Over at The New Yorker (dot com), “John McCain has a few things to say about Donald Trump.” And, well, who cares?

Many people—especially those people who earn livings by convincing editors and bookers that rich and influential strangers consider their thoughts and opinions interesting—have ideas about who should or should not run for president. If you are one of those people, here is a bit of advice: If you are going to write a column arguing that someone should enter the presidential race, it is your responsibility to come up with a coherent and plausible path to victory for that person.

Here are some words that, in this particular order, do not refer to anything that exists: “parody sports-style game show.” What does that mean? Does “parody” modify “sports-style” or “game show” or “sports-style game show”? What is a “sports-style game show”? “Double Dare”? Would this be a parody of “Double Dare”? I’m happy to report that we’ll soon learn what one media organization thinks that term means, thanks to the money-drunk Bloomberg Politics team.

MSNBC recently canceled shows hosted by Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid, reportedly because the channel is tacking away from liberal programming and because the ratings were bad. But MSNBC's supposed abandonment of liberalism can't extend that far: Rachel Maddow isn't going anywhere. So if the problem is mainly ratings, that raises an interesting (to me, at least) question. Why haven't there been any rumors about MSNBC canceling Morning Joe, a show with ratings that are just as bad as—and often much worse than—MSNBC's primetime programming?

Mark Halperin's attempt to "grade" the performances of various Republic 2016 contenders who spoke at CPAC is one of those moments when the veil briefly lifts. He grades each candidate on "substance" and "style," and then presents an "overall" grade that is... not an average of the other two grades. It is clearly completely arbitrary, though his "overall" grades tend to track the "style" grades more than the "substance" grades. In other words, Halperin is outright revealing that, for him, "substance" (whatever he means by that) is simply a quality a politician must perform, not something they must possess, and it is a quality that he deems less important than "style."

Here is a sentence written by professional newspaper columnist Richard Cohen, a man paid to analyze politics, and published today in the Washington Post, America's most respected political news outlet: "I am an ardent supporter of Israel, but I am also an American: Do not insult my president!" Well done, everyone.