The Washington Post‘s Reliable Sources column reported gleefully last week that a prominent Democrat received a fund-raising letter from the Republican party! The prominent Democrat was the campaign consultant Bob Shrum — and the wonder of it all isn’t that one partisan ended up on the mailing list of the opposing political party (it happens all the time), but that the Post, or anyone else, thinks such commonplace anecdotes still make a cute story. Trust us: They don’t. Enough already. We’re sick of it. So sick of it, in fact, that this is the second time we’ve issued a ringing denunciation of the obnoxious journalistic trope. We don’t want to have to do it a third time.
