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Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd sat down with the kids at the Harvard Political Review and discussed the important issue of "real news" verus "fake news." The debate has raged for years now, and it pits the network evening news against Comedy Central, basically. The New York Times counts as "real news," even though they publish Dowd's column. Dowd, obv, is unworried about this pretend news crisis. Because, she would like to remind you, she invented it! Sort of.

"When I first started my columns," Dowd explains, "Michael Kinsley and Bill Safire said to me, 'You have to stop doing humor columns because you'll be seen as too girly.' And I said I would never take humor out of politics." Thank god she didn't listen to those buzzkills and stop doing funny columns! Think of how many tortured Sex & the City references and cutesy nicknames we were almost denied!

Perhaps Kinsley and Safire meant "You should stop doing humor columns because you don't do it as well as Molly Ivins," but they were too gentlemanly to spell it out?

Dowd isn't worried about the rise of "blogs" either because she doesn't know how to turn her iPod on. So she probably doesn't even know the terrible things some of us have been saying about her for years now.

Anyway we can't wait to see what new way she comes up with of calling Barack Obama a fag tomorrow.

[HPR]