System.Xml.XmlException: The element with name '' and namespace '' is not an allowed feed format.

I was about ready to rip my brains out. There I was getting ready to write an article about how simple it is to use the System.ServiceModel.Syndication namespace to consume ATOM from this very blog, when all of a sudden nothing was working correctly. All the other blog entries seemed to make it seem so easy, and I was getting null exceptions everywhere. Then I got this gem:

System.Xml.XmlException: The element with name '' and namespace '' is not an
allowed feed format.

So apparently Google is living in the dark ages with their version of ATOM. Read on.