Mark Halperin: Now Polling the Entire Obama Administration's Personal Views on Marriage Equality (Riiiiight)

Today was a tough day on the rock pile.

Some days, all you can do is duck and then throw them back

Not as tough for me as it was for Dick Lugar, but tough nonetheless.  The day was tough personally, at work, but not politically.  There just wasn't any one BIG development today that riled people up-- the mainstream media is, by and large, still on "rehash" regarding Joe Biden's Meet the Press appearance and Mark Halperin's predictably dickish follow-up question with Arne Duncan on Morning Joe.  (Hey, if Halperin can call the President a dick, the least I can do is return the favor.)

What a non-story.

Why was it a non-story, you ask?  Simple-- Vice President Biden made clear in his Meet the Press interview that he doesn't set the agenda, the President does.  And yet somehow, Mark Halperin, in his thirst for knowledge, felt there must be a story here, worthy of investigating further.  And the best next place to dig for the fountain of truth?  Arne Duncan, of course.  I guess it became essential to know how every member of the Obama administration feels on the subject, that's the only reason I can think of that he would ask Duncan that question.

So is he going to be asking that question of every administration official now?  He's probably working his way down the list as we speak, right?

If he wants to maintain any pretense of journalistic integrity, he'll have to.  Otherwise, he'll look at best like a jerk who wanted to interject a shocking question to grab a headline, not someone who can even fake being genuinely interested in pursuing whatever "insight" there is in exploring how the entire administration feels individually about the subject of marriage equality. 

And at worst, he'll look like someone who deliberately asked an irrelevant question to stoke the embers of an emotionally-charged fire, either to extend its shelf-life or the unthinkable, to fan the flames for his own purposes rather than simply reporting on it.

Of every story in the whole universe that he could pursue, every other dark corner he could shed the sunshine of journalism on to disinfect and send corrupt cockroaches scurrying, that's the best he could come up with.  I, for one, am inspired by his curiosity and zeal to get at a truth that will really have a profound impact in the world.

I haven't heard so far that Halperin has asked anyone else in the Obama administration about their personal views on marriage equality-- if I missed something, please, by all means, set me straight in the comments.  Otherwise, I'll be busy nominating him for a Pulitzer if you need me for anything.  And then I'll be in mourning, now that, with Lugar's defeat, another nail has been driven in the coffin of the functional government phenomenon formerly known as "compromise."

Image credit: Flickr, deflam