I Like Gloats!

I Like Gloats!

I Like Gloats!

A mostly political weblog.
May 4 2009 6:47 PM

I Like Gloats!

Monday, May 4, 2009.

The MSM is sick. John Edwards runs an entire presidential campaign based in large part on his character as shown by his loyalty to his brave, ill wife, etc.--when in reality he's cheating on her, practically setting up a second family--and the press doesn't care (or, rather, pretends in public that it doesn't care, lest its readers get interested). But a year later some prosecutor comes up with a tedious, hard-to-define potential campaign violation , and it's katy-bar-the door ! ... P.S.: Not that there isn't plenty of after-action reporting to do. I'd be interested in knowing how this memorable blog post came to be, for example. ... And: What did Joe Trippi know and when did he know it? ... Follow the honey! ... 5/5 Update: I've now talked with Trippi, who signed on as a top Edwards strategist in 2007. He says he didn't know until the "second National Enquirer story," meaning the July, 2008 account of Edwards getting caught visiting his mistress (and her child) at the Beverly Hilton. (That's pretty late!) When the Enquirer first alleged the affair October, 2007 , Trippi says, "I said, 'What the hell's this?" and was told "'C'mon, It's the Enquirer . Aliens. ...'" He says he also discounted the story because he didn't think John "would do that to Elizabeth." ... Trippi says "I never got brought in" to the Edwards team's elaborate damage control efforts. "[Deputy campaign manager] Jonathan Prince and other people were dealing with it. ... I was on the road a lot." Trippi notes that he arrived after Rielle Hunter was no longer making her "webisodes" for the campaign, and he might not have been taken into the confidence of those who'd been there longer. "I was the Dean guy." ... That's what he says. ...  More:  See Ben Smith's piece in Politico , which discusses Edwards aides' reaction to the (accurate, it turned out) rumor. ...  4:25 P.M.

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While some Obama supporters deride "Tea Party" tax protests on the grounds that Obama hasn't increased taxes on the bottom "95 percent of working families " yet, the diligent Matt Yglesias is already trying to figure out which ones to raise . ...   4:02 P.M.

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Short Cabinet: A possible expansive corollary to the 27th Law of Journalism , which says that when an MSM reporter gives an example of something that is supposed to be funny it won't be funny: The rule may also apply to any line singled out of a piece of writing as especially good. Here's Thomas Mallon reviewing Buckley Dearest (I mean, Chris Buckley's Losing Mum and Pup ) for the New York Times :  

But the writing, like the book's subjects, is generally top-drawer. To take but one example: the elder George Bush "may be a New England Yankee blue blood, but he has the tear ducts of a Sicilian grand­mother." The yield of such lines is exceptionally high, and it's fair to say that the particular talent required to produce them is one of the few that William F. Buckley lacked.  [E.A.]

OK. If you say so. ... 4:00 P.M.

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