YES, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAUREEN DOWD AND GAIL COLLINS

Gail Collins managed to get through an entire column about the plan to shoot down that satellite without once making a snarky metaphoric reference to the Clintons or Barack Obama. In fact, they're not mentioned at all. I don't think Maureen Dowd could pull that off if her life depended on it.

You can imagine how Dowd would write about this:

...Just like the satellite, the notion of the First Black President was launched some time ago, with great fanfare. Now that notion is headed back to earth -- and Bill and Hill fear it's aimed straight at them. They're panicking -- who knew it could do so much damage? They've tried using Bill to shoot it out of the sky, but that's not what his payload was designed for....

Or something like that.

The Collins column is actually rather amusing. It's a nice break from Dowdism, and from 24/7 campaign talk in general.