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SNL's Real Winner? Politics and Prose.

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We couldn’t care less about an abandoned Guy Fieri sketch from Saturday Night Live last weekend when Christmas had already come early for Beltway junkies.

Our beloved Politics and Prose, a local D.C. bookstore and required shopping destination for bibliophiles/political wonks/caffeine junkies, has finally made it to New York. Appearing as the setting for SNL’s cold open, which finds Paula Broadwell (played by Cecily Strong) reading from “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.”
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Petraeus Makes A Black Ops Cameo, Too

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David Petraeus' cameo in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
If the comparisons to the Coen Brothers‘ Burn After Reading weren’t enough for the ongoing Petraeus scandal, how about we get to see his face as a soulless digital avatar as well? Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 ,a sequel to the 2010 spin-off in the Call of Duty franchise focusing on the cold war, came out earlier in the week. In traditional Beltway culture, players assume the role of the same character twice (both father in the 1980s and son in the 2025) while blowing up drug lords, piloting drones and doing everything possible to keep firing a gun from point A to point B.

Except (SPOILER) toward the end of the campaign in 2025, we get a surprise cameo from (fictional) General Petraeus as he oversees the joint-adventure between Chinese and American militaries in lieu of any upcoming cyber-attacks with a motion-captured (and D.C. native) Tony Todd.

As for what’s exactly happening in the video, it really could matter less since we all know Petraeus won’t be in this role in the next 13 years. If he had, Petraeus would’ve seen the end to “The Second Cold War,” a female president and all sorts of impossible battlefield decisions made by a group of 12-year olds hopped up on Mountain Dew and candy that probably assume he’s just a made-up character for the Call of Duty franchise.

However, he is the first “living” government figure to be used in the series, disregarding the first Black Ops that featured a painfully awkward Jack Kennedy impersonator. But it did involve a mode where certain world leaders banded together inside the Pentagon to take down zombies:

The Continuing Drama of David Petraeus

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Did the resignation of General David Petraeus really happen because of misreading an email? Apparently so according to Daily Mail, who reveal the true start of this slow burn was an unpaid social liaison at a military base in Florida named Jill Kelly.  Petraeus knew Kelly from his time in Tampa, when he was the head of U.S. Naval Central Command from 2008 to 2010. Kelly contacted the FBI after being harassed by his biographer, Paula Broadwell.

The inclusion of yet another woman being the start–but, both sides claim, not an affair–makes us wonder just how much effort is needed to actually run the CIA.  Buzzfeed lays out the sins of General Petraeus and why folks shouldn’t be surprised by this reveal–but should be concerned that the FBI are so bored they’d check into his sex life. And someone finally remembered that Broadwell had a co-author for her book, “All In,” in the form of Vernon Loeb, local editor at the Washington Post. While Loeb probably knew nothing and doesn’t want to speak on the matter, it almost plays out like a terrible sci-fi movie.

Which, once again, makes all the parallels between that Argo premiere and the ongoing drama so wonderfully weird for post-election news that isn’t revolving around Nate Silver, the horrible aftermath of Superstorm Sandy or how Broadwell really was reading CIA emails and publicly discussing them.

Petraeus Resigns After Probe Discovers Affair

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Barely a month ago, General David Petraeus and his wife Holly attended the premiere of Argo posing with Bryan Cranston and having the Breaking Bad actor leave his daughter a voice mail from the reception. That was the good news. The bad news: the general resigned his position as head of the CIA earlier this afternoon according to NBC News.

An FBI probe had uncovered that Petraeus had been compromised by his own biographer, Paula Broadwell, author of “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus,” who had tried to gain access to his email and other sensitive information. Slate named her as the other half of the affair that was uncovered by the FBI probe.

Broadwell made the media rounds earlier this year, including an odd interview with The Daily Show that becomes extremely cringeworthy toward the end. She recently published “David Petraeus’ Rules for Living” on The Daily Beast. Likewise, in hindsight, the fourth rule seems to come at an awkward time for the former director of the CIA:

There is an exception to every rule, standard operating procedure, and poli­cy; it is up to leaders to determine when exceptions should be made and to ex­plain why they made them.