Who's the Worst Reporter?

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So many questions about All In and the Real Housewives of Tampa, questions that are making the front page of Military.com look like TMZ this week and suggest that life inside CENTCOM looks a lot more like Desperate Housewives than anyone could've possibly imagined.

Over the weekend, the most widely-circulated video of Gen. Petraeus mistress/biographer Paula Broadwell was her January 2012 interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Last night, Stewart revisited that interview and called himself the "worst reporter in the world" for not picking up on signs that Broadwell might be sleeping with Petraeus.

If anyone wants to point fingers at a reporter, let's talk about the guy who worked on the book with Broadwell for sixteen months. Leaving aside questions about about whether a West Point graduate and Harvard Ph.d. candidate should even need a ghostwriter, Washington Post reporter Vernon Loeb is the guy who was listening to the taped conversations between Broadwell and Petraeus and actually, you know, writing the book.

Loeb addressed his cluelessness in an online interview with a colleague at the Post.

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He also wrote  a column addressing his role in the scandal.

Here's another mystery: Broadwell's hardcover is pretty much out of print and the paperback isn't due for release until December 24th. Was she totally clueless about the investigation or is she so clueless about the book business that she didn't tip off her publisher that they might want to push up the paperback's street date?

You can still cough up $15 to buy a digital copy for your Kindle, Nook or iPad or you can download a free sample from any of those retailers and get a pretty good idea of how Vernon organized Paula's thoughts and feelings about the General.

And if you just can't get enough of this story, here's Broadwell's original interview with Stewart:

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