In news that should stun those of you who just awoke from a seven-decade coma, Dave Weigel, recently fired by the Washington Post, has just been hired by Slate.com… a subsidiary of the Washington Post Company. Slate Group chairman Jacob Weisberg, who rose to journalistic prominence compiling minor gaffes by George W. Bush, was apparently miffed by the Post‘s decision to can Weigel. You didn’t realize that those ads in which Coca-Cola executives plot against Coke Zero were actually media satires, did you?
On a related note, I think I’ve just stumbled upon the single best argument for decentralization, devolution, “states’ rights,” or whatever the hell you want to call the transfer of powers from Washington, D.C., to lower political units, and it’s not to be found in the Constitution or any musty old book of political theory. Simply put, such a transfer would scatter the fraternity of political “journalists,” think-tankers, and the like to the four winds, or at least to Augusta, Tallahassee, Sacramento, and Olympia.
Note: My self-authored rebuttal to my last post will work just fine for this one too, #teamweigel. And if you still haven’t read Arthur Silber’s two–parter on the Journolist fracas, then do it now.