself.

During the 10AM ET hour of America’s Newsroom on Fox News Channel, fill-in co-host Martha Maccallum told viewers what President Obama watched on election night while Democrats suffered big losses in New Jersey and Virginia: “Robert Gibbs said, well, he was actually watching, you know, the HBO special about his year-long campaign and how it all went.”

On Tuesday night the White House had worked to downplay the Democratic gubernatorial defeats by claiming the President did not watch the election returns. Apparently Gibbs thought it would look better if the commander in chief was watching a self-indulgent fawning documentary about himself. Interestingly, Obama apparently previewed the HBO special a few days earlier, as Gibbs himself explained to the blog Talking Points Memo: “White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says Obama has already seen ‘By the People’...Gibbs told TPMDC Obama’s review: ‘Thumbs up!’”

How dare anyone call him a narcissist.

By the way, a story was floating around last night Obama was watching a Chicago Bulls game. I doubt he was watching anything other than MSNBC. Then again, maybe Obama was huddled up with the mysteriously missing Keith Olbermann, clutching each other in sorrow.

Baghdad Bob Gibbs offers the lame spin.

We don't know if President Obama watched the Chicago Bulls-Milwaukee Bucks basketball game last night. Or perhaps that new HBO documentary on his 2008 president campaign.

We do know what he did not watch: Election returns.

"He never watched them when he was running," spokesman Robert Gibbs said, offering the White House analysis on last night's races in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York.

Funny, but why are there dozens of photos here of Obama, um, watching election results?