You just wonder, sometimes: Hillary Clinton seems like a reasonable and smart person who is trying very hard to be good at her job, so is she embarrassed by her continued association with amoral, universally reviled hacks like Lanny Davis and Mark Penn, men who did more than almost anyone else to make her presidential campaign into a sad, unfunny joke?

So, yes. Lanny Davis. He does some "crisis management" work, which is a thing we can't even call a "necessary evil" because honestly it is not necessary, just inevitable. He is a senior adviser for the crazy-right-wing Israel Project and a lobbyist for the government of Pakistan. He is everything bad about Democrats, dating back to his days as a young Yale graduate working for Ed Muskie, to his support of Joe Lieberman against that terrible insurgent real Democrat, to, finally, his insisting that Hillary Clinton would surely win the election once she got 200% of the Mighigan and Florida delegates counted, which she should get, because Barack Obama is a cheater, and he's mean.

He is just bad, for the country. And not just our country! He is now being bad for Honduras, where the military recently seized power, on behalf of the business elite, who were worried that some of their wealth might be redistributed to that nation's poor. (Yes, yes, the President wanted to have a Constitutional Referendum about term limits which means he was basically morphing into CASTRO before their eyes.) So these business leaders, who just installed their own, hand-picked president hired a powerful lobbyist with ties to the Secretary of State, by the name of Lanny Davis!

"This is about the rule of law. That is the only message we have," Davis said, adding that Zelaya "was acting unconstitutionally and illegally" when he pushed for a voter referendum to change presidential term limits.

Yes, the military frog-marching the democratically elected President to a waiting plane, seizing power, and arresting journalists, all on behalf of the moneyed class, is a very good way to go about this "rule of law" stuff.

The book, by his son Seth, is about the 1979 NCAA basketball national championship game, between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Hah, there is a metaphor in there, somewhere, right?

The Game itself was a bit anticlimactic - Michigan State, the Big Ten champion, easily handled undefeated Indiana State, which came into the final game 33-0. MSU won 75-69. Larry Bird played poorly: He finished with 19 points on 7-for-21 shooting; he went 5-for-8 from the foul line, committed six turnovers, and had a season-low two assists. The last image of him on national TV was with his face in a towel. He refused to talk to the press after the game.

And then Lanny Davis went on the TV to demand that Magic make Larry his running mate, the end.

No, wait, it gets pretty bad later: not only does Lanny think his son is the world's best writer in history ever, but so does noted literary critic Donald Imus.

Recently, Don Imus interviewed Seth about his book on his nationally syndicated "Imus in the Morning" radio show. After the interview, I emailed Mr. Imus and thanked him for his gentle and positive treatment of my son. This was Mr. Imus' response:

"What a delightful young man. When he talked about you…the look that washed over his face nearly brought tears to my eyes. Charles [Imus' news broadcasting sidekick] and I talked about it later. We both have sons. The respect and love Seth has for you must be a wonderful comfort for you….Lovely kid. Pretty good old man."

Pretty good comment from anyone to a father about his child, I would say.

Yeesh. As if posting this treacly, embarrassing nonsense to a blog was not bad enough, Lanny emailed the entire post to his whole address book, so that everyone in Washington and New York would know that HIS SON IS SO TALENTED, EVEN IMUS THINKS SO.