Wonkette

… That’s the mostly likely explanation for this — that Sullivan got mad about Joe Biden’s health records and then took out his crayons and scribbled this new cover, which the publishers just assumed was artistic because Sullivan is gay. This is unreadable and very communist-looking. A cursory glance suggests that this issue is about how women and blogs are coming to kill us, but we knew that already. [Marc Ambinder]

The most prolific blogger ever in the history of mankind has been dark since yesterday, and anxious readers have come up with a bunch of creative explanations far beyond his colleague Marc Ambinder’s simple and obvious, “He’s taking a couple days off.” Join us as we enter the dark labyrinthine souls and speculations of Sullivan readers… MORE »

For the last few days, the folks at the Atlantic magazine have been hyping a piece from senior editor Joshua Green about the (not so) mysterious inner workings of Hillary Clinton’s terrible campaign staff, claiming Green had procured 200(!) internal e-mails and memos. Such teases! This is sort of like waving crack in front of John Edwards’ crack baby, but then saying “you have to wait for the September issue of crack to come out in three days.” But it’s out now, and we read it, and there’s not much you haven’t already known for months or couldn’t have predicted. It has its moments, however. Wait until you read about Mark Penn’s “FUN” invisible people button for the website! MORE »

“With more than a year left in the fading Bush presidency, Karl Rove’s worst days in the White House may still lie ahead of him.”
— First sentence of the lead story in the September Atlantic.

Whoops. But hey, their revamped revamped website looks neat! MORE »

You ever wonder what David Bradley thought about Andrew Sullivan? Or about David Bradley? Here’s a hint: he loves them both! An operative sent us one of David’s periodic rambling company-wide memos, this one announcing the (here’s the news, by the way) hiring of Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic, and the moving of his blog there from Time’s NEW AND IMPROVED website.

My Colleagues:

Probably lifting the thought from someone else, though I’ve long forgotten, I’ve spent my adult years believing that life is a sine curve of inevitable highs following inevitable lows. What is new to me, in this second career, is that the highs are much higher in journalism and the lows much lower. I had not understood, before, how wide could be the band of emotions.

This afternoon is one of the high highs for me. Andrew Sullivan has accepted James Bennet’s and my offer to join T he Atlantic as Senior Editor. Andrew will publish his blog, The Daily Dish , exclusively on The Atlantic website and contribute longer-form pieces to the magazine. To say this is a lift to our internet work hardly honors what Andrew has accomplished. Ranked in that highest priesthood of American bloggers, Andrew has a monthly following of over two million readers.

The entire crazy letter, including baked bribery, after the jump.

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Maybe it’s irrelevant, but did they get that professionally framed? MORE »

Still no sign of the Xylophone. (Photo by, you guessed it, Liz Gorman)

Typ-i-cal. As soon as The Atlantic moves to Washington, suddenly no one there knows how to dress. So here comes management with a friendly list of guidelines.

Per the New York Observer’s Gabe Sherman:

“Our policy is intentionally vague and does not specifically exclude certain articles of clothing or types of shoes,” Susan Lavigne, Atlantic director of benefits and compensation wrote. Lavigne then went on to specifically exclude certain articles of clothing and types of shoes: “Flip-flops, crop tops, tank tops, spaghetti-strap tops, and shorts (to name a few) are not appropriate.”

Full memo after the jump.

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The good folks over at Atlantic Media have a crisis on their hands. And since they recently showed us such great hospitality, at the recent Michael Kelly Award Dinner, we thought we’d do them the favor of publicizing their plea for help. Here it is: MORE »

Last night, Team Wonkette rubbed elbows with the D.C. media elite, at the third annual presentation of the Michael Kelly Award:

The $25,000 award is given annually to a journalist whose work exemplifies a quality that animated Michael Kelly’s own career: the fearless pursuit and expression of truth. Kelly, who was the editor of two Atlantic Media publications, The Atlantic Monthly and National Journal, was killed while covering the war in Iraq in 2003.

It was a delightful evening, definitely one of the better parties that we’ve crashed attended lately. As media junkies, our heads were left spinning from all the star-spotting: Peggy Noonan! Adam Nagourney! Howard Fineman! Gwen Ifill! Matt Cooper! (But where was FROOMKIN???)

After the jump, additional commentary on the evening — plus fabulous photos, by Liz Gorman. Enjoy!

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* The fellow behind the “suspicious package” incident at the White House today is a French guy. Figures. [WP] MORE »