Poor Maureen.

How much do you want to bet she was an unhappy camper having to edit away some of her cleverly constructed (*cough, cough*) zingers in this obviously canned column of hers. (Is that an oxymoron?)

Oh, and for the record, he's not from Chicago. He's from Hawaii -- the Hang Loose state, remember? Comes to Chicago by way of Kansas... and Hah-vahd. Can't blame the candidate for fudging, he's trying to win afterall, but c'mon Maureen. When you can't count on that clever wordplay to get you through the night, accuracy should matter a bit, eh? Really think he represents the South Side? Maybe stop hanging with the movie stars if it's going to distort your sense of reality so.

For much of the campaign, when matched against Hillary in debates, the Illinois senator seemed out of his weight class. But he has moved up to heavyweight, even while losing five pounds as he has raced around the country. The big question is: Can he go from laconic to iconic to bionic? Will he have the muscle to take on the opposition, from Billary to the Republican hate machine to the terrorists overseas?

“I try to explain to people, I may be skinny but I’m tough,” he told a crowd of more than 15,000 in Hartford the other night, with the Kennedys looking on. “I’m from Chicago.”

Oh, and if Obama has magically turned into a "heavyweight" because gals like Maureen say so, then I've got washboard abs and biceps worthy of bystander admiration, even when I'm not flexing. Not. (Though I have been doing a lot of shoveling this year, so I'm not exactly a toothpick or anything. Still, accuracy matters...)