Great American Author [unsourced] Philip Roth is provoking some literati tittering [unsourced] today with a provocative New Yorker post:

Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others, my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we require secondary sources.”

Hahahahah!!! Silly Amateur Encyclopedists! Let’s all gather at the Algonquin and amuse ourselves at their expense!

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As Romney speaks notice he is smart enough to do so wo TelePrompTer unlike obama

— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) September 7, 2012

The more Republicans stick to this tired meme, the more they’ll be blindsided. (Or they’ll just ignore it, like they ignore the rest of reality.) The whole notion of Romney as a Great Debater — we even caught Patton Oswalt assenting to it last night — stems from a friendly comparison to such Giants of Locution as Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich. Even Clint Eastwood would shine with that competition.

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Four years ago, the drama and tension at the Democratic convention was palpable: Not just whether Hillary and Barry would kiss and make up, not even whether Teddy would survive the flight to Denver — but whether Barack Obama would pull off The Big Speech.

And, for that matter, whether the weather would let him.

Everything was at stake that Thursday night: The stage columns may have been a tad much, but Obama had to fill an imaginative void in the American mind, the void where President Black Man would go, and not just one from the movies or Allstate commercials. You couldn’t know that within three years, he would be strolling up an ornate hallway to tell us that Bin Laden was sleeping with the fishes.

And this time? Hey, he can phone it in.

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Our guest columnist is Roscoe Bartlett, Republican Congresscritter from Maryland.

Not that it’s not a good idea to give students loans, it certainly is a good idea to give them loans. But if you can ignore the Constitution to do something good today, tomorrow you will be ignoring the Constitution to do something bad. You could. There are more people in our, in America today of German ancestry than any other [inaudible]. The Holocaust that occurred in Germany — how in the heck could that happen? And when you start down the wrong road, it can be a very slippery slope.

Bartlett suggests federal student loans are unconstitutional, invokes Holocaust [WaPo, via Political Wire]

Our guest columnist used to be famous for practicing journalism.

CLINTON: “Their campaign pollster said, ‘We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.’ Now that is true. I couldn’t have said it better myself — I just hope you remember that every time you see the ad.”

THE FACTS: Clinton, who famously finger-wagged a denial on national television about his sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky and was subsequently impeached in the House on a perjury charge, has had his own uncomfortable moments over telling the truth. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” Clinton told television viewers. Later, after he was forced to testify to a grand jury, Clinton said his statements were “legally accurate” but also allowed that he “misled people, including even my wife.”

FACT CHECK: Clinton claims of compromise a stretch [AP, via TPM]

[@pwgavin]

We don’t recall when “wonk” entered polite discourse, but if we had to place a No-Google bar bet on it, we’d date it from 1992. Sax and Cookies may have captured the popular imagination, but we still remember the stories after Clinton chose Gore: two policy geeks infatuated with each other on the campaign bus, challenging each other with their mastery of mind-numbing detail. You still see it when Clinton makes a casual appearance on, say, the Daily Show: America’s Dude just can’t help himself.

Clinton’s so good at talking, he makes you forget the blowjob. And, thanks to the example of his successor, the blowjob is barely a, um, stain on his reputation. That’s now the good old days, when we had nothing worse to worry about.

Which is why Bill Clinton can give a prime-time address tonight and nobody will snicker. And why our DNC Open Thread/Open Wide won’t be nearly as fun as it could be in a better world.