'He hasn't gotten where his is today by being a racial opportunist, has he?'

So says NBC's Matt Lauer to The Boss in the "Today Show" appearance in which, as Human Events says, Lauer "loses his cool":

This is a good example of why I hate television news. Say what you will about the impact of the blogosphere on journalism, TV has been degrading our profession for decades.

Television is a totalitarian medium, which has trouble accommodating diversity of opinion in a Hayekian universe of facts, where not all facts support any one particular side of an argument. TV tends to takes one of three approaches to controversy:

1. "That's the way it is" -- The Walter Cronkite Consensus, a phony moderation that may in some sense be "objective," but is never really neutral. This is the TV version of the phony conventional wisdom that David Broder peddled for decades.
2. Silencing dissent -- The Left has, correctly, excoriated the Beltway press corps for failing to provide due-diligence examination of the arguments in favor of the Iraq invasion. Even ferociously partisan Republicans who were the most hawkish in 2002-03 must now admit that Americans didn't get the whole story in the months leading up to the invasion. One of the reasons was that TV news did an excellent job of ignoring skeptics, not all of whom were International A.N.S.W.E.R.-type peacenik kooks. TV news tends to reduce arguments to exactly two sides, pro and con, and to exclude voices that don't fit neatly into those categories.
3. The "Crossfire" Syndrome -- Speaking of Manichean dualism! Lauer evidently feels obligated to challenge and dispute an assertion with which he disagrees. He is not content to do what a good print-news interviewer always does in such a situation: Let the subject of the interview speak their piece, and then come back later to ask them about some particular fact that contradicts their viewpoint.

One of the oldest tricks in the book, as a newspaper reporter, is the give-'em-enough-rope interview method. You've got somebody caught dead to rights -- the county commissioner who gave a no-bid contract to his brother-in-law, a fact clearly shown by documentary evidence -- and yet the obligation of fairness requires that the crooked commissioner has the right to respond to the accusations against him.

No need to be adversarial in such a situation. In fact, the reporter in this scenario wants to present himself as sympathetic and open-minded: "Hey, what's your side of the story?" You save your toughest question -- your smoking-gun "gotcha" -- for the end, because if the source gets all huffy and hostile then, you've already got a whole notebook full of quotes.

TV news, as a medium, doesn't work that way. Everything is real-time and the clock rules. Lauer knows going in that he's got exactly X-number of minutes with Malkin, and begins with the determination to control the interview for its entirety in a way that no print reporter ever does (or should).

There have been times I've talked to a source for an hour or more, and the entire news value of that interview was two sentences. Print news is patient in a way that live TV is not.

Much criticism of "the media" is actually a criticism of television, and of TV's unexamined influence on other media. As a print reporter, it does not matter what my opinion is -- especially in a place like Washington, D.C., which has now fewer than four daily newspapers.

So long as I'm reporting facts accurately, any imbalance can be counteracted by either (a) a follow-up story the next day, (b) the outraged letter-to-the-editor presenting "the other side," or (c) competing coverage in another paper, reporting whatever it was I missed in my story.

TV news is not as easy as it looks -- for a 2001 interview, I watched ABC's Peter Jennings do a live studio anchor on George W. Bush's first White House press conference, and was impressed -- but it cannot be done well by people who are not conscious of its limitations and inherent biases as a medium.

Jennings took heat for bias -- he was notoriously sympathetic to Israel's enemies, which critics attributed to his having shagged every Arab hottie within reach back when he was a Mideast correspondent -- but he nevertheless had a concern for professionalism that Lauer entirely lacks.

Believe it or not, Jennings took his critics seriously. Conscious of his own liberal views, he had a real curiosity about what made people see things differently.

Jennings and I stood in the snow on the sidewalk outside the ABC News Washington that day, taking a smoke break. (He kept a pack of Camel Lights in his desk, but said, "Don't report this. My wife would kill me.") And as we stood there, off-the-record, Jennings began to interview me.

Who was I? Where did I come from? How many kids did I have? How did I end up at The Washington Times? The man had a real desire to know, and that had a real impact on my perception of a guy whom I'd been prepared to discvoer was a blow-dried Ted Baxter stereotype. Biased or not, Jennings was a real reporter, a guy who took notes and paid attention.
In fact, my feature profile of Jennings was so positive that our editor-in-chief, Wes Pruden, felt the need to edit the story personally, and include a bit of snarky negativity that I considered most unfortunate. And, alas for poor Peter, it wasn't Mrs. Jennings who killed him, but those Camel Lights.

Matt Lauer, quite frankly, is not fit to be called a "journalist" in the sense that Peter Jennings was. We can trace a descending arc in the quality of TV journalism, and Matt Lauer is not an apogee of that arc.

'De-development'? That's SCIENCE!

And who can argue with SCIENCE?

President Obama’s top science adviser, John P. Holdren, advocated the "de-development" of the United States in books he published in the 1970s.
"A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States," Holdren wrote in a 1973 book he co-authored with Paul R. Ehrlch and Anne H. Ehrlich. "De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation."

Kind of makes me want to buy some toxic waste and dump it in a pristine mountain stream somewhere, just for spite. Because I'm evil like that.

Oh, no! Save America from thedreaded 'bipartisan consensus'!

Two of the scariest words in the English language:

An emerging consensus among a bipartisan group of senators is poised to shift the dynamic in the congressional debate over health-care reform and could lead to a final product . . .

Every Republican vote for such legislation is a nail in the coffin of the GOP. If your state has a Republican senator, you must tell them that if they vote in favor of this "deal" -- in committee, in procedurals, in the final roll call -- it is a deal-breaker, a betrayal of the Reagan legacy.

Michelle Malkin has details of a planned "Recess Rally" Aug. 22 to speak out against this "bipartisan consensus" monstrosity.

KILL THE BILL!

Hayek vs. Obama

Ralph Reiland at The American Spectator:

On his overall handling of the economy, President Obama's disapproval rating of 49 percent to 47 percent represents a swift turnaround from his 55 percent to 42 percent positive rating just two months ago.
Rather than re-thinking any of his key proposals in the face of this growing public disapproval, Obama's answer was to try to ram a health care bill through Congress, as well as a global warming bill, before the August recess -- even if no one had the time to even speed-read what's in the legislation.
In his book The Fatal Conceit, Nobel laureate Friedrich A. Hayek provided some insight into this lethal combination of arrogance and stupidity.
"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design," advised Hayek. . . .

Read the whole thing, because there is no such thing as "too much Hayek" or "too much American Spectator."

Progressive nepotism!

Lefty blogger wannabes hoping to hustle a posh New Media gig get screwed over by Team Obama:

Ethan Axelrod is joining the Huffington Post, the liberal Web site that has been largely supportive of President Obama. His dad, now a White House senior adviser . . .
"I've been interested in journalism for a while," the 22-year-old Axelrod said Tuesday. "I heard through my father that they were expanding, so I applied for it."
The younger Axelrod started yesterday as editor of the Huffington Post's new local edition in Denver, the third of a dozen planned sites that have already launched in New York and Chicago and will next target Los Angeles. He applied for the job, was interviewed by Arianna Huffington along with other candidates, and was tapped after submitting a mockup of the Denver home page. The site goes live in September. . . .

Attention, Denver-area activists in the progressive netroots community: Arianna says you suck.
Maybe she's right. First time for everything, I guess . . .

(Hat-tip: Memeorandum.)

'Unseemly obsession'?

Little Miss Attila accuses me of some sort of Freudian complex involving the SiteMeter. Perhaps the Blogospheric Neologian can coin a term for this.

Look, Attila: The writer is ultimately less important than the reader. If it weren't for readers, no one would bother writing. So the writer who seeks a larger readership cannot be presumed to be engaging in mere self-aggrandizement. Given that there is no TV network, publisher, agent, think tank, advocacy group or political party willing to spend a dime promoting my work to the wider world, the DIY-hype approach is the only alternative to the extreme traffic suckage that leads to blog-death.

Growth or entropy, take your pick. If folks in the newspaper industry had been more attuned to giving their readers something worth reading -- something interesting and occasionally surprising -- maybe I'd still be getting paid a full-time salary to fill reams of newsprint. Instead, the industry surrendered its fate to high-priced consultants and know-it-all ASNE panelists, so even if I were interested in a return to the dead-tree racket, why rush to be the last passenger aboard the Lusitania?

So I'm flinging pixels across the 'sphere and, as Chris Muir recently reminded me, trying to have fun.

If you're not having fun, you'll burn out. And if you take this politics crap too seriously, it'll drive you nuts. While I've been certifiably nuts ever since that unfortunate 1979 incident involving psilocybin mushroom tea and Bolivian flake cocaine -- Just Say No, kids -- maintaining a simulacrum of sanity requires that I occasionally get my Gonzo on.

So I indulge in little inside jokes and, as a great philosopher once said, the issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests.

We did. Or at least Professor Douglas did.

Well, you can do what you want to Donald Douglas, but we're not going to sit here while you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!

OK, that brings us around to Cassandra, who offers a splendid opportunity for double entendre that I'll uncharacteristically resist. Instead, I'll take up the comment she left in Monday's post:

Stacy, if you want to argue with something I actually said, knock yourself out :p I'll be more than happy to debate you on the merits.
But knocking down straw men doesn't answer the mail. Kurtz didn't link to the live video (repeatedly, just in case someone still hadn't seen it), nor did he equate taking advantage of a crime committed against an innocent woman as part and parcel of "heterosexual male-dom."

Exploitation is exploitation, ma'am, and your defense of Howard Kurtz approaches the event horizon of that philosophical black hole known as moral relativism. (As Stephen Hawking theorized, when one approaches such a point, time slows down and the force of gravity nears the infinite, which is probably neither here nor there so far as it concerns Erin Andrews, although it would have been a mind-blowing concept to ponder back in 1979.)

In my very first mention of the aforesaid Google-bomb, I tried to employ gentle humor to dissuade the Professor from further pursuing this unfortunate meme. When it quickly became apparent, however, that (a) the MSM were all over it and (b) other bloggers were weighing in on the Professor's ethics, I felt obliged to address the topic more directly:

Like Dan Riehl and Don Surber, I had no clue who Erin Andrews is before this incident. I feel wrong even blogging about it, and I'm notoriously shameless when it comes to traffic enhancement.

Generally, however, it seemed to me that Donald had gotten himself into a fix where friendly persuasion would achieve better results than a fire-and-brimstone sermon. Even geniuses sometimes make mistakes and, while the professor clearly crossed the event horizon, one can hardly argue that his Icarus-like adventure was entirely fruitless.

Given that I was nearing deadline on a 3,000-word feature about IG-Gate for the September print issue of the American Spectator (subscribe now to the only dead-tree publication that still matters), even while new developments were popping up left and right, not even Hawking's time-warp theory could possibly provide me enough time to read everything that everyone wrote about this controversy.

Like a sophomore slugging Red Bull as he furiously crams for a test he'd forgotten was this Wednesday, or a hurried tourist rushing through the Louvre ("Oh, look, Seurat!") during a two-hour tour-bus stop, all I could do was to conjure a rough gestalt impression of what the hell was going on.

Therefore, Ms. Cassandra, please excuse my failure to engage what Conor Friedersdorf would call your "substantive criticisms." Between one thing and another -- reporting IG-Gate, bashing David Brooks, pushing the Best. Book. Evah! -- maybe I'm a tad overextended lately. Hell's bells, I've barely had time to deride the "sucker's rally" on Wall Street!

Speaking of Wall Street, my recent return to biz-blogging means that I now tune my home-office TV to CNBC while working. Tuesday night, while I was writing this (for posting Wednesday morning, when I'll be getting ready for another shoe-leather trip to Capitol Hill), CNBC presented an hour-long special report:"PORN: Business of Pleasure":

It was once too taboo to talk about, but not anymore. In the new CNBC original production "Porn: Business of Pleasure" nothing is off limits when it comes to the controversial multi-billion dollar industry . . .
CNBC, First in Business Worldwide, takes an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look inside the multibillion pornography business . . .

Time slows down, gravity nears the infinite . . .

PJTV: Ed Driscoll on Walter Cronkite

The Most Trusted Man in New Media has an excellent video examination of Uncle Walter's legacy, with contributions from Noel Sheppard and Austin Bay.

Frankly, I'm becoming worried. Ed hasn't been linking quite so much lately and . . . Well, if I've lost Ed Driscoll, I've lost the blogosphere.

Glenn Beck Says: 'Best. Book. Evah!'

Obviously, it takes a big man to admit that a mere "Asian woman" has written a better book than his own bestseller but . . . Glenn, have your people call my people, OK?

You know, I never did get around to exploring the question of why Allah hates me. When we were in Denver for the Apotheosis last summer, I asked Michelle, and she said she doesn't know, either. Maybe it's . . . wait a minute.

What's this? MK Ham and Sully, sittin' in a tree? . . . Errrr, errrr . . . .

Obama 'gracious' and 'uplifting'?

Gag me with a HuffPo:

We've embarked on a national attempt to find something redeeming in the Gates-Crowley affair -- to find the "teachable moment." Obama's gracious and politically astute offer to bring the two men together is an example of what Obama does best -- creating an uplifting moment of reconciliation, a feel-good moment in which each party can have their say in front of the cameras . . .

Sentimental treacle, oblivious to the reality: Obama shot himself in the foot by offering an opinion where he didn't know the facts.

Yet the idiotic Robin Wells is certainly correct that this episode "is an example of what Obama does best" -- posture heroically to invite adulation from simple-minded liberals.

The Worst Cause in the WorldRakes in $34 Million a Year

Stylistically, the protesters favored the familiar "alternative" look: white guys in dredlocks, Army fatigues and grimy t-shirts, chicks in tanktops and ripped, saggy jeans. Piercing seemed to be universal and unisex. One girl I talked to had both nostrils, one eyebrow and her tongue pierced.
And then there was the smell. . . . I don’t know if this neglect of personal hygiene was a political statement on the part of the animal-rights activists, or if maybe they had spent the previous few nights camping somewhere without access to showers, but they genuinely reeked. You could smell them from 50 feet away.
-- Robert Stacy McCain, March 2000

When spotted owls sign a petition, or the Orangutang Caucus organizes a protest march, I'll be willing to consider the possibility that animals have "rights." Meanwhile, I refuse to recognize the moral supremacy of smelly protesters with nose rings and neck tattoos. However, neither their body odor nor the illogic of their rhetoric can keep these crackpots from raking in the capitalist moohlah:

To some Americans, PETA may seem like a caring organization. Sure, you may say, they are a bit extreme -- but it's in defense of animals, after all. . . .
But have you stopped to consider just why PETA picks certain targets to go after? Maybe it makes sense that they've gone after McDonalds and KFC -- until you wonder: Why McDonald's and not Wendy's, and why KFC and not Popeye's? . . .
And why go after MasterCard instead of Visa or American Express -- or the Gap instead of ... whoever else sells Gap-ish stuff?The answer, of course, is money. PETA took in more than $34 million in 2008. Much of the money comes through legal kickbacks and grants, via their "partners" . . . (Emphasis added.)

There's more where that came from, plus here's something interesting from Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood:

While PETA has increasingly become adept at generating mainstream media attention, according to PetaKillsAnimals.com, PETA found homes for less than one out of every three hundred animals in 2008, and they killed 95 percent of the dogs and cats in their care last year . . .

More of that, too. What PETA does, you see, is exploit human sympathy for animals, and then turn that sympathy into cash -- cash that actually kills Fluffy the Cat and Bowser the Dog.

Kind of like ObamaCare, in some ways.

Freeberg sticker roundup

by Smitty

House of Eratosthenes has some quality bumper stickers for you.
I don't agree with the dismal quotation he embeds at the bottom. Our country is as dead as "We the People" allow.

For my wife's boss, and, well, everyone

by Smitty

If a hurricane doesn't leave you dead
It will make you strong
Don't try to explain it just nod your head
Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On

This is a fundamental difference between the Nietzschean fury of a Katrina and a bureaucratic plaster cast from your Progressive: the former is acute and the latter chronic.
Weathering the former indeed strengthens. The latter, like the Federal government, might offer some acute help with a problem. Left in place longer than necessary, that bureaucracy breeds weakness. Nothing less that catastrophic economic failure can hope to free an atrophied limb trapped in a bureaucratic cast. Look a the cast of millions stuck in California for an example.
This is not a pure Libertarian 'government==evil' riff. When you have a Katrina, the availability of resources is a cracking Good Thing. This is merely making a point that one of the addressing acute problems through chronic means triggers a requirement for Somebody to remove the chronic means, before they breed additional problems.
OK, that never happens: like the 111th Congress, we legislate in haste, and repent at leisure. This wisdom propelled the Framers to ratify the 10th Amendment. "We the People" are just now awakening to the perils.
Anyone else join me in a 'Buffet for POTUS'? Sure, he'd legalize marijuana. However, I'm prepared to avoid inhaling, if the rest of his policies compensate.

Cantor: thanks for nearly sounding Federalist, buddy

by Smitty

Update: Edited slightly for clarity.

The House Minority Whip responds to the POTUS umpteenth health care event today. Heh. CNN is calling for more competition to drive down costs at around 3:20.

No mention of the states. The Federal Government remains the only meaningful level of government.
Much mention of employers. As if No mention of empowering individuals through something like a 401k-style health account would having any chance to work. Because that would be too much like a straightforward savings account. Because people cannot be trusted to manage their resources, and allowed to succeed or fail as individuals, families, and communities of faith. Because I'm a moron for failing to grasp the Progressive "gospel".

Quote of the Day

"The America that has done more than any other to spread freedom and prosperity is not going to go quietly into the night."
-- Track-a-Crat

International Rule 5 BikiniFest--Round 2

by Smitty

The International Bikini Festival is taking the blogosphere by storm. If you came here looking for a brief respite from such, well, we've some japing about to do. Little Miss Attila has dispatched a crew of Latino Firefighters to help with the judging. What's this? Not firefighters? A pyromaniac Talking Heads cover band?

• Fulminate of Andrew submits a brace of (PG) ladies of the Far East


• Rightofcourse plays a classic (G) Norma Jeane.


• Jeffords posts a (PG) Kate Beckinsale


• The Physics Geek has completed his (PG) spectral analysis, and all three of the results fell within the visible range.


• Fishersville Mike offers a theme song parody to the tune of "Midnight Hour". Noted and approved:

• The Daley Gator is on board with a full (PG) roundup.


• The semi-retired, yet still dedicated to reporting the news Donald Douglas has a report on party schools, with a link to some bikini pics at the bottom.


• The WyBlog contributes (G) Patricia Heaton, of Everybody Loves Raymond fame.


• The 'modern day Jean Lafitte' William Teach hoists the (PG) Stars 'n' Stripes, with a healthy dose of the Jolly Roger.

Little Miss Attila's henchmen declare that Teach is also today's winner, contributing the only entry of someone wearing an eye patch. They depart for his web site in search of phone numbers or something.
We'll end on a Blue Hawaiians cut. Wanted "Martini Five-0", but no decent YouTube-age:

The next obscure clue for the Cosmic Winner is that she was born during the Kennedy administration.

Update:
Bob Belvedere increases our (G) Marylin Monroe presence. And that, as they say, is a Good Thing.

---

*Not that it matters in the slightest, but the Porch Manqué's inaugural bit of
state left on the cloudy-webs dates to Sep02

America Agrees: Best. Book. Evah!

Professor Glenn Reynolds:

Not long ago, people were saying that right-leaning books didn’t sell. Now reader Gordy Dalman writes: "Michelle Malkin's Culture of Corruption is now #1 on Amazon. It's good to see both Glenn Beck and Mark Levin in the Top 10 as well."

OK, so even if those other guys didn't give me a shout-out (see p. 291 of the Best. Book. Evah!) you should still go ahead and buy all three.

IG-Gate Update:Walpin wonders about Matsui's role

Guess who reads The American Spectator?

In a telephone interview today, Walpin said he noticed last week's report that Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) had contacted White House officials in March, publicly vowing that sanctions against Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson didn't prevent the city from getting its share of bailout cash.
Questions about what role Matsui may have played in Walpin's dismissal are being asked on Capitol Hill, and the ex-IG himself is curious about the Sacramento congresswoman's intervention, which drew attention after it was highlighted by California blogger Eric Hogue.
On the larger question -- whether political pressure over his investigation of Mayor Johnson's St. HOPE Academy was a factor in the June 10 quit-or-be-fired ultimatum from the White House -- Walpin is certain.
"I have no doubt about that," Walpin said. . . .

Read the whole thing, and expect updates.

UPDATE 5 p.m.: Eric Hogue's all over the involvement of Matsui in IG Gate, with audio and lots, lots more.

Down at the Corner of Hate Crime and Blasphemy

by Smitty (No Quarter)

Greg Morton reprises his Obama Man outing by getting on the Niel Diamond steamroller and flattening the good POTUS.

I think I'll schedule a meeting with myself next week to feel bad about this. 10 minutes should suffice. Until then, bwahahahahaha.

My good friend Dan Riehl is angry

At me:

I'd call your attention to July 23rd when I recorded just over 47,000 uniques -- far from a site record, by the way. But it had nothing to do with Erin Andrews videos, or girlie pics, it was a substantive essay on Obama's burning down of his post-racial theme due to his rhetoric on Crowley-Gates.

OK, Dan is honest in his assessment and deserves honesty in return. Dan is one of my original blog buddies, going back long before this blog ever existed.

Dan's skills as a researcher are invaluable to the conservative blogosphere, and have been valuable to me personally. When the question was posed, "Who Is Eleanor Acheson?" it was Dan who discovered that Acheson was actually a registered lobbyist in New York.

Given all his services to the 'sphere, which continue daily, Dan's got better things to do than to referee a silly dispute over Donald Douglas and the "Erin Andrews nude" Google-bomb, in the same sense that I've got better things to do than fisk David Brooks. Considering that I spent a couple hours last night digging for the lost e-mail in which one of my sources sent me Gerald Walpin's phone number -- which is now sitting atop The Notorious Pile O' Crap Otherwise Known As My Desk -- I should probably shrug my shoulders and walk away.

However, there is an important consideration here that I wish I could make Dan and other longtime denizens of the 'sphere appreciate. Dan's been blogging since September 2004 and, like other early-adapters of blogging, he benefits from having built a loyal readership back in the day when the 'sphere was in its infancy, or at least its late pubescence.

Well, way back in September 2004, the policies of my employer specifically forbade me from blogging. There is neither time nor need to go through the whole story, but in July 2006, I came this close to getting fired for blogging about Ralph Reed. Around the same time, I recall reading a magazine article explaining that the hierarchy of the blogosphere was already set in stone, and that new independent bloggers didn't stand a chance of reaching the level where they could actually earn a living at it.

All of which is by way of explaining that when I decided to quit my job in January 2008, to seek my living elsewhere, I couldn't afford to fail.

'Don't . . . Tell Me It's Raining'

On the day that news of my resignation hit Fishbowl DC, I got a call from the managing editor of a monthly magazine, eager to hire me. Because the primary reason for my resignation from the newspaper was a project that required me to fly off to Africa, I wasn't immediately available. But at the insistence of that editor, I sent him a resume.

Some weeks later, when I called the managing editor back -- "OK, let's talk about that job now" -- I discovered that his boss, the publisher, wasn't nearly so eager to hire me as the managing editor was. However, they might consider me, if I'd be willing to try offering some freelance work for them and . . .

Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining.

I had no shortage of freelance opportunities, and was indeed already freelancing for The American Spectator. My references are excellent, my body of work and career skill-set were equal or superior to anyone that other publication might try to hire, so I made up my mind. The publisher of that other magazine would bitterly regret having heinously insulted me. As I remarked in an essay a few weeks ago:

Success in any endeavor starts with the resolute determination to succeed. No matter how formidable the competition, hold your head up high. They’re no better than you, and victory begins with the decision to rule out the possibility of defeat. “Can’t never could.”
That attitude took my father from a farm in Alabama to a brick home in the suburbs of Atlanta. It took me from Georgia to Washington, where now I find myself in daily competition no less formidable than those big boys from Bessemer, even if the sport is a bit more refined. Really, though, it’s still the same game, and the formula for winning has never changed.
I’m going to beat you today.
Count on it, buddy. I didn’t come this far to start losing now.

One reason I relentlessly excoriate David Brooks is that he evidently doesn't feel the need to earn his pay. When I consider how hard Dan Riehl and some other of my friends work to make a few bucks in New Media -- shout out to Jimmie Bise and Cynthia Yockey -- I become enraged by the spectacle of Brooks being paid to waste 804 words on useless navel-gazing.

Growth vs. Entropy
We who are own bosses, hustling for every dime, can't afford wasted words, so I regret if any words have been wasted in this ongoing debate sparked by Donald Douglas. But those of us who entered the 'sphere after the hierarchy had solidified, and who push, push, push to build readership -- the opposite of growth is not stability, but entropic decay -- aren't going to make headway by endlessly reiterating familiar arguments about health care or global warming or whatever today's talking point may be.

If Donald went too far in his relentless quest for traffic enhancement, and it is well-nigh universally agreed that he did, then one ought to consider his motives, even if the best that can be said is that those motives were the good intentions that paved the road to Internet hell.

But I don't want to argue with Donald, or Dan, or Cassandra or Attila. What I want to do is eat a sandwich, take a shower, clear my head and then call that telephone number on my desk. Unlike David Brooks, I have to earn my pay.

Headline of the Year

Newsweek's Obama Correspondent
Joins Administration

First thing Daren Briscoe did? Collect his back pay.