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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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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.