As you may know, a few weeks ago in the thick of the fallout from the Jayson Blair, New York Times columnist/reputed booze-hound Maureen Dowd famously altered a George W. Bush statement which ended up changing the meaning of what he actually said.

In her column, reacting to a new Al Qaeda bombing, Dowd wrote:

Busy chasing off Saddam, the president and vice president had told us that Al Qaeda was spent. "Al Qaeda is on the run," President Bush said last week. "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated…They're not a problem anymore."

Dowd made it sound like Bush arrogantly claimed that Al Qaeda is no longer any threat because of his tough dealing with them. Supposedly, he now had egg on his face because of the bombing they had since perpetrated, proving he had stupidly underestimated them. The key, of course, was what she had deleted by using the elipses.

What Bush actually said (with Dowd's deletion in bold type) was:

Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore. (Applause.) And we'll stay on the hunt. To make sure America is a secure country, the Al Qaeda terrorists have got to understand it doesn't matter how long it's going to take, they will be brought to justice.”

Anyway, this is all old news, but I bring it up because I love what James Taranto is doing with it daily in Opinion Journal's "Best of the Web." He prints several selections, submitted by readers, of "Dowdified" statements from Dowd's own column. Among the "quotes" taken from Dowd's most recent column:

"I . . . have . . . ratcheted up . . . the . . . Prozac, Zoloft, Xanax and Paxil."

"Usually, I avoid . . . issues and . . . act like . . . an amateur. . . . I'm . . . a purveyor of . . . fantasy."

And...

"I'll just die if don't get . . . Botox."

I love it.