That alone does not come close to passing the smell test.

It's clear Fetterman's staff is at war with their boss, and it's impossible for a senator to serve our large and diverse state with that distraction at hand. Perhaps it was their way of pushing the senator to return into some form of treatment?

Either way, having our senior U.S. Senator's office hamstrung like this is not a good thing for Pennsylvania.

But first, some background.

The new phrase we're all learning now, since we're living in it, is the "attention economy." As the Berkeley Economic Review noted: "The term 'attention economy' was coined by psychologist, economist, and Nobel Laureate Herbert A. Simon, who posited that attention was the 'bottleneck of human thought' that limits both what we can perceive in stimulating environments and what we can do. Our attention has always been limited, valuable, and scarce … But what distinguishes the present day is that technological advances have made an overwhelming amount of information available, strategically aimed at capturing our attention. As for the general public, it has never been easier to garner such personal levels of attention though means like social media."

President Trump excels at dominating the country's political attention economy. Whether that's good for him and/or the country remains an open question – even as we recently passed the 100-day mark of his second term.

Is there any Democrat around today who even comes close to Trump's dominance in the attention economy? To me, there's just one: John Fetterman. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are a distant second.

Fetterman is a walking "look at me" sign – given the contrast between his appearance and his diction and his education pedigree. Plus, he lives poor but has a multi-million trust fund at his disposal.

Who had access to world class health care but ignored his doctors for five years and then lied to his boss, then Gov. Tom Wolf, about it.

Who later suffered a bad stroke and then lied to the state about it and his recovery as he campaigned for higher office while, of course, serving as the state's lieutenant governor.

A true renaissance Yinzer … who of course, grew up in south-central Pennsylvania's York.