Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

This really is a full service blog.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

Democrats are back in array!

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

Come on, man.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

Everybody saw this coming.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

You are here: Home / They call that arson, Mike

They call that arson, Mike

by | 123 Comments

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Kevin Drum digs up a paragraph from a Times magazine about Politico:

As a practical matter, here is how Allen’s 10 stories influence the influentials. Cable bookers, reporters and editors read Playbook obsessively, and it’s easy to pinpoint exactly how an item can spark copycat coverage that can drive a story. Items become segment pieces on “Morning Joe,” the MSNBC program, where there are 10 Politico Playbook segments each week, more than half of them featuring Allen. This incites other cable hits, many featuring Politico reporters, who collectively appear on television about 125 times a week. There are subsequent links to Politico stories on The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post and other Web aggregators that newspaper assigning editors and network news producers check regularly. “Washington narratives and impressions are no longer shaped by the grand pronouncements of big news organizations,” said Allen, a former reporter for three of them — The Washington Post, The New York Times and Time magazine. “The smartest people in politics give us the kindling, and we light the fire.”

On the same topic, Ben Smith writes the most nauseating sentence I have ever read in my life:

Playbook is my first read every morning (and unlike some of my colleagues, I’m more about fighting the morning to a draw than winning it), and has always struck me as an unusual phenomenon, in part — though this isn’t the focus of the piece — because it’s so collegial, warm, and small-towny in a city whose inhabitants are, in reality, trying to destroy one another.

Because that’s what matters, that all the Villagers can jerk each other off in a glorified gossip page, while our civilization collapses.

Reader Interactions

123Comments

  1. 1.

    peach flavored shampoo

    that all the Villagers can jerk each other off

    You have a way with, uh…words. Now who’s hungry for lunch?

  2. 2.

    Zifnab

    “The smartest people in politics give us the kindling, and we light the fire.”

    Is this where we hear how the Politico guys are the Smartest Guys In the Room or have they been annointed Masters of the Political Universe, yet?

  4. 4.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Garrigus Carraig: Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
    South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

    Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
    North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

    Rosenberg’s, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
    Brando, “The King and I” and “The Catcher in the Rye”

    Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new queen
    Marciano, Liberace, Santayana Goodbye

  5. 5.

    licensed to kill time

    __

    “The smartest people in politics give us the kindling, and we light the fire.”

    “And then we burn down journalistic integrity and our own damn house”.

  6. 6.

    Felix Holt

    When Ben Smith is good, he’s very good; when he’s bad, he’s just fucking awful. Christ.

  9. 9.

    Ann B. Nonymous

    There has to be a way to monetize the Village Enron-style–and then destroy it in a beautiful bubble of burst ego. Hold your noses though: that isn’t helium they’re filled with.

    The only danger is they’ll ask for a bailout, and get it.

  12. 12.

    J

    I can’t claim any originality for this observation, but these people really are soulless cretins.

  13. 13.

    Kris

    I hate Ben Smith. HATE THE GUY.

    Also: why won’t anyone talk about the fact the Mikey’s dad wrote speeches for George Wallace? Doesn’t that explain a lot of the bias from Politico?

  14. 14.

    Paul L.

    Because that’s what matters, that all the Villagers can jerk each other off in a glorified gossip page, while our civilization collapses.

    You mean like the JournoList.
    John get you a invite yet?

  15. 15.

    Ed Drone

    @licensed to kill time:

    “And then we burn down journalistic integrity and our own damn house”.

    I recall an old (though obscure) saying about someone so self-centered they “would burn down their house to roast eggs.” Sounds right to me — far right, actually.

    Ed

  17. 17.

    Kris

    Oh and you actually missed the best line from that piece:

    “In the basement, a very white, bipartisan Soul Train was getting down to hip-hop.”

    This is the powerful. In Washington DC. A city that is majority black. Anyone wonder why the media is so biased and the blacks are so poor in DC?

  19. 19.

    jl

    The closed circular flow of ideas, nuggets, thoughtbites, themes is a kind of intellectual derivaties market, with a huge multiplier.

    Except it will never crash. This is progress, and you people just don’t recognize it.

    And, looks like Ben Smith stole my comment style. Can I sue?

  24. 24.

    Kris

    @John Cole:

    Black people=partisan and poor! See! Maybe if we weren’t so damned partisan we would be invited to these “parties” and we wouldn’t be poor! See!

    I hate POLITICO.

  25. 25.

    binzinerator

    “The smartest people in politics give us the kindling, and we light the fire.”

    IOW, “We create our own reality”.

    I hate these people.

  28. 28.

    DougJ

    You mean like the JournoList.

    John may feel differently, but I would never be on something like JournoList or TownHall (not that I would ever be invited, anyway). I don’t like backroom conversations the reader can’t see.

  29. 29.

    Jeff

    Well, Ben, this wouldn’t have anything to do with who PAYS YOUR F@%KING SALARY!
    This isn’t just wankery, this is ass-kissing at its worst.

  30. 30.

    Mark S.

    @Kris:

    That paragraph is more terrifying than anything ever written by Stephen King:

    Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren had David Axelrod pinned into a corner near a tower of cupcakes.

    (old white people getting down to hip hop)

    Over by the jambalaya, Alan Greenspan picked up some Mardi Gras beads and placed them around the neck of his wife, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who bristled and quickly removed them.

    Is there anything cuter than puppy love?

  31. 31.

    robertdsc

    It’s too early to start drinking.

    Give Tunch some catnip. Then contemplate the bender he goes on to calm yourself.

  32. 32.

    Jeff

    Well, Ben, this wouldn’t have anything to do with who PAYS YOUR F@%KING SALARY!
    This isn’t just wankery, this is a$$-kissing at its worst.

  33. 33.

    JGabriel

    @John Cole:

    What does that even mean? How was Soul Train partisan?

    It was excerpted from a DC party description. Perhaps more context will help:

    On a recent Friday night, a couple hundred influentials gathered for a Mardi Gras-themed birthday party for Betsy Fischer, the executive producer of “Meet the Press.” Held at the Washington home of the lobbyist Jack Quinn, the party was a classic Suck-Up City affair …
    __
    McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, arrived after the former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie left. Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren had David Axelrod pinned into a corner near a tower of cupcakes. In the basement, a very white, bipartisan Soul Train was getting down to hip-hop.

    .

  35. 35.

    licensed to kill time

    Boy that NYT article is long and nauseating.

    I’m in with the In crowd
    (do you wanna be In with me?)
    I go where the In crowd goes
    I know every latest dance
    When you’re in with the In crowd
    It’s so easy to find romance

  38. 38.

    Mark S.

    OT, Taibbi on the draft. I have long thought this:

    First you draft a bunch of late-round unknown geeks like Brady and Hasselbeck, then bring in a low-cost free-agent placeholder like a Trent Dilfer or Chad Pennington to actually run your team. Then you wait for your aging veteran to rupture his Achilles, as he inevitably will, and while he’s on the IR, you see if any of your late-round flyers can actually play.

  39. 39.

    Joshua Norton

    “The smartest people in politics give us the kindling, and we light the fire.”

    In other words, we make shit up and then run another story when our planted “rumors” have been denied.

    Don’t really care what we write as long as we can generate the hits to impress our advertisers.

  40. 40.

    Alex S.

    So I read that White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer sleeps only 4 hrs a day and talks to Mike Allen before he goes to sleep and after he wakes up. How crazy is that?
    And more importantly, Politico doesn’t have that many page hits. It is (almost) only read by the innermost circle of beltway jerks. If Dan Pfeiffer ignored that beltway bubble the way Obama somewhat promised to do, Politico would become irrelevant.

  41. 41.

    scav

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes. It is terrifyingly epic or epically terrifying in its sheer perfection and I’m off to shudder in a corner until I work up the courage to got out and buy the means for some serious drinking. Utterly alone and with no sounds permitted whatsoever in order to avoid any overlap with that image. Death to cupcake towers!

  49. 49.

    Nellcote

    How the author of that long Times Mag piece on Politico got through the whole thing without using the term “Villager” I’ll never know. Though he did do a good job of defining it.

  52. 52.

    Noonan

    I thought this graph was the money shot in showing how utterly worthless Mike Allen is to anyone other than cable news producers:

    More recently, Allen asked in his April 10 Playbook: “Good Saturday morning: For brunch convo: Why isn’t Secretary Clinton on the media short lists for the Court?” By Monday, the convo had moved from the brunch table to “Morning Joe” (where the host, Joe Scarborough, advocated for her) and “Today” (where the Republican senator Orrin Hatch mentioned her, too). Later that day, Politico’s Ben Smith quoted a State Department spokesman who “threw some coolish water on the Clinton-for-Scotus buzz in an e-mail.” By then, the cable and blog chatter was fully blown. The White House issued a highly unusual statement that Secretary Clinton would not be nominated. Politico then sent out a “breaking news alert,” and Smith reported that the White House had “hurriedly punctured the trial balloon.” End of convo.

  56. 56.

    kay

    They’re writing about themselves, again!
    I just think this is a terrible idea, and they should resist the temptation.
    They have to stop talking about themselves incessantly. They really weren’t given these various forums to promote each others careers.

  57. 57.

    lawguy

    Alright, I am really depressed now, no I mean really. What hope is there in this kind of world. All the references to the later Roman Empire or the French Kings seem so right. Crap.

  59. 59.

    David in NY

    it’s so collegial, warm, and small-towny

    But, but … that’s what I like about this BLOG!

  60. 60.

    Joshua

    To us, that party sounds like something Sauron crafted in Mt. Doom.

    To Sally Quinn, it’s a critical part of her life’s work and validates her existence.

  69. 69.

    PeakVT

    Because that’s what matters, that all the Villagers can jerk each other off in a glorified gossip page, while our civilization collapses.

    One thing we can do about this is try to get our Congresscritters to turn off cable news and the like in their offices. Last time I called, a person at my representative’s office said that they had C-Span on unless some major news was breaking.

  70. 70.

    Admiral_Komack

    Warning: OFF TOPIC:
    _________________________________
    Wed Apr 21, 2010 10:36 am EDT

    Roethlisberger officially suspended for six games
    By MJD

    Follow our NFL blog, Shutdown Corner, on Facebook and on Twitter.

    [UPDATE III: If you’re wondering how the commissioner justifies the suspension, in light of the fact that Ben Roethlisberger(notes) was never charged with anything, here’s how Roger Goodell explained his decision:

    “I recognize that the allegations in Georgia were disputed and that they did not result in criminal charges being filed against you,” he said in his letter to the two-time Super Bowl winner, a six-year veteran.

    “My decision today is not based on a finding that you violated Georgia law, or on a conclusion that differs from that of the local prosecutor. That said, you are held to a higher standard as an NFL player, and there is nothing about your conduct in Milledgeville that can remotely be described as admirable, responsible, or consistent with either the values of the league or the expectations of our fans.”

    Roethlisberger has yet to comment publicly.

    —

    [UPDATE II: The NFL has officially confirmed that Roethlisberger’s suspension will be for six games. In the meantime, Roethlisberger will undergo a league-mandated “professional behavior evaluation” and “must adhere to any counseling or treatment that is recommended by the professional evaluators.”

    If commissioner Roger Goodell is satisfied with the progress Ben makes in the time between now and Week 4, he could reduce the suspension to four games. If he’s displeased with Roethlisberger’s progress or behavior, he could increase the length of the suspension.]

    —

    [UPDATE: CNBC’s Darren Rovell says that a six-game suspension would cost Roethlisberger $2,841,174.]

    —

    Several sources are reporting today that Ben Roethlisberger will be looking at a four-to-six game suspension from the NFL. Adam Schefter was first with the report:

    Filed to ESPN: @mortreport and I are reporting that Ben Roethlisberger will be suspended four to six games, with conditions attached.

    So that’s the early word. Of course, we’ll keep you updated as the story develops and/or becomes official. I’m especially curious about the “conditions attached.”

    Roethlisberger, of course, has twice been accused of sexual assault, though charges were never filed in either case. A punishment from the league has been expected, with no particular timetable attached to it, but it’s looking like today will be the day.

    At the same time, rumors of the Steelers trying to trade Ben Roethlisberger are picking up steam. Schefter also reports on Twitter that the Steelers are actively trying to trade Ben Roethlisberger for a top 10 pick in tomorrow night’s draft.

    A trade would be an incredibly bold move, and something that would’ve been absolutely unthinkable even a month ago. Roethlisberger’s proven himself to be a franchise quarterback, and franchise quarterbacks, in their prime years, simply are not traded.

    That the Steelers are considering it at all is a statement about how seriously they take their reputation as a franchise, and perhaps, about their confidence (or lack of confidence) in Roethlisberger to stay out of trouble going forward.

    http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Report-Roethlisberger-to-be-suspended-four-to-s?urn=nfl,235656

  72. 72.

    blueintheface

    Is this an email or mash note?

    “He is part mascot and part sleepless narrator of our town,” Tracy Sefl, a Democratic media consultant and a close aide to Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, told me by e-mail. “He is an omnipresent participant-observer, abundantly kind, generous and just unpredictable enough to make him an object of curiosity to even the most self-interested. Everything about him is literary.”

    It’s like these people are desperately trying to believe that they live in a pornographic Lake Wobegon, where the men are studly, the women are beautiful, and all are brilliant, preternaturally irresistible, and the envy of the rest of humankind.

  74. 74.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Joshua:

    To us, that party sounds like something Sauron crafted in Mt. Doom.
     
    To Sally Quinn, it’s a critical part of her life’s work and validates her existence.

    So give Sally Q her precious and then throw her into the lava. That’s volcano monitoring we can belive in!

  77. 77.

    demo woman

    @Admiral_Komack: I wasn’t going to mention the Big Ben problems cuz it might cause Tunch to drink. I did see this at MSNBC though.

    The Bills have joined the St. Louis Rams in saying no to a possible trade for Ben Roethlisberger, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter………………………………………..
    The Steelers have reportedly contacted the Rams, 49ers, Raiders, Bills, Jaguars, Seahawks and Browns about Roethlisberger. Other teams may have said no, but it’s uncertain what teams………………………………………….
    Most noteworthy on this list: The Steelers would consider trading Roethlisberger inside the division. That seems far-fetched, but the fact the call was made says everything you need to know about how the Steelers feel about Roethlisberger right now.

    The only team that seems likely is the Raiders. The Seahawks maybe but probably not.

  80. 80.

    Bob K

    This is a true story – this one’s for you Frank Wosznicka, wherever you are. A freind of mine and a high school friend got a job for a local door manufacturer. Frank used to wear a pimp hat all the time. He would take of the hat with a theatrical flourish while loudly exclaiming “This hate reminds me of the Three Musketeers” His boss, who grew weary of this after the first few times quipped. “That hat reminds me of the unemployment line.” I hope the day never comes when we have to choose between round head and cavalier because it’s always cavalier for me. That’s just how I roll.

    If you just said WTF? Google “Third English Civil War”

  84. 84.

    Mark S.

    @demo woman:

    I think Tunch would be down with trading him. I’ve never seen a player turn into toxic waste so quickly.

    ETA: I’d rather rebuild with Michael Vick and Plaxico Burress than Ben.

  86. 86.

    El Cid

    The amazing libertarian Bob Barr clarifying that Bill Clinton shouldn’t ought to be lecturing Americans against dangerous political rhetoric on the anniversary of right wing domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh’s militia & shortwave fueled attack against federal employees and babies because Bill Clinton didn’t say what Barr thought he should have regarding sex with Monica Lewinsky:

    Appearing before the Center for American Progress Action Fund in the nation’s capital, the former president echoed the time-worn theme employed regularly by liberals, that when “conservatives” publicly criticize the government they indirectly encourage exremist violence, such as that perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh in blowing up the Oklahoma City federal building 15 years ago this week.
    …
    Clinton, as do other critics of conservatives who argue against the big government programs liberals so love, try to blunt their criticism by claiming that they are not trying to “restrict free speech”; but that’s precisely what they are subtly trying to do by linking conservatives to violent extremists such as McVeigh.
    …
    The special irony in the case of Clinton lies in the fact that a dozen years ago, during the impeachment proceedings against him, Clinton repeatedly and rather masterfully wordsmithed his way around admitting any wrondgoing; at one point famously declaring in answer to a simple question, that ”it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is,’ is.”
    …
    Thus, when Clinton lectures conservatives on the words they use, they’re learning from the master of obfuscational wordsmithing himself, William Jefferson Clinton.

    Stupid mother fuckers. I god-damned hate all these moralizing Clinton panty-sniffers.

    Clinton was vague while being interviewed relating a court proceeding about his own sex life — he didn’t fucking mockingly suggesting that a guy flying his plane into an IRS building and killing a Vietnam vet working there was, you know, heh heh, somethin’ that oughtta teach the IRS how fed up ‘we all’ were.

    So, fuckhead, what were the dangerous consequences of Bill Clinton evading your asshole god-damned inquisition about what he did with an intern?

    Oh, I forgot, he single-handedly (or other body part wise) caused teenagers to start engaging in oral sex.

    And also there was that one crazed liberal who ended up flying a giant dildo into the Regency University bell tower.

    Deny that, LIBS!

  88. 88.

    asiangrrlMN

    @El Cid: Um, this is how far wingnuttia is gone these days. I actually had to stop at the dildo story and think, “Might the rightwing have said this at one point?” By the way, FH#3, you are killing me with all your not constitushnl stuff. Carry on.

  92. 92.

    maus

    The only thing worse than the noise machine, echo chamber, circle jerk, etc. are the congratulatory media glory-holes.

    Hooray for having one source, be it Drudge or Politico “make” the news for the whole rest of the paper, radio, and television news industry.

    There’s no diversity of thought, there’s no “liberal” media, there’s nothing but what one dumb gatekeeper wants us to know and think.

  94. 94.

    Church Lady

    Doug, you are probably not paying your therapist enough to made it worth continuing to torment yourself this way. Dude, if you think our civilization is nearing collapse, you need to step away from the internet and find someplace go and meditate. Seriously, you’re going to develop an ulcer if you continue to take this shit so close to heart.

  95. 95.

    El Cid

    @asiangrrlMN: I’m not saying I’m opposed to people flying giant dildos into Regency University buildings, but I do think it should be consensual.

  100. 100.

    Bob K

    @asiangrrlMN:

    I once read between the lines in a BOB post that he works in “Condoms Galore” – This explains why THAT happy meal is more than a few french fries short.

  104. 104.

    Chyron HR

    @Church Lady:

    Dude, if you think our civilization is nearing collapse, you need to step away from the internet and find someplace go and meditate.

    Official Positions of the Republican Party:

    1) Obama is secretly the so-called “Antichrist”.
    2) God smote Iceland with a volcano to punish America for enacting moderate regulation of health insurance companies by a majority vote.
    3) The world will literally come to an end in our lifetimes, as explained in the “Left Behind” series of non-fiction books.

    But apart from Satan’s spawn ruling the free world; the wrath of God raining down upon seemingly random countries; and imminent Armageddon, Church Lady thinks we’re doing jes’ fine.

  106. 106.

    El Cid

    @asiangrrlMN:

    How about with incessant adults?

    These days, people with bladder control problems can still have a satisfying sex life, particulately in commissioned monopsonous inflation ships.

  107. 107.

    ericblair

    I’m waiting for all these execrable people to disappear up their own asses in a sort of gastrointestinal Klein bottle. Maybe the only way to get rid of them is to put on a cocktail party on a Potomac dinner cruise, cut the engine, and hope they’re somewhere out near the Canary Islands before any one of them notices the rest of the world is missing.

  108. 108.

    scav

    @ericblair: They’d only titter every time someone mentioned the word “Belgium” and making flying raids on the planet in search of cheese crackers and cupcakes.

  109. 109.

    jibeaux

    Why is it 4:30 and we are still not making jokes about paying doctors with chickens? I gotta go to twitter for everydamnthing now? The #LowdenCare hashtag is the funniest thing this week, no contest.

  110. 110.

    demo woman

    @asiangrrlMN: Wouldn’t you rather think of B.O.B. with condoms that not? The idea that he could be spawning little b.o.b’s is right out of a Stephen King novel.

  111. 111.

    kay

    @ericblair:

    I listened to part of the White House press briefing today, in the car. They were almost painfully serious, and attempting to ask real questions, although, sadly, they asked poor questions. I was wondering if Gibbs got under their skin.

    An example:

    Q On financial regulatory reform, would the bill being considered in the Senate or the one that passed the House, would either of them have prevented the alleged fraud that the SEC is currently suing Goldman over?

    This would be my answer:

    Well, no. Fraud is against the law now, hence the current “lawsuit”. There will always be law-breakers.

    Gibbs just blew it off.

  112. 112.

    Dave

    @Mark S.:

    Over by the jambalaya, Alan Greenspan picked up some Mardi Gras beads and placed them around the neck of his wife, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who bristled and quickly removed them.

    I will pay cash money for video of anyone at that party who spotted Mitchell wearing the beads and shouted SHOW US YOUR TITS!

  113. 113.

    TuiMel

    I saw interviews of Vanderhei and Harris just after they launched Politico. Their smuggness, their naked interest in “traffic uber alles” was off-putting in the extreme. It was plain that fame and forture were the goals – not the truth and not journalism that would inform the public. It was at that point that I decided not to read Politico. I have honored that decision except for a few instances of following links early on. No more. A link to Politico does not get a “click” from me. Since that is what they care about, it is the one thing I care about withholding from them.

  114. 114.

    kay

    @TuiMel:

    Go by there once just to read the comments. It’s all insane wingnuts. That’s the readership. Every subject turns into a cesspool of random Muslim hatred. I’ve never seen anything like it.

  116. 116.

    maus

    @Napoleon: I’m so fucking sick of self-generated content offered as news. There’s a whole fucking world out there that I can’t get news on because they’re busy peering up each other’s assholes for “insider” stories.

  117. 117.

    Mike G

    There’s a whole fucking world out there that I can’t get news on because they’re busy peering up each other’s assholes for “insider” stories.

    Shorter DC Villager Idiots:
    Will the doctor with the cure for cancer please sit the fuck down? Newt Gingrich has a new book out!

  118. 118.

    TuiMel

    @kay:
    I think I will have to take your word for it. I cannot keep up with the commentary on on this blog and others that I want to read,. Politico is all about the monetizing. I cannot spend what little time I have blowing my blood pressure on right-wing rantings. Hopefully this won’t cause me to lose sight of how the other side “thinks.”

  121. 121.

    tc125231

    Because that’s what matters, that all the Villagers can jerk each other off in a glorified gossip page, while our civilization collapses.

    Well, yes, that’s what matters to Ben Smith, which merely proves that he is a self-absorbed wanker.

    Does this surprise you? Any hope of salvation for either “Civilization” or our children’s future undoubtedly involves the complete destruction of the infrastructure that supports Ben Smith, and quite a few other things.

    In a world where every conceivable entity has been utterly corrupted, and where the people responsible for reporting it have no interest whatever in doing their jobs, democracy doesn’t stand much of a chance unless the “reset” button gets pushed.

  123. 123.

    brantl

    Playbook is my first read every morning (and unlike some of my colleagues, I’m more about fighting the morning to a draw than winning it), and has always struck me as an unusual phenomenon, in part—though this isn’t the focus of the piece—because it’s so collegial, warm, and small-towny in a city whose inhabitants are, in reality, trying to destroy one another.

    This guy is happy that his favorite insider-reporting, serial feature is misrepresenting the relationship that is actual news. WHAT A DOUCHE.

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