Is Howard Dean trying to score points with conservatives by stiffing Maureen Dowd? Matt Drudge writes, in his characteristically breathless copy, that:

NEW YORK TIMES op-ed queen Maureen Dowd was left waiting by the phone by Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

After scheduling a phone interview with Dowd at her hotel in Des Moines, the candidate never called!

But I think in the case of Dean and Kerry, sometimes an F-up is just an F-up.

(And for those of you who don't remember the Adam Clymer incident, click here.)

UPDATE: Maybe there's more truth to this than I thought. I hadn't read the Jonah Goldberg piece about Clymer since it first ran back in September of 2000. But Jonah wrote that "sticking it to the press is a bipartisan tradition":

Journalists hate to admit it, but beating up the press is a populist gambit. The media ranks at the bottom of almost every survey when it comes to public trust and confidence. More than a third of America actually thinks our press hurts democracy, according to one major survey. For all of their--often sincere--convictions that journalists are looking out for the little guy, most people see the press as an arrogant and unaccountable priesthood of kingmakers or, in the common vernacular, @$#&*!s.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Must have been a deliberate effort by Dean. Pejman Yousefzadeh writes, "my respect for Howard Dean just skyrocketed".

ONE MORE UPDATE: Orrin Judd writes, "Memo to Howard Dean: If you're a fire hydrant already, best not to give MoDo any more reason to whiz on you".