Political journalist Ron Fournier took his lumps recently for an ill-advisedly friendly email he sent to Bush brain Karl Rove back in 2004. Today, the Politico reveals that Fournier was this close to getting a "senior advisory role" in the McCain campaign, probably as some sort of fancy flack. He turned it down and went back to the AP instead, but now this has been reported and it's fueling the anti-AP fire. They're in bed with McCain! It's like there are these two gigantic beds in DC and everyone in the press is lying down on them with a candidate. Or it's like bullshit. This story, and the last one, are pointless except as part of some weird campaign to embarrass Ron Fournier. Fournier quit the Associated Press a couple years back to start something terrible called HotSoup.com, a sort of message board social networking political blog thing that was supposed to revolutionize everything ever. A couple weeks later (at least it felt like a couple weeks) he was back at the AP as their online political editor. (He's now the Washington bureau chief.) He's actually done a little bit of good work at the AP, stripping away some of the obtuse house style and inserting some liveliness into wire reports, but now all the liberals will decide the AP is a den of McCainiacs and boycott them or something. We ask you: why is a job offer from two years ago news? That's all this is. A declined job offer. Politico even twists the knife further:

But Hotsoup never took flight, and Fournier returned to the AP as online political editor. (Disclosure: Fournier also spoke with Politico about potential employment before rejoining the AP.)

Ha! What the hell do they have against Ron Fournier? Especially after the last scandal, which was about how Ron was too friendly with a source. A legitimate complaint, sure, but we lived in DC. Karl Rove is buddy-buddy with half the fucking reporters in that town. They love him, he loves them, he's a source for everyone and they all go to happy hour together. And just a few weeks ago the same reporer-Michael Calderone-from the same paper-Politico-wrote a story all about how the last person to have Fournier's job thinks Fournier sucks and is destroying journalism. Somebody up there hates you, Ron!