That title, “Dear Media, Penn State is not a ‘sex scandal,’ it’s a rape scandal,” comes from a tweet that I sent out earlier, in response to the umpteenth such reference I heard today to the sickening story that’s  rightly blighting the careers of many associated with Joe Paterno‘s football program. The chatter I’ve been hearing all day, though, did not prepare me for the shocking number of media references to this story as a “sex scandal.”

As Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Texas-sized mouth garners gushers of media attention in the opening days of his presidential campaign, fact-checking website Politifact has been working overtime to ride to Perry’s rescue, rating statements that Perry alternately “threatened to” or “wanted to” secede as “false.”

West Wing Report‘s Paul Brandus points out that it was on this date in 1862 that President Abraham Lincoln laid to rest any doubt about the right of states to secede. Politifact concedes that point, yet ignores it in analyzing the accusations against Perry.

In the mind of comic-book author Benjamin Marra, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is basically a snarky Clark Kent. He’s given the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist the superhero treatment with his bizarre new comic,
The Incredibly Fantastic Adventures of Maureen Dowd. In it, his redheaded heroine breaks national stories, battles bad guys, and parades around in racy underwear, all while maintaining journalistic integrity.

During a short interview on Fox News yesterday from one of her Tea Party Express stops Fox News contributor Sarah Palin was asked how she felt about Maureen Dowd calling her Queen Bee of the mean girls in her column over the weekend.

For better of worse nothing fires up Maureen Dowd like powerful women. In today’s column her sights are set on the ‘Republican Mean Girls.’ In other words, Sarah Palin‘s Mama Grizzlies. Perhaps not surprisingly she has some rather mean words for this group (in the words of Drudge: MAUREEN DOWD UNLEASHED)

Maureen Dowd could not let Christine O’Donnell‘s old remarks about monkey’s and evolution and mice with human brains pass her by. In today’s column she picks up on both as well as Bill Maher‘s concern that these remarks by O’Donnell are far more worrisome than her witchcraft dabbling.

You knew it was coming. Today Maureen Dowd jumps into the Christine O’Donnell fracas. As the witchcraft metaphor has already been handily provided for her, all that’s left for Dowd to do is reflect that perhaps President Obama could use a little more passionate fantasy in his presidency (though thankfully she refrains from any Gandalf comparisons).

It is a measure of the extreme turn the nation’s political dialogue has taken that Maureen Dowd can be considered a voice of reason. Today she is scolding none other than Kenyan anti-colonial interpreter Newt Gingrich.

Rachel Maddow returned from last week’s secret trip to Baghdad and jumped right into the Lower Manhattan mosque controversy. Maddow’s explanation for the recent furor over the building is this: It’s merely “this month’s new ‘scare white people’ story.” Says Maddow: “What’s worth noting about all of these different ‘scare white people’ stories is that they’re not really actual news stories…No non-Fox News, non-conservative media outlet ever starts these things.”

Every once and a while Maureen Dowd comes out swinging with a worthy doozy. This is one of those days. Dowd jumps right into the Mosque fray today with a column that is packed from start to stop with MoDo-esque zingers, all of them worthwhile.

Maureen Dowd thinks President Obama should fire Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Fear not Gibbs fans, she merely thinks the President should promote Gibbs to adviser because he is a truth teller (be it of the unpredictable sort). Dowd, in one of her smarter columns of late, thinks Gibbs is correct in his assertion that the “professional left” is undermining the Obama administration.

First lady Michelle Obama received a lot of criticism from predictable sources on the right and the left for her recent family vacation to Spain. But during an appearance on Fox and Friends this morning, former White House Press Secretary under George W. Bush and Fox News Analyst Dana Perino defended the First Lady’s trip, adding that she should be “off limits,” and criticized NY Times Maureen Dowd in the process.

Past is prologue. Everything old is new again. These seem to be themes permeating this week’s Sunday Times op-ed page. Frank Rich draws further comparisons between the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and this week’s WikiLeaks dump, right down to the White House (ish) wedding that a accompanied both.

Apparently Maureen Dowd has grown tired of calling President Obama a girl. This week Obama’s problem is a a black one. Again. It must be said that, if nothing else, MoDo is brilliant at taking the week’s news and shaping it into a catchy talking point that will dominate the Sunday shows and at least a few days of morning shows in the week to come.

Peggy Noonan has decided there aren’t enough adults in charge and that we need old men (I guess old women wouldn’t be of any help). Waxing nostalgic on the anniversary of the publishing of To Kill a Mockingbird, she’s decided that we need Atticus Finch to lead us through life and that he could be personified in, wait for it, former Republican National Committee chair and current Mississippi governor Haley Barbour.

This is so fantastic and funny it sounds like it came directly out of a Seinfeld episode. In today’s column Maureen Dowd has the backstory on how George Steinbrenner came to be a character on Seinfeld….and how George Costanza almost lost his name.

Apparently Kathleen Parker, WaPo columnist and newly minted CNN host, swallowed a MoDo pill yesterday. How else to explain her column pondering whether Barack Obama is our first female president (listen closely, that’s Hillary Clinton ripping the wood off of whatever podium she’s at today). Parker’s column may lack the trite comparisons to fictional cartoon characters, however the message is the same: Obama is too girly.

The secondary storyline this week with respect to President Obama and his handling of the BP oil spill appears to be how many Democratic stalwarts turned coat and began to loudly criticize the President in recent days. Salon’s Joan Walsh, meanwhile, thinks the nation should stop looking for a daddy.

Happy Easter Sunday! Pope Benedict’s personal preacher apologized to Jews this morning for comparing the barrage of attacks against both the Church and the pope over a number of huge sexual abuse scandals — instigated by the recent, damning reports from the New York Times — to ‘collective violence’ against Jews throughout history. Yes, he actually said that. There’s more.

OK. Okay. Scott Brown is very charming. If Brown’s election last week caught you off guard last night’s Ten@Ten segment on Jay Leno might go a long way to explaining why the people of Massachusetts were so willing to throw over health care reform: Brown is not only charming he’s very sincere.

“The New One is the shimmering vessel that we are pouring all our hopes and dreams into after the grave disappointment of the Last One, Barack Obama.” That would be (and I know this will shock you) Maureen Dowd declaring her love of Scott Brown before tapping him as the 2012 president-elect. There’s more.

Maybe Maureen Dowd should take over national security (hey, apparently the people in charge have not been doing all that much!). According to today’s column MoDo practically predicted that there would be a terrorist attack over the holiday.

If you are a follower of the New York Times you are probably familiar with the blog NYTPicker, the website that “devotes itself exclusively to the goings-on inside the New York Times — the newspaper and the institution itself.” In other words, they watch the goings on at the Times better than most including, arguably, the Times. But who are they?

After Harry Potter’s worldwide record-breaking weekend, we got to talking about certain parallels between the magical land of Hogwarts and the equally magical land of headlines, bylines, cutlines, chyrons, blog pickup and declining ad pages. Turns out, the two have a lot in common!

On that note, for your edification and enjoyment, we present our own version – let’s call it “Harry Potter and the Media Muggles.”

Who’s prettier, more conniving and more ambitious: the characters from the CW’s Gossip Girl or the media elite? Both live in worlds of ambition, access, even backstabbing, and some might say it’s all one big popularity contest. But it’s not just beauty and a knack for spreading news quickly that unite our favorite teen-soap and the media figures whose every move we track. Spotted: Our favorite Gossip Girl characters and their real-life media counterparts.