You Want to Be a Pitchman for Warlords?

Jon Lovett just completely destroys Lanny Davis in one of the greatest takedowns of 2012. See Lanny got mad because Lovett said this on Twitter after Davis defended Cory Booker:

There is too much wrong with Washington to say “So and so represents everything that’s wrong with Washington.” But it’s Lanny Davis.

Heh.

Davis tweeted in reply:

Proving my pt, @jonlovett engages in personal attack w/o subst for cheap joke. Name-calling is juvenile. I want 2 debate issues.@corybooker

Unfortunately for Lanny, he took a knife to a gun fight. Lovett’s reply, in part:

Let’s unpack this!

“Engages in personal attack”: That’s totally true. I basically called him the living embodiment of what’s broken in America’s political life, and that’s pretty personal. I was shaming him as a human being. So, yes. Point to Lanny.

“w/o subst”: Again, spot on. It was a tweet. There wasn’t room for substance! I considered a series of explanatory tweets, but frankly, when you make a joke about Lanny Davis, people just get it. I suppose I could have pointed to his deceptive campaign on behalf of unnecessary additives in infant formula or his shilling on behalf of a strongman in the Ivory Coast who was systematically murdering his opposition. But I didn’t, and I hope he appreciates the efforts I’m taking here to dive into the substance of why I claimed that if anyone represents everything that’s wrong with Washington, it’s Lanny Davis.

“cheap joke”: Now, this upset me. It was a fine joke; not my best, not my worst. The fun contradiction between the two sentences was, I thought, a nice twist on an old standby. This would be a cheaper joke:

What’s the difference between Lanny Davis and a toaster? A toaster doesn’t slowly degrade the democratic process by allowing money to distort political debates in ways that leave the American people profoundly distrustful of the media and their elected leaders.

“Name-calling is juvenile”: In this case I didn’t call him a name. But to his larger point: Name-calling is juvenile when it’s juvenile. It’s wrong when it’s vicious and uncalled for. And we absolutely should err on the side of civility. But sometimes people act in ways so contemptible and wrong than they ought to be called names, and sometimes civility is used as a shield by those who don’t deserve to be treated with it.

“@corybooker”: Lanny wants Cory Booker to know about this. He wants Cory Booker involved.

What’s the difference between Lanny Davis and a toaster. I have to remember that one.