But I said something really nice about him, too!

Dan Balz of the Washington Post is one of those bullshit Washington political reporters who won't touch anything of substance about politics as long as there's a horse race story to tell. Horseshit, more like it.

The tone and upshot of the story shows that it has one audience, John Edwards. Its whole point is when are you going to triage yourself out of Obama's way?

The story contains all the elements of Beltway bloviation:

• The airy refusal to acknowledge the press's own role ("Edwards is the forgotten man")
  
• The pretense of insight on the part of the reporter (whole damn piece)
  
• Rampant use of conventional narrative ("angry populist of Iowa")
• Ha-ha stereotype ("Southern-fried" - aside: when a Yankee uses Southern-fried, it's an insult; not a serious social problem, but akin to calling Hillary the little woman)
• Retrospective out-size claims of importance ("everything on the line in Iowa, a state that was a must-win contest for him")
• Fox-perfected "some say" with not a single quote ("has offended many Democrats")
• Vacuous authenticity claims ("shift from optimism to anger as the sign of an opportunistic politician" - aside: if you're not angry after 7 years of Bushism, you've probably already had a lobotomy)

One reason newspapers have fallen on such hard times is that we readers are firing their asses, since their product is so insipid and inconsequential. Oh, and self-important, I almost forgot that.