Better pieces of journalism have been produced in the past year (and the last 500 words are cringe-inducingly bad--more on that later), but Matthew Scully's not-yet-available-online Atlantic takedown of Michael Gerson is an enormously fun and interesting read. Scully is a former Bush speechwriter and animal-rights defender, and Gerson is also a onetime Bush speechwriter and now a Washington Post columnist. Scully alleges that Gerson repeatedly misled and lied to reporters about his role in crafting the president's speeches. Moreover, Gerson frequently led other White House officials to believe that he alone was writing important addresses. It's hard to do justice to Scully's overwhelming evidence and numerous examples of Gerson's bad faith (a term that seems especially apt), but here is just one example: Gerson used to tell people that he would write speeches at Starbucks, a real man-of-the-people touch. One day, while working on a state of the union speech, Gerson leaves Scully and one other writer to head to an appointment and tells them to "keep going." Meanwhile, he takes a Nightline reporter to Starbucks where he lets the guy watch him "write" the speech. Of course he is doing nothing of the sort. And when he is later interviewed by the show, he basically takes all the credit for a speech he did not pen. There's a lot more in this vein (taking credit for all the good speeches, saying other people wrote the bad ones, telling reporters he came up with certain quotes to make himself sound more serious and religious, etc.). In fact, the combined effect of the article makes one think that the Post should fire him as a columnist because of such serious ethical breaches (lying to Bob Woodward, a Post reporter, e.g.). I'll link to the piece as soon as it goes online--and write more about Scully's bizarre concluding paragraphs later. --Isaac Chotiner