Editor’s note: Some readers were confused that this Roger Simon column was satire. Please see Roger’s note at the end … . 
 
 Paul Ryan has gone rogue. He is unleashed, unchained, off the hook. 
 
 Text Size - 
 
 + 
 
 reset 
 
 “I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, told The New York Times on Sunday. 
 
 Coming from a resident of Iowa, a state where people are polite even to soybeans, this was a powerful condemnation of the Republican nominee. 
 
 Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.” 
 
 Even before the stench article appeared, there was a strong sign that Ryan was freeing himself from the grips of the Romney campaign. It began after his disastrous appearance on Friday before AARP in New Orleans. Ryan delivered his remarks in the style dictated by his Romney handlers: Stand behind the lectern, read the speech as written and don’t stray from the script. 
 
 Ryan brought his 78-year-old mother with him and introduced her to the audience, which is usually a sure crowd pleaser. 
 
 But when Ryan began talking about repealing “Obamacare” because he said it would harm seniors, one woman in the crowd shouted, “Lie!” Another shouted “Liar!” and the crowd booed Ryan lustily. 
 
 Who boos a guy in front of his 78-year-old mother? Other 78-year-old mothers. 
 
 That was Friday, and that was the end of Ryan following the game plan. At a certain point, all running mates on failing campaigns feel they must break free from the manacles placed on them by the top of the ticket. Sarah Palin began pursuing her own path once she learned that John McCain was having strategy sessions with his morning bowl of Farina. 
 
 Dan Senor, one of Romney’s closest advisers, has kept a tight grip on Ryan, traveling with him everywhere and making sure he hews to the directions of the Romney “brain trust” in Boston. (A brain trust, rumor has it, that refers to Ryan as “Gilligan.”) 
 
 But on Saturday, the day after he was booed, Ryan broke free. Appearing at a town hall meeting at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Ryan showed the glitz, the glamour, the razzle-dazzle that he was supposed to bring to the campaign in the first place. ||||| Roger Simon wrote a...thing today for Politico in which he revealed highly embarrassing details about GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan's contempt for Mitt Romney: Ryan has "gone rogue," openly referring to Romney as "the Stench" on the campaign trail and refusing to follow the campaign's direction. EXCEPT TOTALLY NOT! Jokes on you, suckers. 
 
 Simon's column is completely inscrutable. The substance is that Ryan believes that Romney is a failed candidate, and is more concerned with preserving his own political reputation than trying to pull out a win against all hope: 
 
 Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, "If Stench calls, take a message" and "Tell Stench I'm having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later." 
 
 That just sounds weird, right? But because it was published in Politico, which is an actual news outlet employing actual reporters, of which Simon is one, several other news outlets (this one included) took it at face value and repeated it. Stupid idiots! Because, lol, it wasn't real! It was a joke, dummies. From BuzzFeed: 
 
 When Roger Simon wrote in Politico Wednesday that reported Paul Ryan's new nickname for Mitt Romney is "Stench," a number of news outlets - from MSNBC to Mediaite - took it seriously. Simon told BuzzFeed: "Some people always don't get something, but I figured describing PowerPoint as having been invented to euthanize cattle would make the satire clear. I guess people hate PowerPoint more than I thought." 
 
 Indeed, why on earth would anyone take anything you write seriously? BuzzFeed's Ben Smith and reporter Rosie Gray both refer to the column as a "satire" on Twitter, which mangles the meaning of that word pretty badly. Satire requires an object—a thing being satirized. What was Simon's point? Who was he making fun of? Ryan, for too slavishly following Romney's script? Political reporters, for...what? I don't know. I can't think of anyone who could conceivably read Simon's column and be angry about what it says about them. Ryan, maybe? You tell me. 
 
 Simon's "I made a funny" moment—too be sure, he often writes stuff that actually announces its intention to be humorous—comes just a couple weeks after the New York Times' David Brooks wrote an equally dumb and opaque column excoriating Romney as a robotic, heartless, creepy plutocrat. It was interpreted as an announcement that Brooks had turned on Romney. But no—it was an attempt to make fun of people who don't like Romney by...making fun of the way they make fun of Romney! Trouble is, a "satirical" version of Romney haters making fun of Romney is indistinguishable from actual Romney haters making fun of Romney. 
 
 To wit: Romney haters like to make fun of the fact that Mitt Romney tied his dog to the top of his car. So, for comedy, they will exaggerate his purported willingness to be casually cruel to animals. So when he wondered aloud why you can't roll down windows on an airplane, Comedy Central wrote: 
 
 If airplane windows don't roll down, how does the pilot stick his head out the window to make sure his dog is okay? on.cc.com/Qee0T1 — Indecision (@indecision) September 24, 2012 
 
 When David Brooks decided to make fun of people who make fun of Romney for tying his dog to the roof, he wrote this: 
 
 The Romneys had a special family tradition. The most cherished member got to spend road trips on the roof of the car. Mitt spent many happy hours up there, applying face lotion to combat windburn. 
 
 Who is being mocked here? Are people who poke fun at Romney supposed to read that and feel like they've been attacked by Brooks? It's a funny joke. People who mock Romney would be proud to tell it. Employing it as a a fictive example of excess in the anti-Romney camp just...isn't funny. 
 
 (What is funny—uproariously so—is the fact that Romney's subsequent "47%" comments retroactively rendered Brooks' lame attempt at satirizing Romney-haters literally true.) 
 
 Politico quickly updated Simon's column with a note comparing him to Jonathan Swift and George Orwell, and pointing out that he had described PowerPoint as something "released by Microsoft in 1990 as a way to euthanize cattle using a method less cruel than hitting them over the head with iron mallets," which apparently ought to have been a dead giveaway. But all sorts of actual people who report real things—Dana Milbank and Roger Simon come to mind—routinely make little jokey-jokes like that in between clearly factual statements. One comical aside does not a wholesale satire make. 
 
 Anyway the point is stop trying to be funny and if you must write a "satire" to be cool, please think hard and analytically about precisely what it is you are hoping to satirize and whether the words you are actually writing accomplish the task you have set for yourself. ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Representative Paul D. Ryan’s selection as the Republican vice-presidential nominee is now yielding something Mitt Romney’s campaign can do without: second-guessing about how Mr. Ryan is being put to use. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Through the halls of Congress and well beyond, a whisper campaign is bursting into the open: Rather than burden him with the usual constraints on a ticket’s No. 2 not to upstage or get ahead of the presidential nominee, let Ryan be Ryan and take a detailed, policy-heavy fight to President Obama and the Democrats. 
 
 “They definitely need to use him more,” said Rick Brumby, 52, a Republican voter who attended a rally for Mr. Ryan at the University of Central Florida in Orlando on Saturday, suggesting that Mr. Ryan is better than Mr. Romney at avoiding gaffes and making the case to middle-class voters for Republican policies. 
 
 “I like Romney’s message,” Mr. Brumby said, “but I just think Ryan is the sharper of the two, and I think Ryan is more acclimated toward and relates better to the working class.” 
 
 Conservatives initially saw the selection of Mr. Ryan as a hopeful sign that Mr. Romney had fully embraced their small-government agenda and eagerness to turn the election into a head-on clash of ideologies. But now, with Mr. Romney encountering a host of problems and Republicans openly fretting about the outcome in November, Mr. Ryan’s slow fade back into the secondary and sometimes afterthought role traditionally played by running mates has given conservatives a new outlet for frustration over the state of the race. 
 
 “I was enthused when Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan because I thought it was a signal that this guy was getting serious, he was getting bold,” Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Mr. Ryan’s home state, told a Milwaukee radio show host on Friday. “It’s not necessarily even a frustration over the way Paul Ryan’s been used but rather in the larger context: I just haven’t seen that kind of passion I know that Paul has transferred over to our nominee, and I think it’s a little bit of some pushback from some of the folks in the national campaign.” 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Mr. Ryan still has high-profile moments of combativeness and takes on fights that Mr. Romney does not. On Friday, he appeared at the annual AARP convention and drew boos as he called for repeal of Mr. Obama’s health care law and laid out the approach that he and Mr. Romney would take to address Medicare’s financial troubles, which would encourage more private-sector competition in the government-run program. 
 
 It was a classic example of what Chris Chocola, president of the conservative political action committee Club for Growth, admiringly called Mr. Ryan’s “ ‘You’re damned right’ answer” to critics. 
 
 “If someone says you’re going to change Medicare as we know it, you say, ‘You’re damned right.’ Paul Ryan can give that answer,” Mr. Chocola said, adding, “The Romney ticket would be well served to let Paul Ryan be Paul Ryan.” 
 
 There have been no visible signs of tension between the Ryan camp and Mr. Romney’s high command, and Mr. Ryan has said he is happy with the way the campaign is going. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 “Look, I’m doing the things I want to do,” Mr. Ryan said in Bartow, Fla. He added, “I’m excited about my role, and I feel very comfortable with it.” 
 
 Well aware of the failed Republican ticket in 2008, Mr. Romney’s staff sought to foreclose any possibility of a running mate’s going rogue, à la Sarah Palin, by making sure Romney loyalists ran the show. 
 
 Mr. Ryan’s team consists of two chiefs of staff from his Congressional office, who play a back-seat role to Dan Senor, one of Mr. Romney’s closest advisers. Mr. Senor has traveled with Mr. Ryan since Day 1 and has overseen his convention speech, his debate preparation and his getting up to speed on foreign policy. 
 
 There are regular strategy calls, usually daily, between Mr. Ryan and his team and the campaign’s Boston headquarters. 
 
 Mr. Ryan is not the kind of No. 2 whose ambition or temperament inclines him to buck the boss. He has played the traditional role of a vice-presidential nominee: attacking the president more bitingly than Mr. Romney, rallying the party base and doggedly campaigning in states like Ohio and Wisconsin so Mr. Romney can raise money or take time for debate preparation. 
 
 Still, six weeks after Mr. Ryan’s selection the political value of adding him to the Republican ticket seems to be dissipating. His presence has fired up Republican partisans, but it has energized Democrats as well. Mr. Ryan’s signature issue — overhauling Medicare — has moved front and center, but polls suggest that so far it is playing to Mr. Obama’s advantage. 
 
 Even the possibility that he could help Mr. Romney win Wisconsin, a state that Republicans had high hopes of capturing, seems to be in doubt, with a number of recent polls giving the Democratic ticket a small advantage there. 
 
 It is the fate of any running mate to move into the shadows after an initial burst of attention, and few vice-presidential nominees influence the outcome of the campaign in a meaningful way — at least not in a positive meaningful way. Like his predecessors in both parties, Mr. Ryan has had to embrace the positions and political imperatives of his new boss, subordinating his own. 
 
 Before joining the ticket, Mr. Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, had been critical of his party’s political arm for attacking Democrats over more than $700 billion in Medicare spending cuts in Mr. Obama’s 2010 health care law. Mr. Ryan had maintained those cuts in his own budget plans, passed by the House in 2011 and 2012. 
 
 But Mr. Ryan, citing Mr. Romney as the boss, renounced those cuts and his own position. He conformed to Mr. Romney’s promise not to cut any money from Medicare over the next decade even though doing so would add to Medicare’s solvency problems. 
 
 Last week, Mr. Romney’s campaign said he would introduce in ads and speeches a clearer vision of where he would take the country if elected. But he ended up being no more specific than the five-point plan “to help the middle class” that the running mates have been describing in broad generalities for months, a level of caution that many conservatives say leaves voters without assurance that the Romney-Ryan ticket would lead the nation in a different direction. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 “I don’t think it’s possible to be too specific,” said Representative Mick Mulvaney, Republican of South Carolina. “What independent voters are looking for is a clear articulation of differences between the two parties.” He added that Mr. Romney had “been doing a much, much better job” of that since adding Mr. Ryan to the ticket. 
 
 Others close to Mr. Ryan say he has by no means been muzzled or constrained. 
 
 “For those inside the Beltway who think he should talk in more specifics, well, let the people inside the Beltway be disappointed,” said Representative Aaron Schock, Republican of Illinois, who is a friend of Mr. Ryan’s. “Paul Ryan’s job is to convince Middle America. The electorate is not ready for a two-hour dissertation on the unfunded liabilities within the Medicare system.” 
 
 A Congressional official with ties to the Ryan camp said the congressman, who is also running for re-election, has a Plan B: Return to Congress, use his positions on both the Budget and the Ways and Means Committees to seize a prominent role in a sweeping overhaul of the tax code, and use that as a springboard back into presidential politics on his own record. 
 
 If the Republican ticket loses in November, the rush by Mr. Ryan and other 2016 hopefuls to position themselves for the Iowa caucuses “is going to look like Best Buy the night after Thanksgiving,” said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa. “I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him.”
– The most-talked-about political story today ended up being the story about a story. If you heard references to the "stench" today, here's the tale: Politico columnist Roger Simon wrote a piece about Romney-Ryan with this line: (Ryan) "has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, 'If Stench calls, take a message” and 'Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.'" He was joking, playing off a quote that appeared in this New York Times story over the weekend, saying Ryan would "have to wash the stench of Romney off of him" if he planned to run for national office again. The problem is that several big media outlets didn't read Simon's line as a joke, reports BuzzFeed, which rounds up examples of reports that Ryan had a new nickname of "Stench" for his running mate. It also got confirmation of the joke from Simon himself: "Some people always don't get something, but I figured describing PowerPoint as having been invented to euthanize cattle would make the satire clear. I guess people hate PowerPoint more than I thought." At Gawker, one of the sites that initially reported on the nickname, John Cook critiques Simon's "completely inscrutable" column and concludes that he doesn't understand what satire actually is.