Fake deadlines and editors

Gene Weingarten's Below the Beltway column in Washington Post magazine often makes me laugh. I finally read last weekend's piece this morning. My favorite part:

A newspaper deadline is exactly like the speed limit: You know it's phony, but you also know there is a real limit, and because no one discloses that limit, you have to guess. This becomes an elaborate game of chicken, except your opponent is not some pimply teenager in a car but a seasoned, professional editor, by which I mean the snotty know-it-all from eighth grade who hunched protectively over her exam paper as though it was a priceless palimpsest with directions to the Ark of the Covenant.