Heathers against Howard

WHEN A REGULAR at Dean Nation, the oldest and most popular Howard Dean weblog, complained recently about Dean-bashing by liberal pundits Joshua Micah Marshall, Matthew Yglesias, and George Stephanopoulos, among others, he caused the digital equivalent of a firestorm by concluding, "All you Heathers, get out of town." Yglesias, writing on his own blog, claimed to welcome the moniker. But many Democrats online claim that the "Deaniacs" have gone too far this time.

The term "Heather" is apparently derived from the 1989 movie of that title starring Winona Ryder as a high-schooler oppressed by a clique of alpha females, all named Heather. In 2003, along with the more descriptive "Beltway Heathers," the term was frequently used online -- by the popular political blogger Atrios and Slate.com's Mickey Kaus, for example -- to castigate members of the Washington press corps, not for being anti-Dean but for being cliquish. What Heathers have in common, according to one Dean Nation visitor, "is a self-serving, careerist conviction that it's uncool to be too liberal or too Democratic."

Dean also has a real-life Heather to worry about. Republican National Committee spokeswoman Heather Layman recently accused Dean of hypocrisy for taking Dick Cheney to task for holding secret energy policy meetings when he did the same as governor of Vermont. Layman said, "This is another example of a Democrat so bent on attacking the president for political gain that he's not even making an effort to sound consistent or reasonable."