The problem with Bob Woodward is not the egregious power-slurping, nor the thousand-page doorstops that power-slurping produces with the monotonous regularity of cows walking up through he slaughter-pens. The problem with Bob Woodward is that, for all his formidable reputation, he's something of a meathead. He can't write his name. His analysis is inevitably the most lugubrious recitation of the latest right-leaning Beltway conventional wisdom. If he's ever had an original or interesting thought, it died of loneliness. And now, it appears, he's become a paranoid meathead. If my old boss, Marty Baron, wants to make a real splash in his new gig at The Washington Post, he should stage an intervention before Bob turns up on Ancient Aliens, talking about being abducted by The Greys in the West Wing with...The Most Awesome Man On Television.

This story should be deader than Kim Jong-Il. Bob said something silly about something Gene Sperling said to him. He got a couple of suckers from Tiger Beat On The Potomac to listen to his accounts of the tiny black helicopters now circling his skull. He released a full rack of e-mails that made him look even sillier. But, hey, he's Bob Fking Woodward, and you're not, and maybe the profession owes him a couple, so the whole matter likely would have faded from his public profile the way that his ludicrous account of a deathbed Iran-Contra confession from William Casey apparently has.

Except that he won't...shut...up.

On Thursday night, he went on TV without a HazMat suit to plead his case to Sean Hannity, whom Woodward took time to power-slurp.

"I get calls and e-mails from people telling me I'm insane to come on your show. I say, now, wait a minute, you let me say what I want...You dig into things."

Moreover, Woodward, whose facility with English rivals a manatee's gifts with power tools, argued that, because he never specifically used the word "threat" to describe Sterling's caution that Woodward would "regret" saying that the Sequestration was the president's idea, that he hasn't been all over the public prints and the public airwaves saying he'd been threatened with retaliation by the White House. (Which brings up the obvious question — what can they possibly do to Bob Fking Woodward?) OK, now even I'm starting to think Nixon was framed.

Then, in Friday morning, he appeared with Mika And The Squint and, against all odds, things got immeasurably worse.

"Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski on Friday asked Bob Woodward if he feels he exaggerated the nature of his correspondence with the White House, now that the emails have been revealed as cordial and friendly. "Given all the reaction this has gotten, and given the nature of the emails as you read through them, do you think, because you're not a young reporter starting out who might be intimidated, you're not, you're Bob Woodward. Do you think you might have overstepped the way you described the scenario?" Brzezinski asked. "No, I mean, the emails speak for themselves," Woodward said.

His whole problem is that the e-mails do speak for themselves, and they disagree with the interpretation that Woodward has placed on them, and, because he's a meathead, and because he's not a deft enough thinker to extricate himself from this wholly unnecessary comedy, he keeps explaining how Sperling threatened him in a way that was not a threat. An intervention is sorely needed here, or a stun gun.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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