From Salon's "Hack 30"---No 2: Mark Halperin"

Alex Pareene (Salon's War Room-Nov. 24, 2010):

The Drudge-loving political analyst who gets everything wrong--- thought we were all done talking about former Bob Dole speechwriter former ABC News political director Mark Halperin, whose star had seemed to stop rising toward the end of the Bush years -- but then he attached himself, leechlike, to reporter John Heilemann, to co-write "Game Change," a lengthy catalog of the 2008 presidential campaign's moments of least import.

Halperin used to write this thing called the Note, which was an e-mail newsletter that various Washingtonians whom Halperin referred to as "The Gang of 500" used to read to find out what they themselves thought about the news of the day. It was written as privileged wisdom from Beltway insiders -- cryptic references, obscure jokes, endless name-dropping, constant inexplicable plugs for the Palm restaurant -- when it was in fact just "whatever a professional political operative recently told Mark Halperin, along with links to political stories in the major papers." MORE...