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Hello and welcome to the Slate political gab fest for February 1st, 2013, the huddled masses,

and David Flotz's birthday edition. I am David Plotz,

the editor of Slate. Do you know that January 31st is my birthday? Oh, I didn't know that. Happy

birthday. Thank you. I forgot. Happy birthday, David. Thank you. That was really fishing there.

That was embarrassing. That's okay. So I was thinking about you today, John Dickerson.

Because according to the book of Genesis, at the very beginning of the earth, there was a period when angels mated with humans and their offspring were called the Nephilim. I was thinking, John Dickerson, half angel, half human, all man. Well, no, I guess if you're half angel, half human, you're not all man. But you are

Slate's chief political correspondent. Hello, John. Hello, David. I don't understand why John would be half an angel. I mean, I love him dearly, but that's a little strange. Also, I couldn't be feeling less angelic at the moment. First of all, when I did my Reddit AMA this week, all the questions were like, oh, is John that great or is he just even more great than that?

Is John so nice in real life as he is on the show?

And I was like, so I'm in the John Dickerson propaganda.

Also, Emily, aren't you, we are the fellow brunettes.

Don't you look at a blonde and say, oh, he must be.

An angel from heaven?

Better than us.

No, I don't.

Also, I think David's just trying to rebalance the cosmic order of things since there's been a good deal of tonnage of anti-Dickerson views expressed in the public square.

Maybe that's it. Anyway, the other voice you heard

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