Do you, reader, know who Tammy Haddad is? The answer is most likely no. She’s a “former TV producer” or something, whatever. Google says she is now a media consultant. Good for her. But she’s not a household name for most people. But to Allen, VandeHei and a few dozen other D.C. social-sceners whose main goal each calendar year is to get invited to her White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend “garden party,” she is apparently so well known that nowhere in this article, a good quarter of which is about her, do they bother explaining who Tammy Haddad is. In their minds, “Tammy Haddad,” along with, perhaps, Jesus Christ or George Washington or Lindsey Lohan, is in that elite class of universal name recognition that allow a reporter to skip the basic journalistic step of explaining who the person you’re writing about is.

The closest thing we get to an explanation of Haddad’s importance is this modest afterthought: “For what it’s worth, Haddad is a friend who has thrown parties for us. Come to think of it, she has thrown parties for virtually every other person and cause we know.” Likewise, Allen and VandeHei mention that “Washington’s super-lawyer” Robert Barnett will be another big target of the book, then add, “Barnett once represented us for a brief period. Come to think of it, he represents almost everybody we know.” In this way, throughout the piece, the authors try to inoculate themselves and their company from Leibovich’s thesis. We don’t deserve to be singled out, because everyone we know has these same relationships. So in attempting to soften whatever embarrassments Politico may suffer upon release, they end up explicitly confirming Leibovich’s points about the incestuous, too-cozy relationships among Washington’s elite…

There’s an incredible amount of amoral behavior shared just in the single article, and Allen and VandeHei present it with glee. These are people who ostensibly make their living trying to develop “sources” who’ll share dirt on their agency or industry’s behavior; but when a media person tries to shine some light on the awful behaviors of his industry, Allen, VandeHei, and others are stunned that he could be so disloyal to the tribe.