On the April 4 edition of MSNBC's The Most, conservative columnist Joel Mowbray said that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made a “rookie mistake” in, according to Mowbray, chiding New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd for writing that Obama's “ears stick out.” But as Media Matters for America noted, according to Chicago Sun-Times Washington bureau chief Lynn Sweet, Obama was joking, as she noted in a December 11, 2006, weblog entry and a December 11, 2006, Chicago Sun-Times article. Sweet wrote that after a December 10, 2006, press conference in New Hampshire, Obama “chided [Dowd] in a kidding way” for her October 21, 2006, column when he said to her, “I just want to put you on notice. ... I was teased relentlessly when I was a kid about my big ears.” Mowbray's comments echoed those of MSNBC host Tucker Carlson and nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh, among others, who construed Obama's joke literally and called him “sensitive.”

Additionally, Mowbray's use of the term “rookie mistake” echoed the headline on a March 27 article by Politico chief political correspondent Mike Allen, “Rookie Mistakes Plague Obama.” As Media Matters documented, the article stretched what Allen characterized as “trivial” inconsistencies into a 1,200-word piece that was promoted on the Drudge Report, apparently an hour before the article was published on The Politico's website. On the March 28 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, senior political analyst Bill Schneider also repeated the “rookie mistakes” line in discussing Obama, as Media Matters noted. The Republican National Committee (RNC) cited The Politico's “rookie mistakes” headline in a research document attacking Obama. The RNC's document is titled “The Rookie.”

From the April 4 edition of MSNBC's The Most:

ALLISON STEWART (host): So, you say Obama -- media, empty vessel. You're saying John Edwards -- media, empty vessel.

MOWBRAY: Hillary's formidable.

STEWART: So, who's the one -- who's the person who should have folks on the conservative side biting their nails a little bit?

MOWBRAY: Well, I mean, I guess, you know -- biting the nails? Maybe Obama if he's able -- look, he's shown definitely that he can be savvy, but at the same time, remember what he did with Maureen Dowd. He sees her in a crowd and, you know, after he gives a speech, he goes out to her with the microphones right nearby and he says, you know, “You made fun of my ears. They made fun of me relentlessly as a child.” I mean, this is the kind of rookie mistake you can't make on the trail. And I'm guessing --

STEWART: So, who's the real deal?

MOWBRAY: -- he's probably going to do more of that.