Today is Politico Mike Allen‘s second day off since August 2009. Once again Politico has oddly gone off the reservation of its Arlington headquarters to find his replacement.

Yesterday it was ABC’s Jonathan Karl. Today’s “Guest Playbooker” is TIME‘s Michael Crowley. Crowley takes the opportunity to feature TIME‘s cover story by his boss, Richard Stengel. He writes, “Excerpts (and not just because he’s the boss!”) Yeah, riiight.

Allen does typically feature TIME‘s cover. Still, something doesn’t smell right here. Graphs devoted to TIME including highlighting a story by Mark Halerpin: 10.

UPDATE: Crowley wrote into FishbowlDC with a note of explanation: “Mike Allen typically gives generous space to spotlight TIME on Thursdays, when our new issues are out. (He devoted six graphs to our issue on April 12.) I told him in advance that I planned to tout this week’s issue, and he agreed that a Stengel cover story is extra-interesting. It was an honor to sit in for him, not least because people take their Playbook so seriously!”