Novak's Theorem

James Wolcott passes along the timeless musical question about Novakula:

DCMediaGirl--a gal on the go, a gal in the know--posts about Robert Novak's senior moment. She wonders, as do we all, why his slimeball behavior was tolerated for so long. It wasn't as if his on-air cussword was out of character.

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This to me is the psychological puzzler regarding Novak's personality and career--or rather, the coddling of that career by his colleagues. Amy Sullivan did an outstanding job describing in forensic detail the size and scope of Novak's bulletproof protective bubble for The Washington Monthly--how none of the laws that apply to others ever seem applied to him--but she didn't get to the "why" of it, and I can't either.

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Even on the final broadcast of The Capital Gang, Novak pissed on his colleagues from on high. He said that one of the most frequently asked questions from viewers was if the Gang went out for drinks or dinner afterwards, if they socialized after the broadcast. And Novak said that he had better things to do with his Saturday nights than hang out with his fellow panelists.

And maybe he did. But on the final broadcast, surrounded by fellow journalists, some of whom he had done the show with for decades, he could have said the same thing with a touch of class and grace. But, no, he couldn't resist dropping a final acid drop of disdain. He's an awful political operator, an awful writer, a blustering imposter when it comes to the truth, a swaggering little tinpot Napoleon of the Beltway for over a half-century, and the real mystery is how he got away with it, and why it took a profanity to torpedo a career that should have been mothballed decades ago.

I believe I know the answer to how Novak gets away with it, and I'm sure it's what you all were already thinking:

He knows where all the bodies are buried.