Did you spot yesterday's "hidden" Quote of the Day? (Don't worry, the A-hole responsible is being disciplined--he's already in rehab)

The DWT corridors are echoing with recriminations--not to mention the silent sound of wholesale finger-pointing, culminating in the identification of a suspect (seen here in the custody of DWT Security).

For the record, the Quote was concealed in the item that included our transcript of Jon Stewart's excellent Thursday night Daily Show interview with the Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran. The QOTD was supposed to come from Jon's quip when he announced Rajiv as the show's guest:

"He is the author of the new book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a blistering expose on The Wizard of Oz. No, actually it's about life in the Green Zone of Iraq, where our current exit strategy is also a fast clicking of our heels three times."

According to the DWT Inspector General's Preliminary Report, the problem lay in

extracting the heel-clicking quip while preserving the Wizard of Oz context. A spokesman for the Quote Research and Analysis Division insists, "Our responsibility ends with the furnishing of the quote raw material (QRM). And while in this case the QRM does appear to have been supplied on the back of a utility-bill envelope, as the accompanying documentation shows, that is clearly within the contractual quote provision parameters (CQPPs). From there the responsibility lies entirely with the Quote Contextualization Section (QCS)--and of course the quote final-polishing team."

It appears that a complicating factor was the unavailability of the QCS chief, who is currently on book leave. [It had taken Sasha seven months to finally get the library copy of David Sirota's Hostile Takeover he'd put a "hold" on, and it's due back on Monday, and because it's officially "new" (!), it's nonrenewable. If you knew Sasha, you'd understand that there's no question of him paying overdue fees.--Ed.] In his absence, the deputy section chief, Paul, appears to have dropped the ball.

Paul indeed assumes "full responsibility," with the stipulation insisted on by his legal representatives that "he in no way accepts any blame." Paul himself is unavailable for comment, because he is--as noted above--currently in rehab (at an undisclosed location) for substance abuse.

The DWT Non-Capital Disciplinary Panel has been studying the operative precedents. Its Preliminary Report suggests that when Paul returns from rehab he will either:

• be forced to resign (with full pension and other benefits, of course), or

• be awarded the Medal of Freedom and placed at the top of the list for the next vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

BONUS SELECTION FROM THE SAME DAILY SHOW

In an attempt to make up for yesterday's blunder, we offer you this bonus selection from that same Daily Show. Noticing the Quote Transcription Unit's invoice, we realized that it's already been researched and transcribed, and since we're paying for it anyway, by circumventing the rest of the normal editorial process we can afford to offer it here as a "freebie" of sorts.

It came in response to a clip Jon Stewart showed of DWT's sweetheart, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, making his now-famous announcement of the postponement of President Bush's fresh new Iraq policy (which has already been explained to our satisfaction by Tom Toles).

I know a lot of you have been curious about when [the president] would be announcing or talking about "The Way Forward." That is not going to happen until the new year. We do not know when, so I can't give you a date, I can't give you a time, I can't give you a place, I can't give you a way in which it will happen.

Jon came back on looking desperately confused, even panicky:

"Th-the way in which it will happen? I'm thinking, you know, [with gestures] orally? Some other mouth-driven process?"