Perhaps unintentionally. It's meant to be a
flattering article of a consummate flatterer who has created an "essential" piece of fluff for DC Insiders called Playback. Gabriel Winant of Salon wrote this interesting War Room item pulling the sickening essence out of the puffpiece.
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/04/22/allen_politico...
Mark Leibovich, who wrote the Times article, noted that Allen seems ubiquitous in Washington, and was constantly welcoming him to events and thanking him for coming to places where he wasn’t the host. This isn't the guy's only odd tic. Leibovich tries to go soft, because he -- like every other political reporter, apparently -- is friends with Allen, but he's too good a journalist to pass over what makes Allen interesting.
His mannerisms resemble an almost childlike mimicry of a politician -- the incessant thanking, deference, greetings, teeth-clenched smiles and ability to project belief in the purity of his own voice and motivations. He speaks in quick and certain cadences, on message, in sound bites, karate-chopping the table for emphasis. (His work is "joyful, exciting," he says. It is a "privilege" to work at Politico with young reporters. "I love this company. I love what I'm doing." And all that.) Over several discussions, Allen repeated full paragraphs almost to the word.Talking points for a regular person -- that sets off a red flag, doesn't it? Then there's this:
In a recent phone call, I asked Allen what his hobbies were. He paused, went off the record and then came back with an unrevealing sound bite. "I'm a well-rounded person," he said, "who is interested in the community, interested in family, interested in sports, interested in the arts, interested in restaurants."Allen isn't the only writer at Politico, but he is its top star. As soon as the founders got the new publication off the ground, he was their first recruit, and he continues to draw a major chunk of the readership, as well as ad sales, for Playbook. And what's creepy-crawly about Playbook -- and about Allen -- is how much it's the logical conclusion of Washington narcissism.
...
This complete lack of concern for grounding reporting in its proper context means that Politico writers often end up as stenographers for whoever wants to feed them information, and publish plainly ridiculous arguments or gossip. Because if someone important is talking, it must be news.
Leibovich's profile of Allen has a lot of amazing scenes, but the best has to be the Washington elite cocktail party, a birthday celebration thrown by a prominent lobbyist for "Meet the Press" producer Betsy Fischer. Who knew this kind of thing was real, and not just a rhetorical ploy for lazy populists?
McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, arrived after the former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie left. Fox News's Greta Van Susteren had David Axelrod pinned into a corner near a tower of cupcakes. In the basement, a very white, bipartisan Soul Train was getting down to hip-hop. David Gregory, the "Meet the Press" host, and Newsweek's Jon Meacham gave speeches about Fischer. Over by the jambalaya, Alan Greenspan picked up some Mardi Gras beads and placed them around the neck of his wife, NBC's Andrea Mitchell, who bristled and quickly removed them. Allen was there too, of course, but he vanished after a while -- sending an e-mail message later, thanking me for coming.Allen probably is the nice guy everybody says he is, and I'm not trying to be cruel. But this kind of Washington clubbiness is, as Jon Stewart would say, hurting America. People don't trust the government because they don’t think political elites listen to them. Meanwhile, a celebrated new publication discovers fantastic success by showing just how much political elites listen to each other.
It's hard not to come away from the profile of Allen thinking that there’s a bipartisan quasi-conspiracy to run the country without regard for popular input, and that Allen and Politico both embody and facilitate it. Sure, Republicans and Democrats are engaged in nasty, bitter feuds. But it's like when the prom king and queen split up: they're still not about to go make friends with the nerds outside the clique. And Allen is the sycophantic school paper gossip reporter who can't get enough of the who-cheated-on-who. This is a self-referential world where only politicians matter, no matter what they do, and regular people don't at all.
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