Erwin Gomez opened the doors of his Karma salon and spa last night to celebrate the Emerald Spring. This meant heavily made up Hu models, miniature cupcakes, Moet & Imperial champagne, and complimentary mini-manicures. Despite the biting temp, the point was to toast a new warmer season. Gomez, a whiz at eyebrows, opened his spa in late September.

He’s busy when it comes to making up the media. On Wednesday he made up Elle Editor-in-Chief Robbie Myers and his makeup jobs don’t come cheap — $200 a pop. “She’s brilliant and pretty and that helps because I don’t have to work so hard,” he said with a knowing laugh.

Gomez is all about discretion. At his spa, parading around in robes is a no-no. “I respect people’s privacy,” he said, explaining that all changing happens inside the treatment room and no one sees what anyone is getting done.

Speaking of which, it’s time for my mini-manicure. My manicurist takes one good look at my nails and asks if I go to one those “corner shops.” Uh oh. I say yes and she eyes me with a slight scolding and tells me I should come to her. She says she won’t cut my skin as opposed to my cuticle and she’ll only charge me 22 bucks. Time eases on and I’m getting a wonderful watermelon basil vodkatini scrub, which exfoliates my hands. She spends a few minutes raving about the Bourbon Bubbler, a pedicure for men and I contemplate which members of Washington’s media might consider it. NBC’s Chuck Todd? Soon she whips out a caramel-colored tube and slathers the faintest amount of illuminating cream on hands and arms followed by steaming hot towels. I slowly realize I’ve been glitter bombed. Nonetheless, the overall result is a perfect manicure, no chips, bubbles or skin imperfections.

Karma is all about pampering. Read more

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today viewers were treated to what we’ll call a happy ending by TIME‘s Senior Political Analyst Mark Halperin.

While his colleague Mike Barnicle wrapped the show and tossed it to Chuck Todd, Halperin sent a diva-like kiss off to the camera, turned and ripped out his ear piece a la Beyoncé, then proceeded to sashay away.

A visual for the ages.

Writing a story about someone else’s booger feature is no easy task. On some email requests I put a simple, bland, “request for comment.” On others, I went for shock value: “BuzzFeed’s booger post.” It wasn’t plotted. I imagined some might find it funnier than others.

On Tuesday night, BuzzFeed‘s Benny Johnson took Washington’s political and media worlds by surprise by creating a GIF feature about House Speaker John Boehner allegedly checking out his boogers. BuzzFeed Political Editor McKay Coppins promoted the story, even guided readers to it on Twitter.

The headline reads: “John Boehner Looks at His Boogers During the State of the Union.”

Who among us would have the mental fortitude to look away from a Boehner booger post? “It looks like a first-step by BuzzFeed into honest coverage,” said former TWT Editor and Public Affairs exec Sam Dealey. “After all, everyone — the Speaker, the public and evidently BuzzFeed’s reporter too, was bored by the speech and looking for anything even remotely more interesting.”

Boogers are interesting. But by and large, the editors and journalists around town that we interviewed opposed the booger post. “Dumb and dumber; political coverage as booger op? What next: beaver shot?” asked Washingtonian‘s media writer Harry Jaffe. WTOP’s Jim Farley also expressed journalistic outrage. “I believe it is over the top,” he said. “It would have been like showing video of George H.W. Bush throwing up on the Japanese Prime Minister at a State Dinner. A private moment.  Would we show video of Michelle Obama’s skirt blowing up on a windy day?”

Um, there’s actual video showing Bush throwing up? As it turns out, there is.

And by the way, there’s no judgment here. We’ve written about everything from Larry King passing gas on air and a journo popping a zit at a party to females showing ample amounts of cleavage and breasts on TV. Suffice it say, BuzzFeed can write about the Speaker’s alleged boogers if they want to and there won’t be any ethical bitching from us.

And yet we couldn’t help but wonder, is this, in part, the psychological result of our miniscule attention spans and around-the-clock reporting? That we now require boogers to grab our collective attention?

“Poking fun at people in power has always been been part of political journalism,” Coppins told FishbowlDC when asked to comment on the matter. “Dead-tree newspapers used to do it with political cartoons; now the internet does it with GIFs and memes. What actually struck me most about this State of the Union was how many other news sites were competing with us on that front. A year ago, we would have been the only ones GIFing Marco Rubio’s reach for the water bottle; this year we were racing with The Atlantic‘s Twitter feed.”

But some journalists thought BuzzFeed had slipped beneath themselves. “That’s certainly a headline you don’t see every day,” said a longtime Washington editor who preferred to remain anonymous. “But regardless, this is over the line. A classic example of something that gets hits, but is in poor taste. The post appeals to the 10-year-old in all of us, and that’s not a good thing. BuzzFeed is better than this.”

A cable news insider agreed, saying, Read more

Chuck Todd the dog was pretty funny the first time. He was still mildly amusing the second and third times he made the Washington media rounds. But now? The whole thing is getting stupid and tedious.

On Tuesday, Washingtonian‘s media writer Harry Jaffe wrote up a brief punchy interview with the dog and his owners. It was complete, nothing else was needed. But today, Scott Stump, a contributor for NBC’s TODAY.com, felt some burning need to regurgitate the news back to us in yet another extended feature on the pooch with the famous name. Human Chuck Todd, the NBC White House Correspondent, appears to be playing along and offering up varying quotes for journalists who ask — he’s no fool when it comes to the dog’s 15 minutes of fame. And what’s he going to do, tell his network that he’s tired of Chuck Todd’s media whore parents trying to steal his thunder?

But enough is enough. If Chuck Todd is headed for the front of the NYT‘s Style Section we’re going to boycott. We’re done. Over it. Run free, Chuck Todd. Run free. (And yes, we mean the dog.)

If you must, read TODAY‘s version of the story here. But we suggest Jaffe’s, it’s better, funnier and won’t make you wish for the last five minutes of your life back.

The above photograph appeared on TODAY.com.

In mid-December, syndicated columnist Karl Frisch unearthed an odd tidbit of news that a dog answering to Chuck Todd, named after the NBC White House correspondent, had surfaced at his dog park. He snapped a picture and slapped it up on Twitter. Now Washingtonian media writer Harry Jaffe has gone a step further: he interviewed the owner and the dog when he, too, came across Chuck Todd the pooch at the dog park.

It turns out Todd, the human version, has a following of women. The dog owner’s wife as well as Jaffe’s wife, Louise, both consider themselves to be Chuck Todd groupies.

“Chuck Todd is at once frisky and easygoing, engaging but calm,” writes Jaffe of the four-legged Chuck Todd. He exudes, ‘Trust me, I know what I’m saying, and I have the numbers and sources to prove it.’”

The White House Soup of the Day, as reported on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” is…

Chipotle Beef.

“It’s Chipotle. Because when I don’t pronounce it correctly, you get all aTwitter,” said host Chuck Todd, employing one of his puns.

When discussing heathens, the media is always a safe place to start, right?

President Obama took a moment at this morning’s National Prayer Breakfast to ding the cable news networks, using them as a punching bag as to what can happen when a person forgets about prayer and everything discussed at the annual solemn breakfast.

“We have to do it everyday,” Obama said of staying in faith and humility. “Not just at a prayer breakfast. I have to say, this is now our fifth prayer breakfast, and it is always just a wonderful event. But I do worry sometimes, as soon as we leave the prayer breakfast, everything we’ve been talking about seems to be forgotten. On the same day of the prayer breakfast. I mean, you’d like to think the shelf life wadn’t so short. [LAUGHTER] I go back to the Oval Office and start watching the cable news networks and it’s like we didn’t pray.”

But never fear. MSNBC “Daily Rundown” Host Chuck Todd found a silver lining in the message. “The President acknowledged he’s watching [the cable news networks,” noted Todd. “Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t.”

The White House Soup  of the Day, as reported by MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” is…

Coconut Shrimp.

“Coconut Shrimp? Should be some type of crab theme since the President is going to Annapolis,” groused host Chuck Todd.

On the heels of Steve Capus resigning as President of NBC News late last week, WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin took it upon herself in a Sunday column to offer tips to the network. Among her pearls of wisdom:

• “[D]ump David Gregory as host of ‘Meet the Press.’”
• “[S]teal Jan Crawford Greenburg from CBS…”
• “Get some capable conservatives (instead of a left, lefter and leftist panel) and New Media liberals” for the roundtable shows.
• Designate MSNBC’s prime time lineup as “entertainment” rather than news.

Rubin has been especially critical of Gregory as of late. In mid-January she accused him of conducting a “softball interview” with President Obama on New Years Day. She also said Gregory was “ill-prepared, doesn’t listen to the answers or has no interest in conducting tough interviews of the Obama administration’s surrogates.” In her weekend column, she described Gregory as “incapable of asking hard questions and whose most distinctive moment was a stupid, illegal gun stunt.”

Rubin’s suggestion to replace Gregory… Read more

Matt Lewis, a columnist for The Week and a media contributor to The Daily Caller, is hitting chords today with a column titled, “Why I hate Twitter.” NBC Political Director Chuck Todd called his story a “compelling case” for why Twitter is like high school. Author David Limbaugh, brother of conservative bigmouth Rush Limbaugh, swallowed the story whole. “I learned during the Fluke kerfuffle that the block button was my friend,” he reacted on Twitter this morning.

Naturally detractors chimed in. “Guys, the economy may be tanking but we need to focus on the important matters,” wrote conservative blogger Ben Howe on Twitter. “Like how people on Twitter are super duper mean.”

Party lines aside, Lewis says he’s received more positive private feedback from prominent opinion leaders on this piece than nearly any other he has written. “I can’t tell you how many smart and successful people have reached out to me today to tell me they feel the same way,” he told FishbowlDC in an extensive email exchange. “As I have learned from all the emails I received today, a lot of other folks who once embraced the Twitter community have already begin distancing themselves from it.”

Twitter as a Dark Place

In recent weeks, Lewis’ feed has been a virtual cage fight with some conservative bloggers, such as Howe, joking about him having sex with animals. Which part tipped Lewis over the edge of thinking Twitter was still a sane and reasonable place? In his column, he writes, “It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment it happened — but at some point, Twitter became a dark place. It’s a lot like the transformation of the 1960s. It started out being about free love, sharing ideas, and changing the world, but somehow we ended up being more about Altamont and Charles Manson… What was once an inspiring place that gave you a competitive advantage became a prison.”

While the precise moment or insult is unclear, likely all of it over the past year contributed to his declaration that his relationship with Twitter is on the outs.

No, he won’t be leaving. But he will be preserving his “inner artist” by 1) Utilize Twitter lists, following only those he finds “interesting or inspiring”  2) blocking those who want to mock or otherwise engage him in verbal warfare. “I’ll try to use whatever tools available that can empower me to discover new ideas, while also avoiding the negativity and bitterness and noise,” he told FBDC. “Blocking is what you do when you try to weed out the bad seeds, but remain yoked to Twitter. I’m advocating that people should step back a bit from Twitter, take breaks from it, etc.” 3) Generally refrain from conversation or debates.

Lewis says he has never enjoyed the fight. Read more