Len Downie was executive editor of the Washington Post for years and years and years. Now he is the Vice President At Large. We don't know what that means except that it maybe gave him time to finish his novel, The Rules of the Game, which is a story of political intrigue, of fucking course. Also of fucking course: there is a newspaper editor in it! Uh oh! Time to name the thinly veiled real-life Post figures involved! The problem is there is like one easy-to-identify thinly veiled real person, and it's former Post editor Ben Bradlee, and the Bradlee character is a big brave hero, which is how everyone already publicly idolizes him. Actually it looks like all the journalists involved are big heroic hero types!

The novel focuses on fictional reporter Sarah Page at the also fictional Washington Capital, where she "unearths the dark secrets of a powerful lobbying firm, exposing a network of wrongdoing that includes no-bid Pentagon contracts and a powerful holding company that buys favors from members of Congress," Amazon states. "As she digs deeper, threatening phone calls in the middle of the night warn her that she's compromising the nation's safety. Before she's finished untangling what turns out to be a noxious web of profiteering, a source will be murdered and a car bomb will nearly kill her. And when President Susan Cameron learns what Sarah has discovered, she will be forced to make a choice between her political future and the well-being of the nation."

Christ. Sounds like The Boring Identity amirite? When New York journos pen novels about the industry, everyone is craven, greedy, and soulless, from the publisher's office to the mailroom. Is Downie's book rah-rah because he was an editor and old-media cheerleader or because Washington journos already see themselves as stewards of democracy or something? Either way, we'll pass on this. Wake us when the next hilariously critical fictional account of Pinch Sulzberger and his Moose drops.