For example, given the well-documented perversity of the Washington Post‘s op-ed pages under Fred Hiatt, it’s probably no surprise that second-tier staffers blow off steam by grumbling and making sarcastic jokes in informal lunch-room conversations.

So, it happens that yesterday, a bunch of them were sitting around on a break at a table with that morning’s Wall Street Journal — lying open to Karl Rove’s opinion piece offering unsubtle GOP-friendly suggestions to the “tea party” movement (including not forming a third party).  The talk turned to how soon it would take Hiatt to ask the staff to gin up a me-too column from one of the WaPo’s ever-growing stable of former Bush administration mouthpieces.

Then, realizing it was April Fools’ Day, one of them said, “You know what would be funny?  If we wrote up our own piece and put it under the name of Dan Quayle.”

“Who’s Dan Quayle?” asked one of the younger staffers.

“The 1980s prototype for Sarah Palin,” another answered.  “Young, supposedly irresistible good looks, and dumber than the day is long.”

“Seriously?  How dumb was he?” asked the younger staffer.

“Bill Kristol was considered his ‘brain’.”

A long pause.  “Holy crap!  I guess you’re right.”

“Exactly!  So wouldn’t it perfect to have a column with advice for the teabaggers from Dan Quayle — the patron saint and godfather they never knew they had?”

Unfortunately, just then Fred Hiatt walked in for a cup of coffee, overhearing the suggestion.  And he thought they were serious.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

There isn’t a reasonable person around who thinks this scandal will taint Obama in any meaningful way, but at the very least, it reminds people of the political world from whence he came. This story could be a useful preamble to something bigger down the road.

Seeing Murray’s eagerness to tolerate phony claims of corruption in the hopes they will prove “useful” in reporting on a hoped-for presidential scandal later, I immediately flashed back to her comments in the summer of 2007, reacting to the actual corruption of a President commuting the sentence of a criminal in his own administration:

Yaawwn. That’s my view of the Libby flap. What on earth did people expect Bush to do?

Apparently her enthusiasm for White House scandal depends greatly on which party is occupying the White House.