Last week, Washington Post reporters Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza filmed an installment of their newish video series “Mouthpiece Theater” that didn’t go over too well. Dressed in elegant smoking jackets, the two men spent the entire segment naming different beers that could’ve been drunk at the White House beer summit. For example, good thing Sergeant Crowley didn’t pick an extra pale ale, or Gates a “big black stout,” etc. Then the two employees of the paper that broke Watergate speculated that if Hillary Clinton had attended, maybe she would have been given a bottle of “Mad Bitch.” This cracked up angered so many people that the video was removed and the entire series shut down. Cillizza and Milbank have now both apologized, with Cillizza saying that the joke “was inappropriate, over the line and highlighted the broader problems with the show,” while Milbank offered to sit down with Clinton for a beer. So, no harm, no foul? Not exactly the Post has this credibility thing that’s been taking a few jabs to the chin lately as the paper tries to adapt to this new, inhospitable media landscape. First there was that lobbyist dinner incident, and now their latest experiment has invited skewerings like this one, which actually is pretty hilarious.
