Tools of the trade

The second-easiest job in Washington (next to this guy’s) is being a White House correspondent. You show up at press conferences, and ask questions like “Mr. President, are you still smoking?” and “Is the government doing enough about steroid use in baseball?”

You write down the answers, which are then printed in a newspaper.

All this makes you are a high-status journalist, which means you get paid six figures to do a job a chimp could be trained to perform.

So naturally when somebody does some actual reporting it frightens and confuses you.

And because years of being at the top of your profession have rendered you incapable of doing any actual reporting yourself, you get all your facts wrong.

…UPDATE [by SL]: And then there’s this. Milbank’s obsession with trivia would be a little more palatable if it were less, how do you say, painfully unfunny, or at least if it weren’t more smug than every Pajamas TV host combined.