Joshua Micah Marshal has a too-true account in his blog last night about the strange rituals of journalism – the asking of questions unanswered, the spouting of answers that are not, the iteration of that which must be said. He’s in the Clark campaign headquarters and a bunch of A-list journalists (Joshua, must you be such a name-dropper?) are quizzing Eli Segal, the general’s campaign manager:

These little chat sessions are classic moments of campaign kabuki theater. We?re asking Segal questions. But we?re not really asking questions — as in asking questions in the sense that we think we?re going to hear what he thinks.

What we?re doing is tossing out questions so that Segal can tell us what the campaign?s spin is. Everybody has a wink in their eye because everyone knows what the deal is.

It’s not a bad thing, not a good thing, it just is what it is.