FAIL

The Occupy people infiltrated CPAC on Friday. Actually, that was an immediate thought when “Madison Rising,” a conservative rock band, waltzed into the reporters den as Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) was delivering his speech in the Marriott ballroom.

But hardly any of the writers in the room knew what was happening, judging by the blank stares and open mouths as the band members walked through.

A little heads up next time a rock band is scheduled to play in a room where people are working would be nice.

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Someone needs to explain parody to Rep. John Fleming (R-La.). A recent status update on the Congressman’s Facebook page links to a story about how Planned Parenthood is building an “$8 billion Abortionplex.” A story that was published by… The Onion. The website Literally Unbelievable posted a screen shot of the link. They are devoted to publishing screenshots of people who mistakenly believe that Onion articles are the real deal. Fleming has since taken the link down from his timeline.

It took us six calls to Fleming’s office to realize a reply was probably going to be a long shot. When it sunk in that they were never going to call us back, we decided to try harder. On our first call, we were greeted by a slow-witted intern who told us that he didn’t know WHO had posted the Facebook article on Fleming’s profile. When we asked when they realized it was a fake, he again answered “I don’t know.” Then, we suggested, if this was indeed a fake story, where might we be able to find “a more reputable abortionplex in the area?” Again he replied, “I don’t know.”

Finally, we spoke to Doug Sachtleben, a real live spokesman for Fleming. He tells FishbowlDC that the article was ”inadvertently posted” and taken down “within hours.”

Last week, we brought you a very important news story that Howiella (a.k.a. The Hill’s ITK Columnist Judy Kurtz) broke via Twitter. She attended a book party for MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan where she was tipped off by The Examiner’s Yeas and Nays lead writer Nikki Schwab that Ratigan was – GASP – not wearing socks. The fashion faux-pas occurred at a party celebrating “Greedy Bastards“, the new book from Ratigan. While this story was already a stretch to put on Twitter, Schwab decided that it needed “legs” and wrote a full piece on it. THANK GOD. After seeing the picture on Twitter, I thrust my head forward into my hands in a moment of panic and despair wondering why no one had written a lengthy examination of why Ratigan wasn’t wearing socks! Schwab informs us that Ratigan’s sockless look was “unintentional.” He explains that he simply lost them “in a hotel room somewhere.” Stay tuned for Nikki’s next big scoop, “The secret to Dylan Ratigan’s Cuticle Conditioning.”

Last night Howiella (a.k.a. The Hill‘s ITK Columnist Judy Kurtz) attended a book party for MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan and discovered that some men there have feet. And blessedly we get to kill a few birds with one stone — this was actually an observation by The Examiner‘s Yeas & Nays lead writer Nikki Schwab. Howiella knows something this stellar deserves a citation. Yes, dear readers, this is what passes for gossip in Washington. Horrifying.

As @NikkiSchwab noticed, Dylan Ratigan is sockless at his book party. Sen Sanders in loafers, Rep Schweikert in boots. twitter.com/JudyKurtz/stat…

— Judy Kurtz (@JudyKurtz) February 3, 2012

Newspapers aren’t only filled with news, they’re filled with filler. They’re the stories no one really needs to know about but are probably far more popular than actual news. There’s a reason tabloid magazines sell and TMZ is a hit TV show.

Here are some of this week’s “features.”

The World’s Second Favorite Land-Beaver. I’ll leave which beaver is the most favorite to your imagination, but if you guessed that it involved drunken female celebrities getting out of cars in short skirts you wouldn’t be far off. But the second favorite is Punxsutawney Phil, THE groundhog of Groundhog Day. And today he saw his shadow. The Washington Post did a feature on how accurate Phil is (only 39 percent, which is still better than your local weatherman) and the other meteorological vermin around the hemisphere. The piece reports that there’s “Sutton Sammy” in Ontario, “Chuckles” of Manchester, Conn., “Shubenacadie Sam” in Nova Scotia, “Staten Island Chuck,” and “General Beauregard Lee,” of Lilburn, Ga. There’s also news that a DC resident is desperately seeking a groundhog to be named Potomac Phil…because we don’t have enough glorified rats in captivity being violently awoken from hibernation so locals can make a buck selling T-shirts. Maybe they should just let the groundhogs sleep and go pick up rats from Occupy DC and start a new tradition.

Why Jack Bauer Lost His Security Clearance. The Daily Caller, in their quest to out-tabloid the HuffPost, has a feature this week on the Top 10 Celebrity Meltdowns. It features your typical array of mug shots from Lindsay Lohan, Nick Nolte, et. al., but the most disturbing image is that of Kiefer Sutherland sans pants in a London strip club. Not really sure this can be counted as a “meltdown” by anyone familiar with Kiefer’s history of random weirdness. The “meltdown” if there is one, seems to be on the faces of the people with him who have a look of terror on their faces. It’s the look someone who has never held a real job, only leeched off their celebrity friend, has when they realize they may have to come up with bail money. His two friends look like Turtle and Johnny Drama from a deleted scene in Entourage.

We’re Rude? Screw You! The Hill has a feature on how Travel & Leisure magazine ranks D.C. as the third rudest city in America and how politicians reacted to the news. They all seem shocked. Who would have thought that politicians, who are constantly surrounded by staffers and lobbyists who kiss their asses, would have difficulty thinking D.C. is filled with rude people? Life is nice inside that bubble, but too many seem to have forgotten to punch air holes in it because there’s some serious signs of oxygen deprivation happening in there.

The Daily Caller‘s Michelle Fields has made quite a name for herself by visiting Occupy encampments and reporting from within the protests. She did that in New York and was famously shoved to the ground by a police officer. Yesterday, she visited the Occupy DC protests as police prepared to move in. While she interviewed one member of the movement about their treatment of minorities and women, a masked man swooped into the shot and shouted into her microphone, “Michelle Fields is a cunt!” The man then darted off into the camp. A clearly rattled Fields stared blankly through thick, clear, fashion-conscious glasses at her interview subject and then abruptly ended the conversation.

Tommy Christopher is White House Correspondent for Mediaite, but who is the real Tommy Christopher? That’s a question no one asked before yesterday, and probably one no one will ask again after today. But it was asked yesterday, and the asking of it started a pissing match between the aforementioned and alleged Mr. Christopher and The Daily Caller’s Jeff Poor.

Poor wrote a story yesterday pointing out that Mediaite’s White House Correspondent’s name is not Tommy Christopher. Fine, it’s true, his name is not Tommy Christopher. But Poor incited Christopher’s wrath by opening his piece with a simple question: “What if the first two words in every story you have written for a particular outlet were a blatant effort to mislead your readers?”

While a pen name is hardly a Stephen Glass or Jayson Blair moment (hell, I use one), the alleged Mr. Christopher never misses an opportunity to promote himself…no matter how small the audience may be, no matter the state of his rusty, smokey, vocal chords.

The apparent Tommy took to the only outlet insignificant enough to care about a non-controversy involving a self-promoting writer – The Ed Morrissey Show on U-Stream. (The interview starts at the 1 hour mark, the fun starts…I’m kidding, the fun never starts.)

The (as of this writing) 82 people who watched Morrissey’s interview with the supposed Christopher were treated to the equivalent of watching paint dry while the painter bragged about how flat the paint is. In other words, it was seriously boring.

The hypothetical White House correspondent admitted that he thinks very highly of himself (though not highly enough to have the dignity to simply pass on a chance to have his Little Rascals “Froggy” voice sent out to an uninterested Internet. He also widely considers himself to be a “public figure,” which he has voiced several times in the past 48 hours. Whatever the imaginary Christopher’s real name is, someone “more famous” than him already has it. This limits the possibilities to everyone on the planet, which just so happens to be the polar opposite of the number of people who really care.

But we do love watching a good fight, and this one has been entertaining, at least in the comment section…

Read more

Attention Katie Couric: In Politico Mike Allen‘s famous “Playbook” this morning, he writes that V.P. Dick Cheney will be on the morning shows. We know you read Allen before you even get out of bed, Katie. So we wanted to let you know that he didn’t actually mean that Cheney, he meant V.P. Joe Biden. It’s easy to confuse the two. Both are balding.

Allen, of course, corrected the matter. But not before some media reporters went hunting for Cheney on the morning circuit, thinking the shows had booked him to comment on Pres. Obama’s State of the Union address.

As reporters started the scramble out of South Carolina, many ran into airline delays and travel nightmares. Naturally, many of them took to Twitter to complain. But, one of the worst stories came from poor John Dickerson. The Political Director for CBS News just wanted to get out of Columbia EARLY on Sunday morning. He tweeted in the pre-dawn hours about having to wake up to catch his 6a.m. flight. Which meant getting to the airport at 4:30a.m. Where he was told that his flight was delayed for two hours. Dickerson was slated to appear on “Face the Nation” upon returning home, so this was going to be a close shave. So close, in fact, that when Dickerson realized that he wouldn’t be able to go home before his TV appearance, he was forced to shave in an airport bathroom.

Delayed flight means no going home before TV when I land. Just shaved in airport. Water cold! Hand sensor finicky!

— John Dickerson (@jdickerson) January 22, 2012

At least Dickerson was clean shaven when he approached the United Airlines worker to find out that his 6a.m. flight was now pushed bad to 11a.m. Which meant no television for Dickerson. A pissed off Dickerson’s tweets then took an understandably nasty tone.

Announcement says if I I have any questions to contact a @unitedairlines representative. But when I do so I am confronted by a formless blob.

— John Dickerson (@jdickerson) January 22, 2012

Formless blobs are a dime-a-dozen in South Carolina. I wouldn’t hold it against United particularly. A bad situation turned even worse as Dickerson announced later in the day that the flight had ultimately been canceled.

Latest good news: flight cancelled. — John Dickerson (@jdickerson) January 22, 2012

And with that, Dickerson settled into Columbia for one more night, scheduled to leave on the same flight this morning. So far, so good. He’s already let us know that he’s back at the airport and waiting for takeoff.

 

…okay Columbia, SC airport we meet again.

— John Dickerson (@jdickerson) January 23, 2012

It’s nice that his travel nightmare finally had a good ending…  Or did it?

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The White House Press Office deserves a dunce cap for the most absurd notice we’ve seen in two years. On Saturday they sent a note to Poolers at 8:16:29 a.m. that read as follows: Updated pool call time 8:15 a.m. Considering that the email was sent a minute after the call time,  Financial Time‘s political correspondent Anna Fifield understandably missed the call time.

Here’s how Fifield handled it:

Pool Report #1: The president and first lady are at Sasha‘s basketball game at the Jackie Lawton community center in Bethesda. This information is kindly supplied by Bree Tracey of Fox News. Your pooler is not there — the call time was abruptly brought forward and I didn’t make it to the White House in time. Apologies.

Pool Report #2: Just a note in response to questions about my first pool report: I got an
email from the WH press office at 8:16, saying “Updated pool call time 815
am”. Jamie Smith explains: “The president decided to attend his daughter’s
basketball game. The pool was assembled as soon as possible to be there.”

Pool Report #3: Correction to first report: the place where Sasha played basketball was
the Jane Lawton, not Jackie Lawton, community center.