"What a hatchet job." Todd offered the newspaper to Marcus, but he shook his head violently instead of taking it, "You can't just<em>not</em>read it. You need to--"<br/><br/>"Already read it; I have a smartphone, you know." There were times he thought about firing Todd and replacing him with Rinne, but they had enough eyes on them already. As much as he hated to admit it, their affair was contaminating his actions, but not in the way he'd expected months ago when setting that fateful paper on Todd's desk, "Sometimes I wonder how you can do your job effectively with such a technophobic outlook."<br/><br/>"I use what I have to... No more, no less. Relying too much on technology makes you incompetent when you can't count on it." The defensiveness was evident in his tone, but what more had Marcus expected from a grey-haired white man who helped out the Romney campaign? "Besides, you're changing the subject on me again. What do you want to do about this? We can't just sit back and let them smear us like this."<br/><br/>"It's not a subject change. You don't understand my point because you're too out of touch." He sighed, shook his head, and wished Rinne was around for a multitude of reasons, "No one important watches MSNBC. Most independents don't pay attention to any passive news sources."<br/><br/>"If you let your opponents define you--"<br/><br/>"<strong>You sound like a roundtable participant in a speculative newscycle circlejerk.</strong>" He couldn't help but let his frustrations manifest in his voice. And there was an edge there that clearly wounded Todd's thin-skinned ego, "I am not interested in hearing old-fashioned words of wisdom from Barry Goldwater or even Tip O'Neil. The times change, we live in a post-google world. I can't agonize about every fucking interview that didn't break the way I wanted it to."<br/><br/>In the silence that followed, gears began to turn in his head. Maybe there was no option other than axing Todd. The risk was starting to seem worth it.