It’s that time again when we check on recent features published in Washington publications. Sometimes they’re good. Sometimes they’re not. But they’re always worth a look.

The good– The Washington Examiner got a one-on-one with Guns N’ Roses guitarist DJ Ashba this week ahead of the band’s concert in Silver Spring on Thursday. Ashba replaced the original guitarist Slash and Nancy Dunham, who wrote the story, asked the uncomfortable: If Ashba had any problems with Slash. “I have no history or beef with Slash,” he answered. “I don’t know the guy personally. I have a lot of respect for him and all the guys in the band, for their musicianship.”

The awkward– Michael Warren, special to TWT, wrote a review of “Act of Valor,” a movie released today about actual Navy SEAL operations post-9/11. The headline alone was curious: “Anti-Hollywood ‘Act of Valor’ a soldiers soldiering film about the SEALS.” Soldiers soldiering? Further along Warren describes the SEALs as “precision fighting machines” and “the very last people any jihadist of sound mind wants to encounter…” What’s the difference between a jihadist of sound mind and one of unsound mind? Less nitro?

The bad– We had to check twice to make sure WaPo‘s profile on Melissa Harris-Perry‘s new MSNBC show wasn’t written by Mediaite‘s Tommy Christopher. In fact, it was written by Anna Holmes, who seemingly Google searched “positive adjectives” to describe Perry’s show. Holmes says the first episode was “signature Harris-Perry.” How can the first show of someone virtually unknown (and still relatively unknown) be “signature”? “She’s got this,” Holmes writes. Further in the profile Holmes writes that “others” have judged Perry’s impact on TV news– just five days after Perry’s debut. The “others” are Latoya Peterson, editor of of the website Racialicious; Founder of Women and Media in News Jennifer Pozner; and Hub Brown, an associate dean at Syracuse University; None of whom have anything less than sugary to say about Perry. Not to sound like a negative Nancy, but surely not everyone is throwing confetti up over Perry’s new show.

The noteworthy– The Daily Caller‘s Taylor Bigler has an interesting story about the late Whitney Houston allegedly sending a personal bodyguard free of charge to help locate a kidnapped child. In it, we learn that Houston’s nickname was “Nippy.”

We expect nothing short of masterful observation from our thriving hometown paper ombudsman here in Washington.

In that case, was Sunday’s piece by WaPo‘s Patrick Pexton a letdown or not?

On one hand, perhaps channeling talk show host Tyra Banks in a column about whether the publication has recently been offensive to first ladies is not the best way to go. And sure, maybe it is not the most highbrow way to reach a tightly wound Washington audience when you’re talking about gender and journalism, which tends to attract a prickly gaggle of women to begin with.

At issue are a recent blog post on first lady Michelle Obama’s 1,700 calorie-jaunt to Shake Shack in Dupont Circle and a story by new WaPo columnist and Jezebel founder Anna Holmes in which she talks about Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush like they were Kardashians. There’s Nancy’s love of astrology and Barbara being “dowdy.” Pexton interviews Holmes for his piece and she says she was being “honest” and declares, “I don’t regret doing it.”

An excerpt from Pexton’s column: “The wives of our presidents walk in a minefield of expectations — the first lady is supposed to be the nation’s unroyal queen, its top hostess, a fashion plate at the same time as a child rearer, a career woman and an issue crusader, plus the eternal earth mother, strong yet nurturing, kind to all yet with a backbone that can bolster her man.”

Really, Mr. Ombudsman. Her man? You mean, her main man, main squeeze, POTUS?

On the other hand, maybe this is a sign of a new, loose WaPo, with the ombudsman flipping back and forth on what’s appropriate. While writing in the voice of Tyra, he declares that Holmes went too far and there were other, ahem, more interesting facets to the first ladies such as Bush’s literacy campaign (Zzzz) and Nancy’s “steely support” for her husband (Zzzzzzz).

After enumerating various complaints from uptight readers about why WaPo editors fell asleep on the job, he concluded that the Shake Shack story was perfectly acceptable. “A little tabloidy, invasive and sexist? Well, yeah. But given Michelle’s child nutrition advocacy, a story not completely out of bounds.”

Thanks Tyra.