The Bombshell Bombs
Hello. A very short Gene Pool today. It is image-intense.
For sheer hilarious disaster on Day One, Katie Zacharia’s debut as presidential press secretary yesterday may have eclipsed that of a guy named A. J. Clemente, who, in 2013, blatted out his minutes-long broadcasting career as a news anchor with a Bismarck, North Dakota TV staton by saying, as his opening line, “fucking shit.” In case you do not remember:
A.J. was instantly fired, and embarked on a new career as a bartender.
You really should watch Ms. Zacharia, start to finish, or as long as you can last. I lasted the whole 12 minutes or so because I was transfixed. It wasn’t just her slavering deep-dive ass-smooching of her boss. It was her stunning inability to understand her job, an incapacity that manifested itself throughout. There is a journalism betting pool right now about how many Scaramuccis she is going to last in the job.
The New York Times called her debut “bumpy.” This was a ferociously mild understatement. It was like calling the Nazis “rude.” It was “bumpy” the way this was bumpy:
How did this happen? It’s not a mystery. I’d just like to reprint this image, which was making the social-media rounds yesterday:
Even though it breaks the K Street Streak, I should add this:
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One more pure picture item today. The Gene Pool Mailbag just got this letter, regarding a delightful story in the Post Opinions section last week.
“This story is fine, but journalistically speaking, I wanted a picture of the dog.”
The story was indeed fine. It ran under the headline, “My dog seemed to hate me. Here’s how I fixed it. ” It was written by a young woman who discovered she was well along on the OCD spectrum — and thus found treatment — only after she tried to understand why her family’s dog, Pretzel, avoided her.
Ordinarily, I would have had nothing of value to deliver to such a letter writer, but this time my vast network of secret contacts at The Post, borne of decades of familiarity with the staff — relations painfully nurtured over time — proved fruitful. Mostly, this was because I happen to live with the person who edited that story.
In short, I had exclusive access to photographs of Pretzel, the monstrous animal who was repulsive to the writer until the writer learned the problem was herself, not the pooch.
Voila, here is Pretzel:
You are welcome.
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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:
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Where else on Substack do you get this kind of stuff? I mean, for better or worse.
See you tomorrow, in the Invitational.