New standards in journalism

This handsome gentleman on the right here is the new star of WorldNetDaily. Despite the evidence to the contrary -- namely, the obvious color coordination problems between the hat and the last-pressed-in-1987 shirt--this man asserts that he is indeed gay (or, as WND would say, "gay written in quotation marks because gay still means 1890s happy to us, dernit") and once had a cocaine-fueled tryst with presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in a Minnesota hotel.

Despite the crackerjack reporting done by WND on this case, which apparently consisted of watching this guy's YouTube video, the mainstream media has not yet picked up on this breaking story. Not even a Drudge siren yet. But just wait. This guy's going to prove his case by using a polygraph test. Basically, we'll be holding him to the same standards as one of the fine ladies and gentlemen who would appear on MTV's "Exposed."

Using WND's same standards of journalism, however, let me attempt to play a bit of devil's advocate, here. Using my imaginary reverse aging machine to determine what the man in question, Larry Sinclair, looked like in 1999, when he was a spry lad of 37 or so, let me just say -- not a chance. Sorry. Even if Obama had been trolling around upscale Chicago lounges in his limo for crack and tricks, perhaps thinking that Y2K was just going to end it all anyway, the odds of him picking up someone that looked like Sinclair, even a de-aged-by-eight-years Sinclair, are zero. There's a reason the guys from the escort services don't look like that. Not exactly a high-demand item, let's just say. The chances, in fact, are probably about as big as the chances that Sinclair would be able to get past the velvet rope of an upscale Chicago lounge.

Now, some might say WND is just throwing whatever slime it can, hoping some of it eventual sticks to the wall, particularly since another top headline on the right is "Obama mentor identified as communist." And there's another whole story about Obama's campaign, surprisingly enough, refusing to comment on this.

But nay. Go on, WND. Pursue this story and prove us all wrong. By the way, here's a scoop: Mike Huckabee and I once shot up crystal meth in a Wheeling, W.V. Knight's Inn, followed by seven hours of reciprocal fisting and a room service order of squirrel taquitos. Truly. I look forward to seeing your interview request in my inbox tomorrow.

(Sorry for the graphic imagery, but hey -- they started it!)

Self-abuse made easy

I have, on several occasions, written about the off-the-wall columnists on display at WorldNetDaily. Honestly, I could do an entire blog on nothing but that if I had a stronger stomach. Here's a nice little sampling of the wisdom set forth in the past several days:

• RingmasterJoseph Farah asserts that one of the presidential candidates is mentally ill, namely suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. It's an exclusive! (for anyone who hasn't already read the Mayo Clinic page on the disorder). Now, he doesn't want to say which one she is...I mean he or she is. Her...I mean, his or her rhymes with Billary Hinton, but he's not going to be so classless as to name who he's talking about. Farah then proves his point by listing the symptoms of the disorder, which applies to pretty much anyone who has ever sought public office higher than state railroad commissioner. Oh, and he ends the column with a record 16 questions in a row. That's called nagging personality disorder.
• Political science mastermind Chuck Norris implores everyone to vote for Mike Huckabee because preventing gay marriage is one of the most important issues facing our country. I assume that because it's mentioned four times in the column. It turns out he's trying to push the gay rights movement back to the 70s because that was the last time his moustache was in style. Chuck Norris doesn't write bland columns. He opens the dictionary and the words assemble into them out of fear.
• The beyond adjectives Ann Coulter mourns her father as anyone would: by bashing liberals. Because, you know, politicizing a death is tacky only if the guy's last name was Wellstone.
• The homo-obsessed dotard Les Kinsolving regurgitates a Wikipedia entry on the Episcopal Church in Colonial times to complain about sodomy.

And so on. And this is the top tier. Some other guy challenged Huckabee to a fist fight, but I can't even remember his name now. It's pretty scary when the most coherent columnist on a site is Pat Buchanan.

Les Kinsolving: The muttering dotard of the White House Press Corps

As fascinating as the World Net Daily rogues gallery of writers is -- Grandpappy Joseph "Uses More Questions Marks Than Periods" Farah, Star "Quarantine All Sodomites" Parker, Ted "'Bee Movie' Promotes Satanism" Baehr, Hal "I Know I Said It Thirty Years Ago, But We're In The Last Days, Really" Lindsey, Pat "Nothing In Quotation Marks Could Come Close To The Real Horror" Buchanan -- nothing compares with the piece of work known as Les Kinsolving.

The name probably doesn't ring a bell, but anyone who's ever watched a White House press briefing in the last several decades has seen him. Or any regular watcher of "The Daily Show," for that matter. He's the old goat who always rattles off some tinfoil hat question that whomever is handling the conference quickly bats away.

For anyone who's ever attended a City Council meeting, think of him as the zany lady who always sits in the front row, reeking of McCormick Gin and cat litter, and has a 15-minute diatribe prepared on the city's coyote problem or some other matter that's conflated to a crisis in her head only. The one to whom the mayor always nods politely to after the speech but would run like hell if he ever saw her on the street.

At any rate, World Net Daily is up in arms because White House spokeswoman Dana Perino brushed off the "questions" about AIDS that Kinsolving had prepared in honor of World AIDS Day. Here's the exchange:

KINSOLVING: "Two domestic questions. The Media Research Center – with the Centers for Disease Control's statistics that HIV/AIDS in the U.S. is still a great deal higher among men who have sex with men �"

PERINO:: "Let's move on to the next question. I'm not even going to dignify�"

KINSOLVING: "No�"

PERINO: "I'm not, Les, unless you want to just move on altogether. What's your next question?"

KINSOLVING: "All right. In major cities like Washington, Chicago and San Francisco, there are reports that gay bathhouses facilitate�"

PERINO: "Okay, Keith, go ahead. Les, it's inappropriate�"

KINSOLVING: "Inappropriate?"

KINSOLVING: "AIDS isn't that�"

PERINO: "Just stop it, stop it."

This is actually interesting for what it says about both the actors involved. Kinsolving absolutely hates homos to the point that he'd like to see them in ovens. Meanwhile, Perino is stuck with that White House policy to talk about AIDS without ever, ever mentioning the gays. And World Net Daily spins the whole thing to say that the White House has banned questions about AIDS altogether. No, they just don't want to listen to a senile nut rattle off Brent Bozell's doctored statistics about it. And they don't mention the gays EVER, except in cloaked language about marriage amendments.

Synchronize your bigotry, guys. It's embarrassing when you show up to a party in clashing outfits.

Weekend review roundup

Well, actually, uh...I was going to see either "August: Osage County," "The Seafarer" or "A Bronx Tale" this weekend, but obviously, that didn't happen. And I'll spare you guys another Duran Duran post. Instead, I'll try to respond some common things I've been reading and hearing regarding the strike. I might not have intimate knowledge of the parties involved, but I have covered my share of labor negotiations in the past.

Lazy union people. I wish I could just not show up for work when things don't go my way.

Guess what? You can! Not in a union? Try to organize a wildcat strike. Or better yet, why not just use one of those wonderful sick days, personal days or vacation days you've no doubt been accumulating? You know, one of those things you probably wouldn't even have had unions never existed? You'll even still get paid!

If people don't like their job, they should just go find a new one instead of whining about it all the time.

Yeah. That's really easy to do. Everyone who makes this argument hereby loses the right to ever complain about any aspect of his/her work again. And that would make them one of those people who just prattle on about how wonderful his/her job is. And nobody likes those people.

It's pretty selfish for them to go on strike considering how some people have planned trips in advance to see shows.

Yeah, um, if there wasn't any hardship, it wouldn't be a very effective strike, would it? Sad to say, but all travel planning entails some risk. Whether it's Hurricane Bertha canceling your Caribbean cruise or Grandpa Gus having a massive stroke the day before your flight to Tripoli (I just learned Americans can go there again. Cool!), crap happens. Hell, when I went to Yellowstone, it rained the whole time, and I didn't get to ride a horse for the first time. I cried. Of course, I also was 9 years old. At least in this case, you get almost a full refund.

And on the other side:

The media spends far too much time talking to tourists with canceled tickets and not nearly enough time talking to the people this strike is really affecting.

Yes, because those angry tourists are easy to find and usually more than willing to talk. I once covered a strike in which a certain party complained that their side wasn't making it into the stories -- and then would provide me a one- or two-sentence canned statement to state its position. Simple entropy, folks. The loudest and most accessible people will always get the best coverage.

In New York, $150,000 a year barely qualifies as middle class.

Then I am beyond poverty stricken.

You insensitive jerk. I really do have a Grandpa Gus, and he just died last week.

Oops. My condolences.

Impotent insults

Dealing with idiocy turns me into a nit-picky bitch. Just for fun, let's take a look at a voice from my hometown:

There are reasons people support Republicans

Glenn Kamprota writes of the GOP, “With its mismanagement of Iraq, Katrina relief, the budget and Social Security ‘reform,’ as well as its demonizing of gays and immigrants and hypocritical hysteria over family values, the GOP might very well have deserved what it’s getting.”

Demonizing gays? You mean the same gay agenda (read hysteria) that is trying to ram their lifestyle down everyone’s throat no matter our beliefs. Or the (illegal) immigrants who take the jobs (many which Americans would take), don’t pay taxes, send billions to Mexico and clog up the health system. I used to be a Democrat before they turned to the far left. I never loved the big busines GOP, but at least most of them are against abortion, gay militants and trying to keep some family values.

The GOP will get my vote unless a good third party should arise.

Paul Pousson, Angleton

You know, I could mention that in three mere paragraphs, Mr. Pousson -- who it seems used to love Democrats until they started to get to chummy with the fags, Mex'cans (and not said here, but presumably, the uppity blacks) -- managed to misspell both the name of Glenn Krampota (great guy, by the way) and the easily-fixed-by-spellcheck word "business." Or that Mr. Pousson -- a red-blooded, non-immigrant name if I ever heard one -- uses "gay agenda," a singular noun that doesn't fit with the later plural possessive pronoun "their." Or the absolute idiocy of basing a vote on the things that the GOP, when you look at it, haven't really done a great job of making progress on, anyway.

But I won't mention those things. What I will mention is the unintentional hilarity of the last sentence in the middle paragraph. There are two ways to interpret it as written. Either the Republicans are all gay militants who are trying to preserve family values while fighting abortion, or the Republicans are against three things: abortion, gays and the preservation of family values. Keep your compound constructions parallel, kiddies. Grammar lesson for the day.

Perhaps I'm being too mean here. After all, Mr. Pousson isn't a professional writer. So let's look at someone who is. Ann Coulter -- whom we recently learned is a perfected Jew, or Jewess, as she would probably say -- doesn't care much for Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee. In fact, Huckabee and Thompson both had the audacity not to hate Bill Clinton so much they smell the stench of his cologne while they sleep at night. Says she:

Huckabee teamed up with that guy to talk to children about healthy eating habits. Ironically, the obesity campaign kicked off almost exactly nine years from the very Palm Sunday on which President Clinton used a cigar as a sexual aid on Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office.

Ann, how, pray tell, is that ironic? A coincidence, perhaps, but where is the irony? Did C. Everett Koop recently publish a paper indicating that cunnicigarus causes weight gain? 'Cause otherwise, I'm not getting it. I know the word has been diluted of all meaning by pre-teens blogging on MySpace -- "I went to see 'Bratz,' and my BFF Lindsey was there that day, too! Isn't that ironic?????" -- but William Safire would totally kick your ass if he ever stooped to reading WorldNetDaily or the handful of podunk papers that still carry your column. Healthy eating habits, by the way, means actually eating something every once in a while. Try it sometime!

OK, now I have to go scour this post for errors. That's the one danger in writing something criticizing others' grammar and language. If you made a mistake while doing so, that would be, like, ironic.

Oh, and one more song down on the theme song situation. No Liszt's "Liebestraume." Darn it.

Hurricane hysteria

I certainly wrote my share of "watching the hurricane" stories while working on the Texas Gulf Coast, most of which were on storms that never hit anywhere near our coverage area. So, I can only muster half an eyeroll for the overzealous reporting and reacting that comes during hurricane season. I sympathize with the weather forecasters, actually. It's one of their few chances to have the top story for several days in a row.

My mother is another story. She gets so furious with the Houston forecasters, always saying that she suspects they hope the big storm makes a direct hit on the city. So I had to chuckle when she related to me the coverage that accompanied the minimal Tropical Storm Erin when it made landfall last week.

They had plans to go visit my oldest sister in Rockport for my brother-in-law's birthday and to go catch a minor league baseball game. The weather forecasters, predicting the dire rains with Erin, almost made them cancel their trip, but they decided to go, anyway. My youngest sister, seeing the same sort of news reports from her home in New Orleans, called my oldest sister worriedly to make sure my parents made it in all right.

As it turned out, Erin, which quite near Rockport, dropped a whopping 0.09 inches of rain on the city. The minor league baseball game wasn't even delayed by a minute. My oldest sister left a sarcastic message on my youngest sister's answering machine, starting with, "Well, we're all in the hurricane shelter now, but we're doing all right..."

Yes, I know even that minimal storm turned into a major flood event for some other spots. Still, it's no wonder to me that so many people don't evacuate when there really is a dangerous situation occurring. One can only be made frightened by drizzle so many times.

Oh, and here's a nasty bit of inside information. Mom was right. There are indeed a bunch of reporters out there who, in a twisted way, do hope for the big one to hit. It's called building a great clip file. Sounds callous, but it's true. Where do you think Dan Rather would be if he didn't tie himself to a pole during Hurricane Carla?

Rats, roaches to run rampant over Houston restaurants

I'm back! Quite a lovely trip, but I'm not quite ready to put that post together yet.

So, instead, I'll just send fond wishes out to the family of Marvin Zindler.

He's not a familiar face to those who have never lived in the Houston area, but musical theatre buffs might know him better as the inspiration for Melvin P. Thorpe in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."

When I attended the University of Houston, I always enjoyed watching the Texas newcomers see Zindler for the first time. Their response was usually, "Is this guy for real?" Yes, indeed, Marvin was always Marvin. Only he could turn the fungus that grows on poorly tended icemakers into a catchphrase and eventual funk song. Truly. Watch this.

I actually had the opportunity to meet Zindler briefly not too many years ago. It was in my first days of working as a reporter for The Facts in Brazoria County, and I was assigned to do the "Seen and Heard" piece (basically, a short story with a bunch of posed shots of all the local muckity-mucks who attended) on a fundraiser -- a roast of longtime KTRK anchor Dave Ward -- for the local women's center. Zindler, along with former Houston Oilers coach and Blue Ribbon bacon and sausage hawker Bum Phillips, were among the roasters. I'd link to the story, but thank goodness, it's long gone from the publicly accessible Facts archives.

We actually chatted only a few minutes, so I won't pretend to have any inside knowledge of what a wonderful man I'm sure he was. But he did at least have enough of a sense of humor to auction off one of his wigs and a pair of blue glasses as part of the fundraiser. If I remember correctly, they fetched about $25.

At any rate, I knew it was grim when I heard about Zindler's pancreatic cancer a few weeks ago. Coincidentally, that same disease claimed another Houston icon -- furniture entrepreneur Robert "At your fingers" Finger -- not too long ago. Perhaps they're now somewhere enjoying a good game of golf. Or tennis. Or whatever makes them happy.

WND: Bush is a mind-boggling loser

Sometimes it's hard to pick out a good title. So why not use two? Here's the title Joseph Farah used for his column on Bush today:

And here's the title for that same column that appeared -- on the same page -- as part of the column links on the side:

Always go with your first instinct, I say.

Grease that wheel, already

I've threaded two common themes across several posts in this blog, both of which lament something missing in political discourse today: crackerjack columnists and the ability of nuance. Well, I've found the perfect exemplar of both of those themes in columnist Burt Prelutsky. This man seems to have the easiest job in the world, as his columns are nothing more than the same Mad Lib (forgive the pun) every week with a few different adjectives thrown in. No common theme, no particular reason of timeliness -- just the same hackneyed arguments week after week after week. Just read this week's column.

I'm not even going to quote from it, because it's so asinine. It's nothing more than a bunch of broad generalizations with all the hot-button names (Nancy Pelosi, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy) thrown in for pointless garnish. Nothing specific to today is mentioned.

Now go to his archives and read last week's column. And the week before that. And so on. It's all the same thing! And when they are on a timely issue, they provide no more insight to it than reading a few posts at FreeRepublic. It's not even his positions I find as repulsive as the intellectual sloppiness and laziness it must take to so consistently produce something of poor quality. There are numerous conservative writers -- Peggy Noonan, Andrew Sullivan, mambopalace or some of the guys over at the Lone Star Times, for example -- whom I don't often agree with but respect the thought and/or humor they inject into their positions.

And yes, there are plenty of liberal versions of Prelutsky out there, too. I can't even get through a sentence of theirs. To see what you actually believe in turned into a cartoon would make me reconsider my positions more than Noonan's most florid prose.

Coincidentally, I'm writing this because it's a slow news day

One of the worst things about working on a Saturday rotation schedule as a small-town journalist -- besides the fact that you're working on Saturdays, naturally -- is those daily, disposable "events" you always have to cover.

Take a look at a small-town Sunday or Monday paper and you'll see what I mean. You'll see those stories about dinky church events, town festivals, police barbecues or something similar that might have some sort of news peg -- the organizers are trying to start an annual event, or it's the town's 45th birthday or something to that effect -- but it's usually not enough to make the event interesting to anyone who didn't have the desire to attend it in the first place.

Ivory tower journalism professors might use these as an excuse to show how every story should count and how a good reporter could use it as an opportunity to find the a compelling story among the chaff. OK, perhaps, and this might work out in some cases, but realistically, the reporter, who in most cases is working the day alone, probably wants to get in and out of the event in about 45 minutes and doesn't have time to get the life story of every attendee to see who wins queen for the day. After all, the reporter doesn't want to miss any real news that's breaking, because trust me: The editor isn't going to care how great the Annual Tree Lighting story came out if the reporter missed a murder that occurred that day.

Still, I don't even blame the editors for assigning them, because the stories serve a few purposes, after all. They're an easy way to get a community that doesn't make news very often in the paper. They're useful filler for the thick Sunday editions or usually news-dry Monday editions. Most importantly, they're a chance to put in cute pictures of kids.

That's also the horrid part for the reporter, however: interviewing those kids. Little is more excruciating than trying to mine a 7-year-old for a quote, because in my experience, kids rarely say the darndest things. In fact, they rarely speak in sentences that are more than four words long when put on the spot by a reporter, so that's why you'll see quotes like: "It's a lot of fun," 6-year-old Paducah resident Caitlyn (they're always named Caitlyn) Williamson said. "I liked the horses." And despite journalism school's best efforts to teach aspiring writers that quotes should be a garnish used sparingly in the story, the mindset in the real world pervades that if a person isn't quoted, they're not really in the story. So Caitlyn's monosyllabic grunts make the cut.

My point in bringing this up is to give a little perspective for the next time you see one of these eyeroll-invoking stories in the paper. I like to defend those usually budding journalists when I can, because I know they get a lot of flack. They probably didn't want to write the story any more than you wanted to read it. So just skip it over and think of how happy Colton's (they're always named Colton) parents are that he's on the front page.

To be fair, I guess I should link to one such story I had to write. It took some digging, but I found one, copied onto Free Republic of all places. Scroll down a bit, and it's there. It was one of those "Rally for America" things that took place at the beginning of the war. You know, when it was actually popular in the South? It's a bit more newsy than the events I was talking about, but keep in mind that one of these things was going on every weekend in those days, so it was a stale story going into it. I did, however, manage to invoke the imagery of red, white and blue vomit rather high up in the story, so I guess that's worth something.

So that's where you've been, charming Billy

Forget an ill-timed joke and a trip to Florida. The clod of the year award prematurely goes to the Prince Philip of American television, Bill O'Reilly, who wasted no time in turning the tragic Bronx fire into a diatribe against immigration.

Never mind that he doesn't even know whether the children killed in the were here legally. No, he points his finger squarely at those who don't agree with his immigration stance and says, "You helped this to happen." Jerry Falwell would be proud!

His paper-thin link of the two stories centers around the living conditions at the Bronx building. Granted, they weren't ideal. I would, however, suggest that O'Reilly take a tour of the housing options open to people in New York who cannot afford more than $1,000 a month in rent. Having a green card does not get you any credit toward a better place, I'm afraid. As Kirsten Powers noted, there are plenty of legal citizens -- a group in which these folks might very well be included -- who live in similar conditions. From all accounts, this fire was the result of nothing more than a space heater, missing batteries and understandably panicked reactions from some very frightened people.

Perhaps O'Reilly should visit the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side and learn about the conditions in which some of his (presumably legal) ancestors used to live. Then perhaps he might give a little consideration before tossing out a speciously seasoned piece of red meat to his base in an effort to capitalize on someone else's tragedy.

Tacky? Or a breach of trust?

When it comes to a crisis, I don't think many would mistake Mayor Mike Bloomberg for Winston Churchill. Or even Mike Brady. Just a few weeks after he orders a rash of parking tickets during the worst winter storm of the season, he gets caught in an incredibly insensitive quote following one of the most horrific fires in the city's history, which killed nine people, including eight children, in the Bronx on Wednesday.

In talking about criticism that he did not cancel a planned trip to Florida after the fire, he told the Daily News: "Some people think I'm here for spring break. But actually I was thinking about doing a movie in South Beach -- 'Mayors Gone Wild.'" Not exactly the best tone for the moment, to be sure.

Whether he should have canceled his trip is a different debate entirely, and I tend to fall in line with the Daily Intelligencer in saying no. Somehow, I don't think knowing the mayor's in town is going to be of much comfort to the families involved, and stirring up controversy over it is a distraction from the tragedy. But there's no question his joke was ill-timed. Still, rather than place the blame entirely on him, I'd also question the reporter's judgment in using it in the story.

When a reporters have to build rapport with sources, they'll often have off-the-cuff conversations with them. Trust me: If you've ever lost a loved one in a car accident, you don't want to hear the way police officers sometimes talk about accident victims. It can range somewhere between indifferent and joking. I certainly can understand why -- they see this stuff all the time and can't fall apart over it every time something happens -- and I certainly never used any of it in my stories. Not only would it have been insensitive to the families involved, but the officer in question never would have talked to me again.

Now, I'm not comparing Bloomberg with a first responder. He's not a warm, comforting presence, and he probably never will be. I'm just saying that it wouldn't surprise me if this joke occurred in the conversation long after the talk had moved from the fire itself. If not, it should have been put in better context within the story. If it was jarring to me, I can't imagine what it was like for someone who had a much closer connection to the tragedy than merely living across the river from it.

Retreating to my slimy place

I shouldn't have insulted my apartment management. I'm now cowering on my couch after spotting a mouse hopping around my stove, no doubt planted there by the visiting repairman this morning who didn't like his timeliness questioned.

So I'm trying to return to my filthiest memory, something that will make me feel better about sharing an apartment with vermin. And this is what comes to mind.

As a reporter, I saw a lot of awful things: mangled and decapitated bodies in car wrecks, gruesome autopsy photos at murder trials and municipal budget hearings. One assignment particularly sticks out, however.

With my work phone number printed in the paper every day, I got all sort of, let's just say, interesting ideas for stories to pursue. A lot of the times, the people knew me or my family because I had grown up in the area. One in particular was an older woman speaking in a thick Southern drawl, telling me that I had known her grandson in the Cub Scouts and that she wanted my help in finding two of her other grandchildren, given up for adoption by their estranged stepfather in Iowa. I guess she had heard about our vast Des Moines readership. She nearly made a grave error by saying she was reminded of me when watching "Barney and Friends" episodes with her grandchildren, in that I looked like the obnoxious, mugging blond kid (also named Michael) in the show, but my editor and I decided we'd let that unintended insult pass.

The photographer and I drove out to her trailer in Jones Creek, and the second we entered, the smell hit us: a mixture of mold, cat excrement and who knows what else. Dirty dishes lined the kitchen and den as cats writhed all over the furniture. The photographer and I tried to find the cleanest spots possible on the couch to chat with the woman, who was largely unable to walk because of her weight. I asked questions as best I could while I watched the photographer try not to gag. At one point, we saw a huge roach scuttle across his notepad as we exchanged anguished looks. After an excruciating 20 minutes or so, the task was done.

As it turned out, the interview paid off. Grandma reconnected with her grandchildren within a few days thanks to step-dad's acquiescence, and I quietly said thank the Lord when my editor allowed me to do the follow up story by phone.

OK, I'm feeling better. The mouse seems to be gone, hopefully having climbed down the stovepipe into the basement where he belongs. Meanwhile, I know what I'm doing this weekend! Scrub, scrub, scrub. And maybe getting a few hundred cats.

Glorious moments in paparazzidom

Two photos in the Daily News gave me pause this morning.

First, the "exclusive" look inside Anna Nicole Smith's refrigerator. Wow! In addition to the methadone, there was yogurt, Slim Fast, and Worcestershire sauce, all detailed with little scribbles identifying each item. Enthralling! I can't wait for the exclusive look in her pantry so I can see her cans of Pam, Spaghetti-Os and Tuna Helper mixes next to the cases of ipecac.

More exciting, however, was a photo of Britney Spears exiting her limo after vomiting inside of it. The caption made sure to note the stain on her pants from it. It also seemed to indicate that photographers got a shot of the pile of puke as "evidence."

Even getting punched by Angelina Jolie has to be better than this.

Another nail in the coffin of nuance

A few months ago, I mentioned my admiration for Leonard Pitts Jr. while lamenting the lack of decent columnists around anymore (one less, in fact, with the recent death of Molly Ivins). Unfortunately not only are writing skills no longer a requirement to be a published columnist, apparently neither is understanding of basic facts.

Let's take today's column by Larry Elder, entitled "Global Warming Turns People 'Gay'" -- got to love how World Net Daily always has to put the word gay in quotation marks, by the way. It begins as such:

Global warming alarmists – despite their best efforts – seem incapable of convincing the Bush administration. So here's my suggestion. Make the scientists tell the president that global warming turns people gay.

The idea came to me after seeing a Super Bowl Snickers commercial and learning of the "controversy" that followed it. In the ad, two guys chewing on either end of the candy bar inadvertently touch lips. Shocked, they decide to do something "manly" and demonstrate their heterosexuality. How? They pull down their shirts and rip off their chest hairs. A pro-gay-rights group called the ad homophobic and demanded the Snickers people stop showing it. Clearly, America runs rampant with gay-haters.

So, imagine if scientists simply told Bush that global warming made people gay.

On the surface, it's a surrealist premise that doesn't even work, an attempt to tie together two news stories that have nothing to do with one another without providing sufficient reason why. It's kind of like my beginning directing project in college, in which I spliced together footage of Dali paintings and scenes from "Carrie" to a Natalie Merchant song. I scored well on it at the time, but looking back now, I wonder, "Why in the hell did I ever do that?"

More problematic, however, is the fact that the opening assertion is absolutely wrong.

The furor over the Snickers campaign was never about that one individual commercial. If Elder had bothered to pay attention to the story, he would have realized that most had no problem with the commercial until seeing the additional material Mars put around the promotion on its Web site. In addition to showing footage of football players acting repulsed when seeing the original commercial, it also provided an alternate ending in which the men reacted to the accidental kiss by drinking motor oil and one beating the other senseless with a wrench.

Alas, however, we now must be able to boil everything down to one sentence. Gay groups thought a Snickers ad was homophobic. Al Gore said he invented the Internet. Record cold temperatures on one day in Michigan prove that global warming is a hoax.

None of those sentences accurately describes its respective situation, but I guess they all make great thesis statements, eh, Larry?

One for the humor morgue

A quick request: Can we please, please, please have a moratorium on jokes about how many presidential candidates there are?

It's already the late-night punchline du jour along with the subject of countless editorial cartoons (including the one in the Daily News today). But honestly. I remember the same jokes from four, eight, twelve, etc. years ago, and they weren't that funny then. You might as well be drawing cartoons about airplane food or VCR programming difficulties.

It's even less funny when you think: There really aren't that many candidates. Tossing aside the joke candidates and the impossible long shots, there's a handful on each side. So the jokes are more routine, like the inevitable Black Friday or day-after-Christmas returns story that inevitably appear in every paper each year, rather than based on any reality.

So I pronounce these jokes as dead as the Chuck Norris ones.

Jesus needs a new agent

Although I might occasionally kid about my hometown and state, I am known to defend it against rather ignorant comments from those who've never been there and assume we're all braindead hicks. News like this, however, doesn't help my case.

For those who don't want to click the link, a lady who lives about 15 miles or so from where I grew up thinks she saw Jesus appear on her laundry room floor. What's more, her minister found that news to be exciting enough to include in his sermon, and people are already stopping by to visit.

Now, far be it from me to take away whatever comfort people can find in a floor stain. But let's think of Jesus for a second. Poor guy's been appearing in grilled cheese sandwiches, on trees in tiny towns and paint drippings for too long. At the very least, he should have a venue of the caliber of, say, the Helen Hayes Theatre. Even Jackie Mason's had the chance to appear there.

Meanwhile, I have to think of the writer of said article, who is new to the paper, and presumably, to Brazoria County. Chin up, my dear. This isn't indicative of what you'll be finding in Brazoria County. If it makes you feel better, one of my first articles was about a vandal who was setting portable toilets on fire. And no, I wouldn't provide a link to that story even if I thought it was on the Web somewhere.

Patricia Heaton revisited

The reviews for "The Scene" came out yesterday, and they were mostly positive -- the ones that mattered at least. The New York Times, Newsday, the Daily News and the New York Post all leaned positive on it, largely praising the acting while quibbling a bit about the play itself. A couple of theater Web sites had the most overtly negative reviews, although those reviews will have about as much impact on ticket sales as mine.

I bring this up again only because I noticed today that my dinky little review made it onto Patricia Heaton's (unofficial) Web site (scroll to the "according to the blogosphere" spot near the bottom). Ah, legitimacy!

In addition, there was a rather interesting New York Times article on Heaton a few weeks back that got a bit more into the political question. I, for one, didn't realize that the infamous stem cell ad -- which she wasn't that thrilled with anyway -- was not done directly as a response to Michael J. Fox's. As it turns out, her views might be a little more nuanced than what some think, which really shouldn't be all that surprising. I mean, when an entire news channel can boil down Nancy Pelosi's agenda into "trying to turn America into San Francisco," it's clear that understanding nuance is largely dead.

Here's another Patricia Heaton story that really doesn't have anything to do with her directly. When I was working for The Facts in Texas, I was assigned a feature section piece on the kids from "Everybody Loves Raymond." They had family who lived in Brazoria County and were in town for the holidays. All sweet, unpretentious kids. The twins, like their television counterparts, were understandably much more interested in their toys than talking to me. But Madylin, the older girl, was already consummate professional even at the young age. During our conversation, Madylin and her mother spoke rather highly of Heaton and how motherly she was to the kids on the set.

At any rate, this is all enough anecdotal evidence to convince me that Patricia Heaton is good people. So lay off her, my fellow libs! Or at least be a bit kinder in your barbs.

And I'm sure she'll sleep much better with this endorsement.

My nomination for most callous lede of the year

Bill O'Reilly was the latest Fox News personality to get a tour of Iraq. Now, as newly announced Democratic presidential contender Tom Vilsack mentioned on "The Daily Show" tonight, any visit is largely a scripted experience, but I'm sure we can count on O'Reilly's "no spin zone" to cut through the staging and get the real story. If not, at least it might give him something new to put on the placemats or whatever it is he's selling nowadays.

In the meantime, I was quite taken aback by the press release from the Multi-National Force -- Iraq on the visit. It begins:

In a war that has perhaps been even hotter in debates than it is on the streets of Baghdad, the one constant in the media has been “spin.”

Even with the "perhaps" to mitigate it...just wow. But I guess they're right. Every member of the armed forces I interviewed upon their return from Iraq said something like: "Yeah, sure, it was rough, but I'd rather be there than stuck between Brent Bozell and Donna Brazile on that Tucker Carlson show."

Peachy Pitts

Pam's House Blend today links to a great column by Leonard Pitts Jr. The column speaks for itself, but I was quite surprised by the number of people in the comments section who had never heard of Pitts, as I find him consistently to be one of the best columnists around today. And it's not just because I usually agree with him.

When I worked for The Facts, Pitts was one of two progressive writers (although the editor at the time we added him called him a moderate, which might be more accurate) whose work we ran. The other was Molly Ivins, known by many of the local editorial page readers as Satan Incarnate. People despised her. Her mere mention of the word "shrub" would inspire dozens of angry letters to the editor. Yet Pitts, even when talking about hot-button issues like gay rights, never provoked such a response. Why was this?

I admire columnists like Ivins, Christopher Hitchens and such who can shred their targets with their caustic wit. I also can admire florid writers like Peggy Noonan, which can sometimes be overly gooey but nonetheless paints a lovely picture. But when it comes to a straight hammer to the point -- no overwriting, no Ann Coulter-esque phony controversy, no pretension -- no one can beat Pitts. He's the type who actually makes people examine their own opinions, not someone who panders to already formed political opinions.

Just read his famous post-Sept. 11 column. No one said it better at the time.

My least favorite columnist, if anyone is wondering? No, it's not Ann Coulter. It's not even Chuck Norris or Pat Boone. At least they have some camp value.

It's David Limbaugh. And it's not because I almost never agree with him.

It's not so much any particular column he has written. Rather, it's that he exemplifies everything that Pitts isn't. His typical column is the most lifeless, condescending rehash of whatever Republican Party issue du jour is at the top of the Roger Ailes memo this week, the graveyard where prose goes to die. I'd sooner listen to his brother for three hours than make it all the way to the end of one of his pieces.