Like, yeah, she’s totally mean to him and everything.

NEW YORK — President Barack Obama is an avid reader of the New York Times opinion section and has, on several occasions, invited two of his favorite columnists — Tom Friedman and David Brooks — over to the White House before rolling out major policy initiatives.

But Obama is apparently not a fan of Maureen Dowd, another high-profile writer in the Times opinion stable. Former top Obama adviser David Axelrod wrote in his memoir published Tuesday, Believer, that “no one got under Barack’s skin more than Maureen.”

Axelrod recalled how Dowd was granted a brief interview during an overseas 2008 campaign trip with then-candidate Obama. When the two were together, he wrote, Obama “proceeded to blister her for a previous column she had written.”

The former adviser wrote that Dowd’s “penchant for delving into the psyches of her subjects was particularly irritating to the self-possessed Obama.”

“Normally polite under any circumstances, he was patronizing and disrespectful to Maureen in a way I had rarely seen,” Axelrod continued. “This was not well received by Dowd who, like most journalists, was accustomed to firing off salvos, yet decidedly uncomfortable when fired upon herself. After that awkward encounter, she seemed to take particular delight in psychoanalyzing Barack and belittling him in print, which only deepened his contempt. Maureen, who is as gracious and loyal to her friends as she is rough on the high and mighty, would become a friend of mine in Washington, which became a minor source of tension with Obama. ‘Why are you friends with her?’ he would demand after Maureen sent one of her acid darts his way.”

Dowd did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the passage.

It’s not clear exactly which 2008 column rankled Obama, but Dowd did write on Obama’s big foreign trip during the campaign.

UPDATE: Dowd’s predictable response.