Oh the things you'll see...

I can hardly believe this has yet to come up, but let's talk a little bit about HotlineTV. Like Hillary, by talk I mean you listen as I type, but pay that no never mind; this is assuredly the finest political web-tv cultural criticism you'll read online this afternoon.

I first came to HotlineTV in the halcyon days of late summer 2006. There were two young men, I recall, who were the stars; one gangly drunk by the Mercurio, and one apple-cheeked Orlandinian, went by the name of Chuck I believe. And Katy bar the door, what a show! Cheap graphics, sure; laughably well-intentioned Nat'l Assoc. of Mining Corporation propaganda to start out, of course; idiot sports-metaphor concluding segment, you know it baby. But above and beyond all this, the heart of the show was the camaraderie, the esprit de corps, the pure drunken intimacy of John Mercurio and Chuck Todd.

I'm pretty sure I party better than those losers in DC. Maybe not Sam Smith (fuck you DCist, I met you all at Black Cat and you wouldn't stop asking me where I went to college), he wilds out like a big 'un, but better than most of those narcotics-shy, martini-tippling, ambitious sons-o-bitches. But seeing Mercurio sniff and blink and make inappropriate jokes, my confidence was shaken. Todd is clearly a lightweight (haha, political director of NBC News), but this italian fella is onamove.

Absent real proof, I can only point to the delirious quality of this post to aver for the quality of this show. Also, for some bizarre reason every editor at Hotline is super-hot. You know who I'm talking about: who could forget Shira Toeplitz's sexy stammer, or Maura O'Brien's vampy poses. Amy Walter and Marc Anbinder can speak on camera like professionals, fer sure; but I have seen the future of my political media consumption, and it is the good-lookin' leftwing political journalists at HotlineTV.

Thank you, National Journal. If only you knew...