If you look up "irony" in the dictionary, you will find a picture of . . . well, of WHOM? Yes, ladies and germs, it's another famous DWT News Quiz!

Kudos to Steve Benen for nailing this one on his Carpetbagger Report ("Juan Williams defines 'journalist'").

Steve notes that NPR's Juan Williams--a former Fox Noise "analyst," you may recall--had a powerfully negative response to Newsweek's announcement that Markos Moulitsas, creator of Daily Kos, will be contributing commentary on the 2008 presidential election to both the magazine and its website (naturally he'll be "balanced" by a rabidly conservative voice to be named later):

[T]he fact is that he’s not a journalist in terms of someone who knows how to do reporting, someone who reflects balance in what he portrays. To the contrary, he engages in the kind of hyperbole and extreme statements that’s represented by that crass and, I think, offensive statement he made about those dead people.

But you know what? I think that’s just what’s going on in journalism. I think that, you know, there’s more and more opinion, less and less people who know how to do the job. All you’ve got to do is shout, say something on the blog that offends and attacks the other side, and suddenly, you have the credentials, and you’re said to be a journalist. I think it’s a great lie.

Now, this is pretty dopey in its own right, and Steve picks it apart well, but only after pausing to relish the irony of it all. Said irony has to do with the circumstances in which "Scoop" Williams made these remarks. And that, to me, has "news quiz" written all over it. So let's make this an impromptu DWT "Nerds in the News" Quiz:

To whom and where did Juan Williams deliver this manifesto on journalism?

(a) To Bill Moyers [right] in an interview on his PBS Moyers Report

(b) To CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, who was in Washington for a pot-luck supper at David Broder's house

(c) To Sean Hannity in an interview on Fox Noise

(d) To Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, as the justice was autographing a copy of his vitriolic new tell-little-of-consequence memoir, Confronting the Future, at the pot-luck supper at David Broder's house

(e) To FEMA Acting Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson [left], the guy who had that supposed "press conference" where the softball-lobbing questioners were all FEMA employees, whom he addressed by their first names [hey, did you see Al Kamen's hilarious recap of this priceless imbroglio in yesterday's Washington Post "In the Loop" column?]

(f) To former New York Times diplomatic affairs correspondent Judy Miller, his charades partner at the pot-luck supper at David Broder's house, after they lost a round to the team of syndicated columnist Robert Novak and former vice presidential enforcer Irving "Lewis" Libby



AND THE ANSWER IS . . .

Of course, it's the loudest and dumbest mouth in the whole of the Right-Wing Noise Machine:

Sean "Nuclear-Waste Mouth" Hannity!


SCORING

If you picked (c), you have a perfect score of 100.

However, if you picked (b), (d), or (f), you're alarmingly out of the loop--the Beltway loop, that is. "A pot-luck supper at David Broder's house"? Come on, puh-leeze! What ever would Sally Quinn say about that?

You're going to need to read a few hundred Broder columns in quick succession. Don't try this on an empty stomach, though--or on a full one either, come to think of it.


BREAKING NEWS--NEWSWEEK NAMES MARKOS'S RIGHT-WING COMMENTATING COUNTERPART, AND IT IS . . .

Howard Kurtz has the story.

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