We tried, honestly, on what promises to be our swan song in Wonkette guest-blogging, to lay off the devoted practitioners of the Halperinite Tendency over at ABC. Be gracious in retiring, we told ourselves; spare a kind word, or at least a circumspect silence for the language-mangling media elitists who thrill to each fresh beat of Dan Bartlett’s heart. But our better angels did not conquer. As we let our eyes rest on the practiced vacuities slithering out of the many-fingered beast that is Team Note, we could remain silent no longer. Consider, first of all, today’s Notely overture:
There is some elaborate seasoned-pol style throat clearing to the effect of “the Clinton White House was leaky; the Bush one not so much.” Only, you know, delivered in three hundred so words of preening self-congratulation, for having been so close to so many powerful apparatchiks for so long. Then, the irrelevant, though no less irritating aside:

Out goes the elaborate lede we had written based on yet another leak (the early reviews of Tim Kaine’s State of the Union response preps, which we will save for a non-rainy day). Instead here is our insider report on this morning’s White House senior staff meeting.

Yes, because the lead (or, if you must, Note, “lede”) you have selected instead is so much less fucking elaborate. And correct us if we are wrong, but aren’t you all publicly congratulating yourselves for receiving a White House-orchestrated piece of pre-debate smear in the classic Rove-Bartlett vintage? This tickles your pride as journalists how, exactly?

More Notely questions after the jump.

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Today, the plucky Halperinites seek to ventriloquize their own Xmas wish list through the harried minds of Congressional leaders Frist and Hastert. See, it’s just like visiting Santa, only you have little wooden scale models of wish-granters sitting on your knee. The only thing is, they still have some quaint desire to dress up these thought experiments as something resembling journalism–so cute!–so the whole thing is packaged as a sober laundry list of self-contradictory advice from the Hill’s major domos to our dead sexy president. But not long into the exercise, you get a strong whiff indeed of the musky longings of senior Notesters.

Awkward examples and explications after the jump.

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