Not just any execs and not just any advisors, either. Watch as Ric Grenell floats a possible explanation for some of the Benghazi coverage, especially vis-a-vis rumors that CBS is unhappy with Sharyl Attkisson’s dogged reporting. Would the media reaction really be different without the sibling/spouse conflicts of interest, though? Half of me thinks the blood ties between the White House and media VIPs deserve lots of publicity and half of me thinks that publicizing it inadvertently lets them off the hook. They’re not in the tank out of family loyalty, they’re in the tank out of ideological loyalty. Replace the leadership at CBS, ABC, and CNN and you’ll get the same results. But Grenell’s not arguing to the contrary: The point here is simply to show that our government leadership and our media leadership are so chummy that, not infrequently, they’ve literally lived in the same house. It’s an especially vivid illustration of a wider problem.

And that problem can be pretty darned wide.