John Bryson

“Poor John Bryson!” exclaimed the "Reliable Source" gossips at The Washington Post on Wednesday. “Be honest: How many of you could have coughed up the name of the commerce secretary last week, even if a Jeopardy Daily Double were on the line?” (Especially, you, Chris Matthews.)

Even the newspapers ignored him: “In the year since he was nominated for the job by President Obama, Bryson had never once made it onto the front page of the Washington Post, New York Times or Wall Street Journal — until, of course, the bizarre series of traffic accidents in southern California Saturday that prompted him to take a medical leave.” Or as Jim Geraghty of National Review tweeted on Monday, “How is it that 4 years into economic hard times, most of us news junkies have no idea who the Commerce Secretary is?”

On Tuesday's NBC Today, correspondent Kristen Welker amazingly shoe-horned a swipe at Republicans into a report about Commerce Secretary John Bryson causing multiple car accidents over the weekend, claiming that a tweet from a GOP super-PAC about the incident was "a sign of how contentious the campaign season has gotten." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

After quoting the tweet in question – of American Crossroads joking about Bryson's odd series of fender-benders – Welker then quoted another tweet shortly after that apologized. A sound bite then followed of left-wing Washington Post opinion writer Jonathan Capehart, who eagerly seized on the Twitter postings: "We always knew that it was going to be a negative campaign. But we're beginning to see just how low and how negative it can get."