Fumbling the Big One

NEW YORK -- The story has everything: fame, wealth, weapons, arrogance and allegations of special treatment.

Forget about Hillary, Iraq, Citigroup and the auto bailout that has the Big Three CEOs driving hybrids and offering to work for a buck a year, which means that hell has officially frozen over. They've got nothing on the man the tabloids call PLAX.

Plaxico Burress, a star receiver for the world champion New York Giants, had it pretty good. A new, $35 million contract, a worshipful press, a paid radio gig on WFAN, and all he had to do was show up and catch footballs 26 times a year and maybe in a few playoff games.

So what does he do? Carries a loaded, unlicensed gun into a nightclub, shoots himself in the leg and blows up his career.

"PLAX GUN RAGE," says the New York Post.

"LOCK HIM UP!" screams the Daily News.

The latter was a reference to the "outraged" mayor, Mike Bloomberg, calling for the authorities to throw the book at Burress. Especially after it was revealed that New York-Cornell hospital broke the rules by not disclosing that Burress, admitted under an alias, was treated for a gunshot wound.

Can you imagine throwing it all away just to pack some heat? The Giants fined and suspended Burress yesterday for the remainder of the season, and he could face a three-year prison term.

Maybe I've just gotten sucked into the tabloid culture here. At the moment, Plax is a bigger story than Obama. Sure it's overplayed. Everything is overplayed in New York. But talk about self-inflicted wounds. What a yarn.

I've been bird-dogging the David Gregory story since it hit the blogs, and here's what I've been able to nail down:

NBC is in advanced negotiations with David Gregory to become the moderator of "Meet the Press" and could announce the move as early as Sunday, when Tom Brokaw hopes to wind up his temporary stint on the program, according to network executives familiar with the situation.

The decision, if not derailed at the last minute, would place the network's lucrative franchise in the hands of a journalist who has been a chief White House correspondent, cable news host, frequent fill-in on "Today" and accomplished mimic who has dared to dance on the air. The challenge for Gregory would be to fill the considerable void left by Tim Russert, who turned "Meet the Press" into a top-rated interrogation ritual during a 17-year run that ended with his death in June.