Maybe you've been spared the sight and sound and sheer hilarious horror of it. If you have, if Mouthpiece Theater has been totally off your radar, stop reading.
If you know about it, and you've seen the latest installment in which the Washington Post's Dana Milbank suggests that if she'd been at the "beer summit" Hillary Clinton would have ordered a Mad Bitch, then I have an apology for you.
You may think that Milbank got the idea from Dan Ackroyd's old Leonard Pinth Garnell sketches on Saturday Night Live.
Nope.
He got it from me.
I'm convinced he read a post of mine from 2005, Notes from the Drones Club and, perhaps unconsciously, remembered this bit and mistook my attempt at satire for a flattering portrait:
Milbank has been one of the few bright lights not just at the Post---New slogan: We're not really a Republican mouthpiece, we only pretend to be one above the fold---but among the Inside the Beltway club members. It doesn't take much to be a renegade inside the Beltway, of course. It's just a matter of while the other club members sit contentedly in their big armchairs by the fire, smoking their Havanas and sipping 20 year old Scotch and tut tutting over what boobs and rubes the Democrats are and marveling over Karl Rove's genius, Milbank occasionally strolls into the club bar and asks the hired help what they think of Bush's economic plan, then wanders back to his place by the fire to tell his fellow club members, to their astonishment, that good old Isaac behind the bar thinks we ought to take a look at this thing he calls "the Deficit" and another thing he calls "The War in Iraq."
His reports are always met with some polite coughing and a quick change of the subject back to what a cad and a scoundrel that Bill Clinton was, and Milbank shrugs and picks up his cigar and Scotch and resumes his quiet place by the fire.
I didn't mention any smoking jackets but I think they're implied.
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