I love the Ali G show on HBO. I’ve only seen a few, but they’ve all been hilarious. You’ve probably heard the basics already. A British comedian, Sacha Baron Cohen, gets tricked out in gangsta attire and interviews stuffed shirts, eggheads and prominent current and former government officials. He asks them absurd questions and even gets some of them to rap. Anyway, Maureen Dowd has a pretty good description of the show with some very funny quotes.

But what’s really annoying and gratuitously cheap about Dowd’s column is her total failure to mention a single liberal who’s been on the show. She doesn’t even mention that Ralph Nader was reportedly going to sue the show for making him look like an idiot and making him rap (some people think he looked like an idiot by rapping, I think that was just the icing on the cake). Why leave this out? I hope her excuse is ignorance. Because if her point was that only Republicans look stiff and silly on the show, she’s making her self look lame and foolishly. Dowd’s been on this kick for years, of course. She called conservative men the “C-Span and galoshes” crowd more than a decade ago. And has always seemed to believe in a catty way that only people who share her politics can be hip and cool. The problem is her whole schtick is predicated on the myth that she’s really clued in to what’s happening with the kids today. Remember her embarrassing column on her crush on Eminem? If she can only draw partisan conclusions from the Ali G show, she’s not nearly as with it as she thinks she is.