A rare opportunity and treat in the glass-enclosed nerve center of Extreme Mortman these days– we’re reading Christopher Buckley’s wonderful new “Boomsday.”  With surgical precision he elevates media, political, and PR cynicism to all-new heights.  Among many shining moments there’s a particular gem on page 81 (don’t worry about plot spoiling, this is one of many delightful tangents Buckley pursues):

On the other side of the walls of the detention center, Cass was playing hearts with a reporter for The New York Times.  The reporter was a fellow inmate.  There were quite a few reporters “on the inside” these days, so many of them that they’d formed their own prison gang.  They called themselves “Pulitzer Nation” and sported henna tattos and do-rags made from expensive hosiery.  Cass’s card-playing partner was a Times reporter who had revealed in her “Letter from Washington” that the CIA had planted a chef inside the French embassy in Washington — no mean feat — who was putting edible listening devices in the torchons de foie gras at state dinners.  She was refusing to reveal her source.

A great read for fans of just about anything political and DC media-related.