NEW YORK -- Oh, man. One little joke about Barack Obama and that Middle Eastern fellow with the rhyming name, and her inbox is piled high with squawky offended e-mail. It's enough to make make Jeanne Moos wish she were back interviewing three-legged pantyhose or even two-headed turtles.

''I'm used to doing dog stories,'' says CNN's queen of quirk, shaking her head as she leafs through outraged denunciations ranging from not particularly bright to how low can you sink? ``Dogs don't write in. I've never gotten any angry e-mails from dogs.''

If there's one lesson Moos has learned in the 12 months since becoming a regular on Situation Room, the network's daily campaign roundup, it's that political activists have much less of a sense of humor than the average canine. Whether she's musing on John McCain's difficulties using a teleprompter or Hillary Clinton's befuddlement at the technology of convenience-store coffee machines, Moos has drawn almost daily fire.

This morning's e-blizzard of insults was prompted by a Moos piece on body language of the various candidates -- particularly their strange, compulsive habit of pointing off into the distance while addressing the crowds at campaign rallies.

SCATHING CRITICISM

''Since we usually can't see who the candidates are pointing at,'' Moos intoned during a voiceover, ''we'll just have to use our imagination.'' Footage of Clinton waving her finger in the air was intercut with her husband's former Oval Office playmate Monica Lewinsky; of McCain, with his conservative bte noir Ann Coulter; and Obama, with the sound-alike with whom he is perpetually entangled in verbal slips by TV anchormen, Osama bin Laden.

Result: The lefty watchdog group Media Matters for America issued a scathing statement saying Moos ''associates'' Obama with Osama, and a chorus of liberal bloggers joined in.

''I thought it would be Hillary and Monica that would get me in trouble,'' sighs Moos. ``I was going for nemeses -- Hillary and Monica, McCain and Coulter, Obama and you-know-who. I thought it was funny, but everybody now is touchy, touchy.''

It's a peculiar and sometimes disheartening situation for the 54-year-old Moos, who's used to making her viewers laugh rather than foam at the mouth. Her divertingly oddball reports about everything from a convention of sword-swallowers (Moos: ''What's it taste like?'' Sword swallower: ''It tastes like a fork.'') to politically correct Christmas carolers (''Have yourself a merry little visitation of the three wise men to the birth of Christ . . .'') over the past 27 years have made her one of CNN's most enduring stars.

''She is an institution,'' observes network president Jon Klein fondly, ``and possibly belongs in one.''

From fake testicles for dogs who've been neutered (''Ohhh, for the days when dogs fetched balls rather than had them implanted,'' she lamented) to the strange and possibly sinister fact that watches and clocks in advertisements are always set at 10:10, there's practically nothing too weird or whimsical for Moos to report on.

''I did a story on flying debris in New York City, following around some piece of trash on a windy day to see where it came from and where it went,'' she recalls. 'I did a story on the life of a traffic cone: `They die for us' -- we had pictures of a crushed one -- 'but at least they get laid' -- we had pictures of me laying down a bunch of them on a street . . .

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