The New Republic

For Kinsley, a guy with Scully's wounded vanity is easy prey, and Kinsley devoured him. Scully failed to realize that, while there perhaps should be honor among thieves, the code of honor can only be enforced internally. When Scully tried to bring us, the outsiders in, all I saw was kvetching by a guy who overrated the quality of the 'good' lines in Bush's speeches -- and, worse, overrated Bush himself -- about an occupational hazard in Washington, that the boss always get a disproportionate share of the credit for staff work.

- RaymondA

August 24, 2007 at 9:01pm

and though I sensed that this was really a disagreement about who got the most hot light amongst the three underlings. That said, Scully did paint a convincing portrait of Gerson as a smarmy media hound. But in this blasted age when EVERYONE seems to equate media exposure with occupational integrity and validation, then I suppose one should accept fate's fickle finger and not whine...

- MrCookie1

August 24, 2007 at 9:08pm

truly made me wanna barf...

- MrCookie1

August 24, 2007 at 9:09pm

is right. And Scully knows he's standing in the presence of "greatness" when GWB is around! Those two deserve each other, and GWB deserves them. I'd like to think the country deserves better, though.

- wmsberry

August 24, 2007 at 9:15pm

Yeah, Scully's words about the quiet magnitude of Bush's response to 9-11 seemed a tad sycophantic. That said, I thought the Atlantic article displayed what a good writer he is. He knows his way around a sentence. He did seem to nit-pick, but I think that his complaints illustrate the toll of a long-term relationship with a person (Gerson) who consistently irritated. Scully seems to be the victim of a "death by a thousand small cuts" relationship in which the complainer has a hard time capturing why he is so vexed with the person he's complaining about. Kinsley is right in noting that no single thing Gerson did was really awful, but imagine being slighted and upstaged on a daily basis for several years. That would drive anyone into pettiness.

- Todd

August 24, 2007 at 9:30pm

Michael Gerson's columns in the Post make me want to barf. Basically, the Post is paying Gerson for the privilege of printing his right-wing propaganda. Someone ought to tell the Post that a prostitute is supposed to get money, not give it.

- AMVHuck

August 24, 2007 at 11:08pm

While I thought that Scully's shots at Gerson were pretty tame (if this is what Beltway types think is a stinging attack on someone, their ears would catch on fire if they listened to me and my friends after we had a few beers), I did find the article interesting in that it did show Gerson to be a selfish jerk. Granted, that isn't a huge scoop, but since Gerson makes a big public display of what a great Christian he supposedly is (po-faced and hand-on-heart whenever the cameras flash), it was good to see someone let the air out of that balloon a bit. But the article wasn't the scorched-earth takedown that many made it out to be.

- myzaguirre

August 25, 2007 at 11:40am

You can't have your cake and eat it too. While Scully's piece made for great reading, it suffers from the fact that you cannot call someone out on violating the speech-writers code without violating it yourself. Even if every word that Scully wrote about Gerson is true, just by writing the article he stoops to Gerson's level.

- scottminkoff

August 25, 2007 at 12:38pm

the prick is amusingly Gerson on this one. From "we're at war" to "Mike, we're at war" is an epic, prick-tastic stunt, very pleased he was busted for it. There's a minor ring of hell reserved for fibbing, supposedly devout glory hogs, its called "Four Pages in the Atlantic." Again, as so many in this administration are learning first hand: karma is impossible to get away from. I also thought there was a larger issue at stake (along with the petty vicarious thrill of it all) which is here we have yet another example of Bush era pliant, lazy press-hoards copying each other and not doing their job being skeptics.

- Wandreycer1

August 25, 2007 at 4:28pm

To not give a care about the finer points of who wrote what, where, and when.

- willip

August 25, 2007 at 5:13pm

great line. although in these days of Republican state legislators offering both money and to perform the sex act, I have no idea what to expect anymore. all this referring going on gives me a headache. We have Cookie on Noam Scheiber on Kinsley on Scully on Gerson on Dasher and Vixon and Comet and Pluto and whatever else those flying chipmunks are called. It gets all so confusing.

- blackton

August 25, 2007 at 6:10pm

Oh, snap!

- hsrubin

August 25, 2007 at 7:50pm

my barf instinct was tickled not by Noam's parting words but by Scully's last two paragraphs of his Atlantic piece.

- MrCookie1

August 25, 2007 at 8:07pm

Just finished Scully piece over a Tim Horton's donut and coffee. It would have been a waste of C$2.03 to have barfed at the last two paragraphs, the "I saw greatness" quip, and the tone of wounded vanity. At the same time, I agree with Wandrey that Gerson should have been called on his grandstanding. Of course, this should have been done years ago. Looks to me like Scully is just upset that Gerson was a more savvy media whore than he was ... they are deserve one another; too bad, though, that we were stuck with them for so long ... Oh, another barf moment: Karen Hughes and Donald Rumsfeld thinking that the three stooges had gone overboard on the "Mission Accomplished" speech. These are not speechwriters, they're fabulists.

- icarusr

August 26, 2007 at 7:22pm