What You Really Want

And from the left, Kos remains unhappy with HRC:

"Many can't believe that Hillary is so damn stupid as to give George Bush a rationale for attacking Iran.

"She really didn't learn her lesson the first time. Is she seriously claiming that this resolution was really needed to 'lay the groundwork for using diplomacy and sanctions'? What, was Condi Rice (remember her?) hamstrung on her ability to conduct diplomacy without Congress giving her the thumbs up?

"Does she think her audience is that stupid? Apparently so. No wonder she won't apologize for screwing up the Iraq War Authorization. She sees nothing wrong with that vote, and has every intention of casting that kind of vote over and over again."

Slate's Jack Shafer takes note of a new book and a new noun:

" 'The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers was Thomas Jefferson's motto. Drew Curtis shares the sentiment to the extreme in his splenetic takedown of the press, It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries To Pass Off Crap As News, which came out late last spring.

"In 278 quick pages, It's Not News, It's Fark does more to advance the journalistic art than all the millions spent by the Poynter Institute, the Shorenstein Center, the Nieman Foundation, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Columbia Journalism Review and the American Journalism Review, the Committee of Concerned Journalists, the various Annenberg outposts, and the Freedom Forum, combined.

"Instead of urging journalists to raise their standards--the typical tack taken by the press-guardian-industrial complex--Curtis puts the onus on readers, insisting that they become better news consumers. The educated reader's top enemy is the 'filler' of non-news, he argues, which the mass media pumps out whenever there's not enough hard news to complete a newscast or fill a newspaper."

Of course, if people didn't like it, would media outlets spew it?

"Through this crack come the inaccurate, fear-mongering stories about germs, earthquakes, and potential terrorist attacks; the worthless formula stories hooked on changing seasons, hot-weather spells, shark attacks, and holiday traffic patterns--the media events generated by PR firms that reporters translate into news stories. Even when journalists do right they often go wrong, he writes, by pausing in the middle of well-reported pieces to give equal time--in the name of balance--to flat-earth 'nutjobs' (his word) who take the opposing view.

"All the garbage the press publishes and broadcasts when it runs out of genuine news is what Curtis calls 'fark' . . . High-octane blends of fark contain celebrity news, press coverage of itself, and news served in the context of no context. When Shepard Smith screens, say, five seconds of a burning skyscraper in Brazil, followed by five seconds of a cat rescue in Montana, followed by five seconds of a flood in Thailand on the Fox News Report," that's fark.

Here's a great kicker from Cenk Uygur on an audacious online appeal:

"Craigslist has produced many internet classics in our time. Personally, I have seen friends have unbelievable sexual liaisons through people they met secretly on Craigslist. I knew a girl who just put an ad out for a man to buy her a microwave and someone appeared at her door the next day with a free microwave. I'm not kidding. But this latest story might take the cake. An unabashed gold-digger in New York put an ad up on Craigslist asking to meet a man making over $500,000. She explained that men making just $250,000 wouldn't cut it:

" Okay, I'm tired of beating around the bush. I'm a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I'm articulate and classy. I'm not from New York. I'm looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don't think I'm overreaching at all. Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200-250. But that's where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250K won't get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she's not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

"My favorite part is when she tells us how 'classy' she is. Yes, this ad is nothing but classy. So, someone responded. And they let her have it. He explains in the beginning of the letter that he does meet her qualifications, as he is a man on Wall Street making over $500K. Then he tells her this: '[I]n economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset.' "

I'll be off the blogging trail the next couple of days as I hit the airwaves to talk about my book "Reality Show." Maybe I'll have some reflections next week on tangling with the likes of O'Reilly, Olbermann and Jon Stewart.