Maureen Dowd, the best-lookin’ redheaded op-ed columnist at the New York Times, asks May We Mock, Barack?

The answer, if you lean leftward, is “How dare you!?” as The New Yorker magazine found out this week. But it wasn’t always this way.

Maureen writes: When I interviewed Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for Rolling Stone a couple years ago, I wondered what Barack Obama would mean for them. “It seems like a President Obama would be harder to make fun of than these guys,” I said.

“Are you kidding me?” Stewart scoffed. Then he and Colbert both said at the same time: “His dad was a goat-herder!”

When I noted that Obama, in his memoir, had revealed that he had done some pot, booze and “maybe a little blow,” the two comedians began riffing about the dapper senator’s familiarity with drug slang.

Colbert: Wow, that’s a very street way of putting it. “A little blow.”

Stewart: A little bit of the white rabbit.

Colbert: “Yeah, I packed a cocktail straw of cocaine and had a prostitute blow it in my ear, but that is all I did. High-fivin’.”

That was then. But since then, this son of a goat-herder who admits to sniffing “a little blow” has been proclaimed by lefties as “Messiah,” “Lightworker,” “Enlightened Being” and Mr. “Thrill up my leg” just to list a few of their over-the-top names for He-who-shall-not-be-mocked.

But of course, members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (of which I have been a member since before Hillary named us) have no difficulty whatsoever finding something about Obama to mock. So herewith is the Reader’s Digest version of right-o-sphere names for The Anointed One.

Ace of Spades has coined my personal favorite, Captain Bullsh!t, which of course mocks Obama’s ever-changing versions of what “I have always been for…” and his extremely slippery and loose grip on “truthiness.” Or as Ace so colorfully often puts it, Obama’s “loose sh!t.”

Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee calls Obama “Flapjack” for the same reasons, his constant flip-flops on what “I have always been for…”

Michelle Malkin calls him “D'OH-bama” which if I’m not mistaken is a favorite way of saying “Stupid!” on “The Simpsons.”

James Lewis at American Thinker calls him “Alfred E. Obama” referring to the freckle-faced kid with the big ears in Mad magazine. Lewis apparently named him thusly because “Obama told Maureen Dowd early in the primaries that he is hypersensitive to any remarks about his ears.”

Jennifer Rubin at American Spectator notes that John McCain “came up with a slick moniker for Obama: Dr. No,” in contrast to McCain’s support for new domestic oil drilling to relieve pain at the pump, which Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the entire left are vehemently opposing.

Jennifer asks: “Could the Agent of Change be transformed into Dr. No? … Public polling indicates McCain may have caught a wave. Significant majorities now favor increased domestic oil production including offshore drilling. When Obama doubled-down on Tuesday, declaring that he wouldn't be joining the ranks of nervous Democrats now considering offshore oil development, the McCain team no doubt smiled broadly.”

Perhaps McCain’s name for Obama will be the one that hurts him the most. It mocks Barack on an issue that seems to resonate with voters.

Finally, some good news on our “pain at the pump” crisis. On Monday, Bush Rescinds Offshore Oil Ban. Today, the price of oil drops $10 a barrel. Wow. Instant results as the market reacts to half-a-loaf of good news? Who knows? But the bad news is, Drilling Still Blocked by Congress.

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are digging in their heels and saying “Not only no, but he!! no, we won’t drill!” The left has been so deep in the pockets of the enviro-nazis and tree-huggers for the past 30 years that they can’t possibly allow any new oil to be drilled here in the U.S., or offshore, or new refineries or new nuke power plants, and the list goes on and on while the price at the pump keeps climbing higher and higher.

And speaking of enviro-nazis, have you heard the latest crisis from the “Save the polar bears and whales!” crowd? Now it’s Save the Ferrets!

What the heck is a ferret? Some kind of big rat? Lordy, we’re dying everytime we stop at the pump and they’re worried about Saving Ferrets?

In other important campaign news, have you noticed that the new, improved Obama is seldom seen these days without a flag pin in his lapel? Nobody has asked him lately about it, but I’m sure if someone did, he would explain that he’s “always been for flag lapel pins” even when he used to say that “flag pins have become substitutes for true patriotism.”

Anyway, the ever-helpful Campaign Stops blog at the New York Times has come up with a few suggestions for a new Obama lapel pin.

Daniel Young, a design entrepreneur, designed a mirror-flag pin.

Actually, this one is quite appropriate for Obama. Sort of an “insert any flag you like here” pin. Which is exactly what this “multi-cultural” candidate is trying to sell, whatever you’ll buy. Who needs “true patriotism” when you can offer them whatever they want, just vote for me.

Heard any good jokes about Obama on the late-night talk shows? No? Wonder why? You don’t suppose it’s because they’re all Obama backers? Nah, couldn’t be that. According to the New York Times, there’s been one joke so far, just one. And it’s a pro-Obama joke by Bill Maher.

“There’s been this question about whether he’s black enough,” Mr. Maher said. “I have this joke: What does he have to do? Dunk? He bowled a 37 — to me, that’s black enough.”

What a knee-slapper: Obama’s “black enough” because he can’t bowl. Mary Katharine Ham’s HamNation on Obama’s bowling was way funnier.

Jimmy Kimmel, the host of the ABC late-night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” said of Mr. Obama, “There’s a weird reverse racism going on. You can’t joke about him because he’s half-white. It’s silly. I think it’s more a problem because he’s so polished, he doesn’t seem to have any flaws.”

That one’s so funny it’s hysterical. Captain Bullsh!t “doesn’t seem to have any flaws”!? What in the world is Jimmy Kimmel smoking these days?

Finally, The Washington Post is still pontificating about The New Yorker magazine cover that pokes satire at Mr. and Mrs. “No Flaws.”

“The prissy tone of dudgeon from the Obama campaign was a relatively well-pitched political twofer: It distinguished them from the New Yorker and its untouchable demographic (educated, literate, well-informed people from New York or New York-ish enclaves) and it gave them a news cycle on the high ground of victimization, defensively crouched against credulous souls misreading the New Yorker in coal mines, truck stops and smoky saloons.”

Only one teensy little problem with that conclusion: Nobody reads The New Yorker magazine in “coal mines, truck stops and smoky saloons.”

Finally, Ace has the New Yorker magazine cover that just missed making the cut. Who says there's no good jokes about Obama?