I know you were all terribly worried about whether or not long time Clintonite and secret Illuminati member John Podesta was going to be able to find a new job after the implosion of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Fear not! Turns out that he’s landed himself a gig writing political analysis columns for the Washington Post. (The Hill)

John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s former presidential campaign chairman, has joined The Washington Post as a contributing columnist, according to a Thursday announcement by the paper. “No one knows more about how Washington works, how the White House operates, and how policy ideas are translated into reality than John Podesta,” said the Post’s editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, in a statement. “His long experience in Congress, inside two Democratic White Houses and on the front lines of numerous presidential campaigns, will offer readers vital insight into Washington and politics at the start of a new era.”

I’m a little bit lost at the moment. Part of me wants to start pulling my hair out and declaring that this is simply too unbelievable to be a real story. But there’s a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I should’ve already realized this is simply business as usual. Still, at what point did the train go so badly off the rails that we arrived at this juncture?

It’s not a question of whether or not the Washington Post should be ready, willing and able to hire some more distinctly liberal voices as editorial columnists. That’s pretty much a given. They already have a full stable of them on the payroll but there’s always room for more. Yes, I’m sure there are those of us who would like to see them investing their time and money into landing a few more prominent conservative voices just for balance. This is particularly true since their Right Turn blog is still being run by someone so deeply trapped in Trump Derangement Syndrome that many of the columns are indistinguishable from those written by the usual Democratic cheerleaders.

But even if they were going to add another left-side voice, I just can’t get over the fact that it turned out to be John Podesta. Seriously? Am I the only one who remembers when a bunch of his emails wound up being leaked to the public? Some of them opened up a whole new chapter in the ongoing discussion over how closely the mainstream media is “embedded” (or should we just say in bed) with political campaigns. Talk about picking winners and losers… Podesta seemed to be a master of it.

Having someone make an informed, well written argument in favor of liberal causes is perfectly acceptable for any newspaper. (Though it would be nice if the numbers from the left and right sides were a bit closer to equal.) But John Podesta isn’t even that consistently liberal. He actually caused no end of problems for Hillary Clinton for some of his less charitable writings and positions. He was always more of a political operative than an analyst and has buttered his bread for decades by keeping his star hitched to the Clintons’ wagon.

Still, the guy deserves to earn a living like anybody else. And if this is what the Washington Post has decided to do I guess it’s on them.