[Bloomberg] A report this morning by Politico chief political correspondent Roger Simon ... who's an entirely different person from PJ Media's Roger L. Simon...
includes this bombshell
Oh, noze! Not a bombshell!
about Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan:
...U.S. Representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district, serving since 1999. He is the Republican Party veep candidate. He proposed an alternative to President B.O.'s 2011 budget and made himself the target of both Democrat and Republican verbal pies...
Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, "If Stench calls, take a message" and "Tell Stench I'm having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later."That's a pretty sophomoric way to act if you're the veep candidate. Maybe Joe Biden could do that, but... No, not even Sheriff Joe.
The "stench" reference comes from a quote that Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Iowa Republican Party gave to the New York Times over the weekend: "I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he'll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him."
Comments like that could have something to do with why he's a former political director...
Needless to say, the political press and blogosphere have jumped on the story including Times columnist Paul Krugman, Tommy Christopher of press-gossip site Mediaite..., Joe Gandelman of the Moderate Voice..., Liberal radio personality Taylor Marsh..., Steve Benen at MSNBC host Rachel Maddow's blog..., [and] David Ferguson of the Raw Story.
"Dog pile on the rabbit!"
Clearly, a disaster for the Romney campaign, right?
If true, an indication the veep candidate's jumped his trolley.
No, it was apparently a clumsy attempt at satire gone horribly awry.
Meaning it wasn't true...?
As Ben Smith of Buzzfeed, a former Politico blogger, tweeted: "So uh a lot of people seem not to have picked up that @politicoroger's column was satire." Put more succinctly by conservative blogger JammieWearingFool: "Satire should actually be funny."
Satire told with a straight face is what we used to call a "lie."
Or, at least it should be pretty obvious. ...
This one sounds pretty juvenile.
Naturally, no writer wants to put a blinking sign indicating "This Is a Joke" above his or her parody piece.
"That's a joke, son! I say, that's a joke!"
But editors should realize that if there is even a chance that such a sign is necessary, it's probably best to spike the whole idea.