{"id":506690,"date":"2010-04-02T18:00:18","date_gmt":"2010-04-02T22:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=76417"},"modified":"2010-04-02T18:00:18","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T22:00:18","slug":"an-april-fools%e2%80%99-day-joke-goes-awry-at-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/506690","title":{"rendered":"An April Fools\u2019 Day Joke Goes Awry at the Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>April Fools’ Day can be a very dangerous holiday in some organizations.<\/p>\n

For example, given the well-documented perversity<\/a> of the Washington Post<\/em>’s op-ed pages under Fred Hiatt, it’s probably no surprise that second-tier staffers blow off steam by grumbling and making sarcastic jokes in informal lunch-room conversations.<\/p>\n

So, it happens that yesterday, a bunch of them were sitting around on a break at a table with that morning’s Wall Street Journal<\/em> — lying open to Karl Rove’s opinion piece offering unsubtle GOP-friendly suggestions to the “tea party” movement (including not forming a third party<\/a>).\u00a0 The talk turned to how soon it would take Hiatt to ask the staff to gin up a me-too column from one of the WaPo’s ever-growing stable of former Bush administration mouthpieces<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then, realizing it was April Fools’ Day, one of them said, “You know what would be funny?\u00a0 If we wrote up our own piece and put it under the name of Dan Quayle.”<\/p>\n

“Who’s Dan Quayle?” asked one of the younger staffers.<\/p>\n

“The 1980s prototype for Sarah Palin,” another answered.\u00a0 “Young, supposedly irresistible good looks, and dumber than the day is long.”<\/p>\n

“Seriously?\u00a0 How dumb was he?” asked the younger staffer.<\/p>\n

“Bill Kristol was considered his ‘brain’.”<\/p>\n

A long pause.\u00a0 “Holy crap!\u00a0 I guess you’re right.”<\/p>\n

“Exactly!\u00a0 So wouldn’t it be perfect to have a column with advice for the teabaggers from Dan Quayle — the patron saint and godfather they never knew they had?”<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, just then Fred Hiatt walked in for a cup of coffee, overhearing the suggestion.\u00a0 And he thought they were serious<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Share <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April Fools’ Day can be a very dangerous holiday in some organizations. For example, given the well-documented perversity of the Washington Post’s op-ed pages under Fred Hiatt, it’s probably no surprise that second-tier staffers blow off steam by grumbling and making sarcastic jokes in informal lunch-room conversations. So, it happens that yesterday, a bunch of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5274,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}