Pulitzer Prize winner and NYT columnist Maureen Dowd has faced the wrath of Obama's supporters after criticising the politician, blasting him for "Hollywood whoring" in a piece titled "Behold Barack Antoinette".
"The party crystallized the caricature of the Democratic Party that Joe Biden had to fight against in order to get elected", Dowd said. "It was as far from Flint and Scranton as you can imagine: an orgy of the 1 percent — private jets, Martha’s Vineyard, limousine liberals and Hollywood whoring".
She stressed that the president, who had to scale down his initial list, preferred to exclude politicians, but kept celebrities like Beyoncé and John Legend.
"Whether the party was 500 or 300 or 30, Obama should have made sure to have the people there who made the moment possible, the ones who worked so hard to get him elected and cement his legacy", Dowd said. "Obama closed his house to many of the invited after getting flak for hosting 'a celebrity mosh pit', as Stephen Colbert called it, while officials were telling people to mask back up".
The criticism immediately resulted in a harsh reaction from Obama's supporters on the Internet, with many of them noting that the author is bitter because she was not invited to the party.
This is not the first time the NYT has triggered a twitterstorm due to Obama's birthday.
Users slammed New York Times White House correspondent Annie Karni, who tried to defend the 44th by saying that the party was a gathering of "sophisticated, vaccinated" guests who were "following all the safety precautions".