Washington Post writer Dana Milbank has effectively pissed off everyone by now. You could call him an “equal opportunity provocateur,” as Politico’s Michael Calderone does, or you can call Milbank a dick, if you’d prefer not to mince words.

Calderone, whose work I generally appreciate, treats Milbank with kid gloves in his most recent piece and almost succeeds in turning the former “Mouthpiece Theater” blowhard into a sympathetic figure.

Calderone omits that Milbank called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a “mad bitch” without provocation. He details Milbank’s feuds with both the left and right but suggests these episodes are evidence that Milbank has “ruffled feathers,” when the truth is that Milbank regularly acts like a fool and, when called out, doubles down, lashes out at his critics, and blames the blogosphere.

Perhaps Calderone’s biggest mistake is depicting Milbank as an outsider or some sort of critic of the mainstream media. These are the two worst quotes:

The New York Times’s Peter Baker, a former colleague at the Post, described Milbank as “an equal opportunity offender.”

“He fearlessly lampoons all of us,” Baker said. “Half of his columns are mocking reporters. That’s what makes him great. He opposes the hypocrisies and pompousness and absurdities of Washington.”

And

Post Style writer Hank Stuever said Milbank thrives when “poking the self-importance of this town.”

There is no reporter who embodies the “hypocrisies and pompousness and absurdities of Washington” or wears “self-importance” like a badge on his sleeve more than Dana Milbank, which is very much the point that Eric Alterman made to Politico:

Even though Milbank’s role is to bring some fizz into the otherwise staid columns, Center for American Progress senior fellow Eric Alterman, who’s written critically of Milbank — along with much of New York and Washington’s elite media world — sees Milbank as old media, not new. The Post writer, he wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO, is “a nearly perfect representative of much, if not almost everything, that’s objectionable about the MSM.”

Dana Milbank showed his respect for Washington Post readers by calling them “whiners.” Calderone writes, “That didn’t endear him to critics,” which is quite the understatement.

After calling Clinton a “mad bitch” and offending countless people, Milbank wrapped himself in bandages and filmed another “Mouthpiece” installment instead of apologizing.

Milbank’s propensity for riling up people of all stripes doesn’t prove that he’s an “equal opportunity provocateur” but that he’s insufferable.