It’s probably not the only reason he’s leaving this thankless job. But I’ve always said that whatever the White House has been paying Jay Carney, it’s not nearly enough. It’s hard damned work defending the indefensible, peddling the preposterous, parsing the incoherent, putting lipstick on pig after pig.
The job of chief flack in this White House — which has to be included in any honest list of the Ten Worst Jobs in America — reminds me of those, “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?” ads, where people would make fools of themselves for chocolate-covered ice cream. The holder of this job has to make way more of a fool of himself just to survive from day to day. (The ice cream at least was agreeable.)
What do you bet young Carney oozes up at a university somewhere next? After what he’s been required to do for the last three years, it would be too much to expect him to try to re-enter the real world (assuming there was any reality to the journalistic work he did before he became Obama’s megaphone).
And good luck to the earnest Josh, the next in the dunce’s chair. It won’t be pretty. It won’t be easy. And he may not respect himself in the morning. But it’s a living.
