The Boys on the Bus

On May 31, 2008, I sat down at Harry's Pub in the Marriott Hotel in Washington D.C. I was utterly exhausted, having just spent the day covering the inherently exhilarating Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee hearing. Seated between two fellow reporters I ordered a Reuben sandwich and sipped from a tall glass of ice water. At the bar were dozens of rowdy Hillary Clinton supporters who had traveled from across the country to protest the allocation of delegates from the hotly contested Michigan and Florida primaries. I talked to one, hoping for nothing more than a clever anecdote. Only when she found out my name and the name of my publication, the vitriol spread like wildfire. I was, it seems, persona non grata amidst the crowd of PUMAs. And soon the denizens were letting me have a piece of their mind. "HuffPost sucks! HuffPost sucks!" they chanted, as I bit into my now-arrived Reuben. "Fox News, fair and balanced! Fox News, fair and balanced!"