Michael Scherer on Levi Johnston

Michael Scherer is one weird dude. It's usually the totally undiminished McCain love, and maybe that's why this jumped out at me, but I don't think so. Here's the opening of his post entitled "Levi Johnston Was Nervous at First, But Then He Was Like, 'Whatever'":

Easily one of the best, non-political stories of this election cycle has been the tale of Levi Johnston, an 18-year-old kid from Alaska, who was living his life, going to high school, watching his friends tend to his MySpace page, playing hockey, and hanging out with his girlfriend, Bristol, until everything suddenly changed.

Wanting to give this as charitable a reading as possible, I assumed that by "best" he meant "ickiest," but the rest of the post suggests he was genuinely enthusiastic about it.

Bob Wright was talking about the Bristol-Levi story and said it was Bad For America because should they form a loving, cohesive family it would be a positive example of out of wedlock pregnancy. I don't even care about that angle, but there's still something kind of embarrassing about it for everyone involved. Not least of whom being the VP candidate mother who's such a big believer in abstinence-only education.

By sheer coincidence, Josh Marshall wrote a post within an hour of Scherer just to muse about how bizarre the thing was:

I was taking a few moments to think over the most surreal moments of the campaign so far. And this was certainly high on the list: John McCain's tarmac embrace of Levi Johnston, Wasilla's high school hockey star who impregnated Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol ...

Totally unprovoked "Man wasn't that f'ed up?" reminisence. Now whether or not you might personally use something more euphemistic than "impregnated" when describing the situation, Scherer's unalloyed, and by all appearances unironic glee can't be that common a response.