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Some say that by devoting her entire Thursday column to the tale of Mitt Romney driving to Canada with his dog on the roof of the car, The New York Times's Gail Collins has finally (finally) found the line past which readers would no longer tolerate her many mentions of the story. But don't underestimate the persistence of Seamus: This old dog still has some bite.
Collins has made a recurring joke of mentioning as often as possible the story of the Romneys driving to Canada in the 1980s with their dog defecating in terror in a rooftop crate. Decades old, Seamus's very bad day has slowly made its way into this campaign season, alluded to by Obama campaign head David Axelrod, and this week's New Yorker cover. In fact, that cover, by Bob Staake, may have inspired Collins to go full-on Seamus this week with a Q&A format column addressing the Seamus story and her dogged (sorry, we had to) pursuit of it.
And yet, as Buzzfeed's McKay Coppins noted Thursday morning, many political writers took to Twitter with less-than glowing reviews of Collins's effort. "I don't find the Gail Collins dog thing funny anymore. It's just annoying," wrote Politico's Ben White. "Gail Collins moving from column-writing to SEO optimization?" wonders Slate's Jacob Weisberg. It would seem that Collins's many mentions of Seamus had reached some kind of peak. By giving over her entire column to it, she'd jumped the Irish setter.