Wonkette
It’s Wednesday, everyone, and that’s the day of the week that the New York Times releases its Sunday Magazine to the Internet and Richard Cohen’s hated BlackBerrys! Obama must be so happy. Especially this week, because he’s mentioned in it! This issue’s cover story profiles legendary Hawk and Dove drunk Robert Gibbs, Obama’s former campaign communications “czar” and press secretary-elect. The Times‘ excellent Mark Leibovitch wrote the piece, so it’s quite readable and you may want to go through the whole thing yourself. But since you all are lazy unemployed slobs, we’ve extracted some of the more delightful bits below. Teaser: Obama is a hologram?
HA HA HA HA HA this is the best possible fourth paragraph; all fourth paragraphs in every story from now on should mock Mark Halperin, and certain aspects of Politico:
Staff members were encouraged to ignore new Web sites like The Page, written by Time’s Mark Halperin, and Politico, both of which had gained instant cachet among the Washington smarty-pants set. “If Politico and Halperin say we’re winning, we’re losing,” Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, would repeat mantralike around headquarters.
Mark Leibovitch even got to interview Obama for this thing — the president himself! Naturally, he wants to kill all of his staff, because of Hillary Clinton:
When I spoke to Obama by phone earlier this month, he said he was not surprised by this. “The transition involves an awful lot of people who don’t actually work for me,” he said. “You’ve got a slew of volunteers in every agency in the vetting process. You’ve got F.B.I. folks involved when it comes to appointments. So we anticipated that we weren’t going to be able to march in lock step on our communications as effectively.” Still, Obama was said to be furious over the serial public airings about Hillary Clinton’s eventual nomination to be Secretary of State. He sent an explicit message that anyone caught leaking would be fired — and he sent it through his newly named chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who a couple of weeks earlier conducted a very public hand-wringing about whether he would take that job.
According to Obama, Gibbs is a lard-ass, just really really fat:
Gibbs gained considerable weight during the campaign that he is trying to shed, and he has a habit — maybe unconscious — of running his hands up and down his paunch while he speaks. (“The chronicle of his weight is a story unto itself,” Obama told me.)
We might infer that Dana Perino’s wife used to get harassed on the telephone, by Iraqi microphones:
Gibbs scrolled back a few days on his BlackBerry to show me a helpful reminder that the current White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, sent him. “Remember to unlist your phone number,” it said. “Your wife will thank you.”
As the lefty blogs know ALL TOO WELL NOW, the real Barack Obama is just George Bush in Muslim clothing:
“We talked a lot about the Bush model, which is that there are a few people who really know everything,” Plouffe told me in early December. That helps ensure an airtight bubble of knowledge. “If there was leaking, we tried to find out who did it,” Plouffe said. “You didn’t have to worry about having a conference call and anything getting out. That’s the value of a small, continuitous group.”
As in most small, continuitous groups, Obama and Gibbs developed a homosexual love for each other. But Obama and Gibbs like dirty, crude jokes, so they will probably laugh when we write that they give each other handjobs all the time while David Plouffe watches, cackling, from a dark corner:
Less than two years later, Obama was running for president and Gibbs was still at his side. He served in a variety of roles at first — spokesman, overseer, strategist and, in Gibbs’s words, Obama’s “traveling buddy.” “It’s not quite that they finish each others’ sentences,” Dunn said. “But they do have that mind meld.”
Obama called Gibbs “a very good friend of mine” who, like himself, is a “well-informed sports fan” and appreciates “gallows humor.” When I asked him for an example of this gallows humor, Obama demurred. “I’m not sure all of it is clean,” he said.
True bros, bro:
Dunn tells the story of a tense practice session before the third debate in which Obama, sitting at a table, kept looking up intently at Gibbs across the room. They were sending urgent-looking BlackBerry messages back and forth, and Dunn became concerned that some crisis had arisen. When the session ended, the men ran over to each other. It was a Sunday afternoon, and they had been following the fortunes of Obama’s fantasy football team.
Between Obama and the Press [NYT Magazine]
where is C J Cregg?
You know, I’m actually a little concerned that the next president has a fantasy football team.
continuitous
Con-tin-new-it-is
Con-tin-new-it-is
I don’t think that word means what he thinks it means…
That was really gay. . . . and muslim.
Fantasy Football is the new World of Warcraft!
eatsshootsleaves: My gut reaction also. Dude’s from Chicago. Shouldn’t he be fretting over the sucky Bears? Maybe he should be trying to buy them a quarterback.
Politico — the classless rag with its finger on the pulse of the corpse of the GOP machine. Any administration that thinks they’re garbage is alright by me.
step up from dungeons and dragons! … barely.
I want to be a czar? Can I be a czar of something?
I think I’ll be “Snide Czar”. That’s what I’ll be.
Good grief. Can we just dispense with the preliminaries and get right to the money shot?
“ARE YA READY FOR SOME FOOTBALLLLL. A MONDAY NIGHT TERROR SPREEEEE”
This guy is a nobody until he has been beaten up by a the soft silky padding of a microphone.
You can get a book deal out of that ‘n’ never have to work again!
The best part (even better than the gay love between Hopey and Gibb) is the Politico and Page diss … I loved it!
I am still waiting for Politico to run a story from an “unnamed source” about how Obama did not do a courtesy flush after eating Mexican back in 1987 and how this “proves” he is unready for office. On second thought, that would be an improvement over most of their articles since the election.
eatsshootsleaves: It’s ok as long as he doesn’t get it confused with the Fantasy Nuclear Football.
“It’s not quite that they finish each others’ sentences,” Dunn said. “But they do have that mind meld.”
Here’s something funny. Try to think this sentence is describing SnowBilly & Walnuts. Ha!
Well I guess Obama won’t be winning Politico’s man ‘o the year
Whoa ho, read this quote. We got ourselves the real scoop here!
“ONE WAY THAT THE OBAMA MODEL in the White House would diverge sharply from the Bush model is that Gibbs knows his principal intimately — Obama’s mind, his history, his rhythms.”
They know each other intimately & Gibbs knows Barry’s rhythms. Does Michelle know about this & when will she be taking her size 12 heel to both of them?
The only surprise in that story is that someone would want to call Dana Perino.
TGY: Barry plays World of Warcraft? Clearly he is fit to be the lvl 80 leader of the free world.
my favorite part was how it comes across as though gibbs is the redheaded stepchild that they all just make fun of all the time; they harp on him for being craptacular at his job, admit that they only hired him because they felt sorry for him that he was unemployed after the kerry mess, call him a tub of lard and laugh that he has the dumbest ideas out of the whole group.
i also love that he’s a diehard member of rednecks for obama, he gets bonus points for that.
…appreciates “gallows humor.” When I asked him for an example of this gallows humor, Obama demurred. “I’m not sure all of it is clean,” he said.
There once was an executioner from Nantucket….
When is Obama going on SportsCenter?
NYT online mag blows. It’s like trying to read the old print versions of WIRED, all weird fonts, druggy colors, and smarminess.
bitchincamaro: My latest Hobo deal was to sell the entire first 3 years of Wired on Ebay. Stupid Americans even paid for shipping from Europe.
If Obama turns out to be another James Buchanan/William Rufus King, I thin Rick Warren might kick sand into their eyes in the Executive Sandbox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan#Personal_relationships
Look at Gibby staring at Hopey’s lips, his jaw dropped in awe of their raw power! Listen, Gib, while they are brown lips, they are not Campbell Brown’s lips–so close your mouth or come out of the closet. Really, everybody’d pretty much be okay with it at this point.
Man, it feels good to know that my instinctive loathing for Politico will now be official US policy. Politico is something like the Platonic form of mediocre mendacious hackery.
Every conversation, no matter how erudite (as if) among the wonkerrati always comes back to Campbell Brown and her 8PM ET biased bull show on CNN. I guess that means the ad is working–What I don’t get is why O’Bama didn’t make her press secretary. I’ll bet none of the men in the press corps would ask her a difficult question.
The more I think about it, the better I like it.
Obviously, some of Hopey’s best friends are white….really….