EMBARRASSING, IF TRUE:

Yesterday Williams’s communications director, Tony Bullock, told us he thinks he knows why McLaughlin slammed the mayor: Immediately after the blizzard, city officials didn’t grant the TV host preferential treatment when minions for “Dr. McLaughlin,” as they refer to their boss, repeatedly phoned and demanded that a snowplow be deployed to McLaughlin’s residential street in the pricey Massachusetts Avenue Heights neighborhood.

And I guess it’s true, because McLaughlin isn’t denying it. (Via Romenesko).

UPDATE: Reader Gary Imhoff emails that it’s not true:

You should know better than to believe DC’s Mayor Tony Williams or his press secretary, Tony Bullock. Actually, McLaughlin was out of town when the snowstorm hit, and he didn’t call to try to get his street plowed. Neither did Matthew Faraci, the producer of McLaughlin One-on-One, whom Bullock unprofessionally derired as “McLaughlin’s chief twit.” McLaughlin’s driver did call because the street was snowed in for days and never plowed. But the Mayor and spokesmen for his administration had told citizens to call for service and report if their street hadn’t been plowed, and now the mayor is deriding a citizen for taking the administration’s position seriously and calling for service.

The principle Mayor Williams is stating, which is consistent with his positions in the past is that Washington’s residents have no right to complain about bad service from his administration if they personally receive bad service.

I know the above facts because my wife, Dorothy Brizill, was a guest on the McLaughlin One-on-One show about which the mayor is complaining. Dorothy was invited on One-on-One because she is the executive director of DCWatch, which is a good government watchdog group.

Hmm. Okay. Seems like McLaughlin should’ve said this himself, though.