The Federal Communications Commission needs a makeover--an updated look, or at least attitude, for our time, the editorial board writes. That's especially true of the time and attention it gives to enforcing decency rules:

The FCC also showed an alarming willingness to use government power to impose ineffective and discriminatory decency rules on broadcasters in the name of shielding children from profane or violent programming. More relevant to a bygone era's media environment, such rules reflect how poorly the commissioners seem to understand today's technological realities.

The Obama family hasn't even had time to pick a puppy yet, and already President-elect Barack Obama is confronted with missile threats from Russia. Missile defense threats are rattling their own sabres, but Obama "should not react to the rhetoric from either quarter, but he should reconsider missile defense on its merits -- or lack thereof. The president-elect rightly is skeptical of the defense shield, given that it doesn't yet work and it's intended to defend against nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles that don't yet exist," the board advises.  It also calls on federal immigration authorities to be open about their rules for deportation of detained illegal immigrants and to inform potential deportess of their rights.

On the other side of the fold, Los Angele Unified school board member Tamar Galatzan wants a more consistent system for approving and assessing charter schools:

Charters should not be rewarded for simply out- performing their underachieving LAUSD counterparts. The philosophy of charter schools is based on accountability, and the district must hold them to their promises. Lack of accountability is not uncommon in the school district, but we cannot let it seep into the charter movement as well.

Arguments about the genocide in Rwanda are at the heart of a court case in which the African nation seeks to shake itself free of French influence. And Joel Stein calls for a "No Gays for a Day" day, in which the gay and lesbian community would display its financial clout by staying home from work and shopping.

Illustration by Signe Wilkinson/Philadelphia Daily News

Barack Obama isn't even president yet, and he's already committed his first "gaffe."  At his proto-presidential news conference on Friday, Obama was asked which former presidents he had consulted about how to discharge his new duties. The puckish president-elect replied: "I have spoken to all of them who are living. I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any séances." Later, Obama apologized to Nancy Reagan for the allusion to her practice of consulting astrologers (not mediums) in planning her husband's schedule.

The apology may have been a political imperative, but I loved Obama's original comment. It showed that he has a smartass streak, which high office tends to suppress. Only rarely do figures of the magnitude of Obama let their inner wisguy escape.

It happened a couple of times at the Senate confirmation of hearings of John G. Roberts as chief justice.  Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah (in the self-referential habit of senators) told Roberts: "I read an interesting book over the weekend, Cass Sunstein's recent book published by Basic Books. Now, he discussed various philosophies with regard to judging. And I just would like to ask you this question: Some of the philosophies he discussed were whether a judge should be an originalist, a strict constructionist, a fundamentalist, perfectionist, a majoritarian or minimalist -- which of those categories do you fit in?" Roberts replied: "I didn't have a chance to read Professor Sunstein's book. He writes a different one every week; it's hard to keep up with him."

Speaking of the Supreme Court, when I was covering the court, schoolkids on pilgrimage to the nation's capital were often dragooned into watching oral arguments before the justices. At the end of one particulary soporific session, a group of junior high schoolers was taking a shortcut out of the courtoom through the press gallery. I asked their teacher if her students had enjoyed the argument. One boy piped up: "Yeah, I was riveted to my seat." Ah, I thought, a kindred spirit! At his age I also was a smartass. (It runs in the family.)

Life is tough for little smartasses -- or mavericks, as John McCain and Sarah Palin might describe them. McCain, by the way, fought smartassery with smartassery while campaigning in New Hampshire. When a high school student asked McCain if at 71 he was too old to be president, the candidate shot back: "Thanks for the question, you little jerk.  You're drafted.'' That moment was the closest I came to supporting McCain.

We get a lot of press releases here at the Opinion Manufacturing Division that pass without comment, but today's missive from the Western Business Roundtable is such a masterpiece of obfuscation that it cries out to be posted here, especially because it repeats similar baseless accusations against Barack Obama that were raised today by vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Here are the first two paragraphs of the release:

A bipartisan coalition of business leaders is calling on governors, state legislators and members of Congress to publicly express their opposition before tomorrow's election to proposals to "bankrupt" the U.S. coal industry and threaten to put out of work several hundred thousand Americans who work in coal-related industries.

The call was issued by the Western Business Roundtable following news reports that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama intends to make it so costly to build advanced clean coal power plants with carbon capture and sequestration that it will "bankrupt" any company that tries to do so.

Well, no. The "news reports" refer to tapes that appeared Sunday on YouTube, which were excerpted from a discussion held by Obama with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board in January. Here's what Obama said that has raised the ire of both Palin and the Western Business Roundtable:

What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter.... So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as an ideological matter, as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

Note carefully what Obama is saying here: He wants a cap-and-trade program that would set a price for greenhouse-gas emissions. That would make it prohibitively expensive to build new conventional coal plants, because they emit vast amounts of carbon. Yet that's not the way the Business Roundtable, a marketing organization for a coalition of Western CEOs, puts it. Its release says Obama's proposal would make it impossible to build "advanced clean coal power plants with carbon capture and sequestration." Actually, if the technology to capture and bury carbon emissions from coal plants existed (it's still under study, and may never be commercially viable), such a plant would emit only trace amounts of carbon, and thus be perfectly viable under Obama's cap-and-trade scheme.

This is why business groups get a bad name for trying to "greenwash" environmentally destructive projects: The roundtable clearly objects to Obama's stance on dirty, conventional coal, but in order to look as if it cares about the environment, it's pretending that Obama actually opposes carbon-capture technology, which he has repeatedly backed (that's what Obama meant when he said "if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it").

The Business Roundtable still could take a few pointers on Doublespeak, though, from the master: Palin. In a campaign appearance in Ohio, Palin brought up the same YouTube tape to blast Obama's stance on coal.

He said that, sure, if the industry wants to build new coal-fired plants, then they can go ahead and try. . . but they can do it only in a way that will bankrupt the coal industry, and he's comfortable letting that happen.

What Palin neglected to mention is that the guy she's running with, John McCain, favors a cap-and-trade program very similar to Obama's, which would have the exact same impact on conventional coal plants. No matter who wins, the coal industry is going to be in trouble. Maybe after the election we can all stop pretending otherwise.

* Photo by Charlie Riedel / AP

Having spent a total of about one hour with Barack Obama, I'm no expert on his personality. But from what I've seen and read about him, he doesn't seem like a knee-slapping kind of guy. John McCain, on the other hand, is a pretty humorous fellow, especially when mocking himself and the people around him (my ilk included). Or at least he was back when I was in Washington in the 80s and 90s; like most folks on the campaign trail, his scripted humor isn't Improv-grade.

Anyway, according to the AP, tomorrow the GOP standard-bearer is due to appear again on "Saturday Night Live," where perhaps he can teach Darrell Hammond a thing or two about verisimilitude. (NBC declined to confirm the story, and said it had "an open door to all candidates.") Assuming the report is true, my guess is that McCain will do as Sarah Palin did earlier this month, making one or two brief appearances in skits but not reprising his medley of Streisand songs from 2002. The appearances may not offset Obama's multi-million-dollar purchase of prime-time airwaves Wednesday, but at least any laughs they produce will be intentional.

I'm no expert on campaigning, either, but I think this is a smart use of McCain's time. Candidates who are trailing in the polls often struggle to strike the positive tone that voters crave, particularly in tough times like the ones we're in now. McCain's main focus for the past month or so has been on Obama's flaws, rather than the promise of his own candidacy. SNL gives him the opportunity to put a different image in front of people, both on TV and through clips that get passed around the Net.

Here's my hope: I'd like to see SNL put McCain in a skit with actors playing William Ayers, Tony Rezko and Charles Keating -- sort of a Ghost of Associations Past thing. But I don't have an Improv-grade sense of humor, either. What about you? Tell us your ideas for McCain on SNL, and remember -- if only Republicans would laugh (or Democrats), then it's not really funny.

AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

Like every journalist, I have kicked myself after conducting an interview for not asking an obvious -- in retrospect -- follow-up question. So I don't want to be too harsh on Brian Williams. Nevertheless,  Williams bungled big-time when he allowed John McCain and Sarah Palin to exploit Joe Biden's knuckleheaded prediction that a new President Barack Obama would be tested by America's enemies.

Contrasting himself with Obama, McCain said: I've been tested." Then he harped on the fact that Obama is "young and untested," and Palin chimed in, calling Biden's comment the "most telling" utterance of the campaign.

Whoa! "Young and untested"? Isn't that also a description of Palin, who as even her supporters acknowledge is a foreign-policy novice? Wasn't the obvious follow-up for Williams this zinger: "If, Senator McCain, you had a fatal heart attack on Jan. 21, would our enemies be tempted the next day to provoke a crisis to test President Palin?"

True, Williams later asked the Republican couple to comment on Colin Powell's criticism of McCain's choice of Palin, which evoked a defense by Palin -- who didn't want to toot her own horn -- of her executive experience. But the subject was foregn policy, wasn't it?

Like a lot of journalists (I suspect), I spent Friday evening in a movie theater watching "W," the President Bush biopic. Like Times reviewer Kenneth Turan, I found the Oliver Stone take on Bush suprisingly complex, not the unsubtle screed I had expected. My one disagreement with Turan is with this portion of his review: "It also helps that 'W' is exceptionally well cast with actors who are not only gifted but who also actually look like the people they portray. Richard Dreyfuss makes a fine scheming Dick Cheney, Scott Glenn is a confident Donald  'I don't do nuance' Rumsfeld. And Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush and Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice are also on target. First among acting equals is the always involving Jeffrey Wright as Gen. Colin L. Powell, a man torn between an instinct for loyalty and what he sees happening around him."

As the friends who accompanied me to "W" can attest, I found jarring the fact that some of the characters -- particularly Wright as Colin Powell and Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld -- looked not at all like the people they were portraying. The problem was aggravated by the fact that other actors in the film -- especially Brolin as W, Dreyfuss as  Cheney and Bruce McGill as CIA Director George Tenet -- were  the spittin' image of the real people. The inconsistent casting made it difficult for me to suspend disbelief across the board, which wouldn't have been the case with a film that wasn't as intent on verismilitude. For example, "RFK,"  a 2002 cable move starred  British actor Linus Roache (the  prosecutor on "Law & Order") as Bobby Kennedy, even though Roache didn't look the part. (The actor playing Lyndon Johnson in "RFK," by the way, was James Cromwell, who unconvincingly plays George H.W. Bush in "W.")

The casting of Wright is especially annoying, because it seems to reflect the Hollywood belief that one black actor is as good as another. Wright doesn't  resemble Powell, any more than Sidney Poitier looks like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall -- yet Poitier played Marshall in a 1991 television film. Though not a clone of George W. Bush, Brolin's resemblance to Bush is close enough to complement the character's mannerisms. The film wouldn't have worked as well if Stone has cast another white actor -- Paul Giamatti, say -- in the role. But it isn't only whites who take a simplistic attitude toward racial casting: There were murmurs of disapproval when "Saturday Night Live" first cast Fred Armisen, who is of  South American and Asian ancestry, to play Barack Obama. Yet Armisen, with the aid of makeup, looks at least as much like Obama as Brolin does George W. Bush.

Obviously there's more to capturing the personality of a real-life figure than physical resemblance. But in a film that strives to replicate the face as well as the name, everyone should look like the original -- or no one should.

John McCain: "And of course, I've been talking about the economy. Of course, I've talked to people like Joe the assistant professor of cultural studies to tell him that I'm not going to spread his wealth around. I'm going to let him keep his wealth. And of course, we're talking about positive plan of action to restore this economy and restore jobs in America." No, that is not a fully accurate quote from Wednesday's debate, in which McCain endlessly invoked not Joe the Professor but Joe the Plumber. It was another example of the homage politicians pay to blue-collar workers, even those who aspire to ownership of a business (a dream off-limits to low-paid academics). It doesn't matter that Joe the Plumber was swiftly demythologized with a little fact-checking. Politicians will still exalt cite blue-collar workers, real and imagined, in their stump speeches. McCain is a Republican, but Democrats, if anything, are more enamored of Joe Six-Pack. He is the unspoken subject of appeals for programs that benefit "working people," a term that is not meant to conjure up images ofadjunct faculty, computer troubleshooters or journalists ("I met a laid-off editorial writer at one of my campaign stops...) Speaking of journalists, we also worship at the altar -- or barstool -- of the working man. If I had a dollar for every story in which political reporters take the pulse of the people in a beer garden, I'd be ineligible for Barack Obama's tax cuts. This story is the hoariest of journalistic cliches, yet it appears election after election -- and in non-election journalism as well.

Years ago, the Harvard Lampoon published a parody of The Wall Street Journal that included a hilarious  takeoff of the man-in-the-bar story. Under the headline "When Talking Finance, Joe Six-Pack Sounds Like a Professor or Something," the story pulled a switcheroo in which blue-collar barflies commented about the economy with erudite references to obscure financial instruments.

There was a time when it made statistical sense for politicians and journalists to fixate on blue-collar workers. But the economy has changed. In my native city of Pittsburgh, where the economic center of gravity has shifted from manufacturing to health care and high technology, it would make more sense for visiting reporters to canvass voters in a Starbucks than a workingman's bar. But old archetypes die hard. Pittsburgh's NFL team is still the Steelers (or Stillers, as it's pronounced there), not the Geeks or Transplanters.

I have a theory about the continued canonziation of blue-collar workers: People who push paper -- or buttons on a keyboard -- are secretly a bit guilty about the non-physical nature of their labor. Never mind that plumbers often make more than assistant professors -- teaching isn't really "hard work." Of course, neither is being a U.S. senator.

Photo: AP Photo/Madalyn Ruggiero

Are John McCain and Sarah Palin stoking the fires of polarization and bigotry, or are such accusations just a canard that liberals have been using against conservatives for generations? The Times editorial board and columnist Jonah Goldberg take starkly different positions on that issue today.

In the third installment of its "Position Papers for the Next President" series, The Times argues that the next president will be tasked with bridging partisan divisions and slowing the "decline of civility" that afflicts modern American culture. "This campaign is more crass and more virulent because McCain made it so," the editorial states, blaming the GOP candidate for the xenophobic attitudes of some of his supporters. To Goldberg, meanwhile, such notions reflect the hypocrisy of liberals who decry McCain's backers for calling Democrat Barack Obama a terrorist while ignoring the intolerance of Obama supporters who put "Abort Sarah Palin" bumper stickers on their cars.

Speaking of undignified campaigns, English professor Gillian Silverman says modern presidential debates have got nothing on the famous contest between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858 -- in those days, politicians really knew how to fire up the crowd. And homeless services expert Joel John Roberts and English teacher Charles E. Diaz give their perspectives on John Robert McGraham, a Los Angeles homeless man who was doused with gasoline and set on fire last week. Roberts says we can avoid such tragedies with better homeless programs, while Diaz remembers the panhandler who taught him a lesson about human dignity. Finally, back on the editorial page, The Times finds for the defense in a Supreme Court case against Philip Morris USA, which it says is being wrongfully accused of unfairly marketing "light" cigarettes.

*Illustration by Roman Genn / For the Times

They're back.... The current issue of National Geographic magazine cover features Neanderthals, the human-like race who inhabited the Near East and Europe until 25,000 to 30,000 years ago, when they were wiped out either by the elements or by lither Homo sapiens from Africa --  i.e., us.  Neanderthals are almost as ubiquitous in the media as the GEICO cavemen, who are at least arguably Neanderthals. (They might be Cro-Magnons, but I have a feeling the ad men who invented them weren't interested in anthropological taxonomy.)

Alas, the NG article has only a brief reference to the question that excites most of the non-specialist interest in Neanderthals: Did they, um, do it with us? As I have mentioned before, this question is of more than prurient interest; one scientist has theorized that humans got their smarts from canoodling with our beetle-browed cousins.

For years, advocates of the interbreeding hypothesis have pointed to Neanderthal-like features in some modern-day people, like prominent brow ridges, weak chins and a fondness for sleeveless undershirts. But the NG article by Stephen S. Hall mentions the interbreeding hypothesis in the process of debunking it on the basis of DNA evidence.

Hall does include a rebuttal by Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis. "There were very few people on the landscape, and you need to find a mate and reproduce," Trinkaus said. "Why not? Humans are not known to be choosy. Sex happens."

The NG article also suggests that Neanderthals possessed a gene associated with speech, which means that Neanderthal men had no excuse when their human girlfriends complained, "We never talk."

Photo: AP Photo/Frank Franklin II

If Tuesday's presidential debate had been more compelling, I might not have noticed two peculiarities about the event: the bizarre behavior of moderator Tom Brokaw and the inertness of the audience of "real people" from Nashville.

Brokaw already has been scolded for a schoolmarmish insistence on holding Barack Obama and John McCain to the arcane rules of the format, lest they actually engage each other in a debate. But the oddest aspect of his moderation was an insistence on introducing the questioners at the "town hall" by referring to the section of the hall in which they were seating as if it were a town.

At the beginning of the debate Brokaw said that "we're going to have our first question from over here in Section A from Allen Shaffer." Later he introduced "Oliver Clark, who is over here in section F." Later still: "The next question does come from the hall for Sen. McCain. It comes from Section C over here, and it's from Ingrid Jackson." And so on. So often did Brokaw mention sections that he sounded like a Broadway usher.

Odd as it was, Brokaw's obsession with where people were sitting was out-weirded by the audience. Regardless of the section they occupied, they were to a person eerily immobile and expressionless, so much so that I was surprised when a seemingly stiffened teenager actually blinked his eyes. The pod people from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" were more animated than this group. Maybe the drinking water at the debate was spiked with curare. Or the debate staffer who wrangled the audience "undecided" with "undead."

Photo: AP Photo/Jim Bourg, Pool

Heck hath no fury like a talk-show host scorned. So it wasn't surprising that David Letterman threw a hilarious hissy fit after John McCain canceled on him as part of McCain's return to Washington to solve the financial crisis. Except, of course, as Letterman revealed, McCain was still in New York  getting made up for an interview with Katy Couric.

McCain defenders say Letterman's tantrum proves that he's part of the MSM anti-McCain lynch mob. But Letterman has treated McCain respectfully in the past, and his jokes about McCain's age have been good-natured. Clearly, however, Letterman was stung by the snub. So is this proof that entertainers have placed themselves above their station, as they say in Britain?

I don't think so. Politicians have admitted comedians and actors into their charmed circle, with both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton making cameos and "Saturday Night Live" and McCain himself announcing his candidacy on Letterman's show. So why wouldn't a talk-show host stiffed by a candidate be just as aggrieved as a ward heeler on learning that a presidential candidate was a no-show?

Michelle Obama is rightly being praised for her charming speech Monday night to the Democratic National Convention. If anyone -- say, low-IQ New Yorker readers -- thought she was a radical, her self-portrait should have disabused them of that thought. As one commentator put it: "Michelle Obama's speech reflected great nobility. She presented herself as a loving wife and mom, and she presented herself as being in sync with the values of most Americans." In other words, she was June Cleaver, mother of the Beaver.

Fair enough, but she also is a lawyer with the same blue-chip education boasted by her husband. Apparently, campaign tacticians decided that she should de-emphasize that aspect of her persona, much as Hillary Rodham did when she belatedly took the Clinton surname.

Speaking of radical, here's a suggestion that will never be adopted: Make party conventions and other political events off-limits to spouses, parents, children, siblings, high school coaches and pets. The practice of politicians proving that they are family men (or women), which was satirized as early as 1956 in the great political novel "The Last Hurrah," isn't just cheesy. As Larry Craig, Elliot Spitzer and John Edwards can attest, it also can set you up for a fall big-time (as Dick Cheney would say).

But Americans will never give up on the family portrait as a political symbol. The other day a poll was released showing that a majority of Americans would be willing to vote for a gay or lesbian candidate for president. I suppose that means that in the future, life partners of nominees will be coached to portray themselves as "being in sync with the values of most Americans."

Photo of Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver and Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver courtesy of Billingsley's MySpace page

James Carville may think he was a show-stopper –- in the bad sense. But for me there was a poignancy to former Iowa U.S. Rep. Jim Leach’s soporific speech Monday night at the Democratic National Convention. Leach is a member of that vanishing breed, the liberal or Rockefeller Republican, and there was a freak-show aspect to his appearance in Denver. In justifying his defection, Leach offered a selective litany of progressive positions taken by past Republican presidents and lamented the loss of bipartisanship in Washington.

I have a soft spot for liberal Republicans partly because they held sway in my home state of Pennsylvania for so long. Governors like Bill Scranton, Ray Shafer, Dick Thornburgh (before his drift to the right) and Tom Ridge were the mainstream of the Republican Party in the Commonwealth. Rick Santorum came from a different wing of the party, which remains the new mainstream despite Santorum’s defeat two years ago.

That John McCain is considered a moderate Republican is a measure how much the center of gravity in the party has shifted. Genuine moderate Republicans remain in the Senate, but they are an endangered species. I count four: Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania; Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine; Dick Lugar of Indiana.

My nostalgia for liberal Republicans is as much cultural as it is political.  The pejorative term for them is “country club Republicans” who, like Leach and the first President Bush, often belonged to the Episcopal Church, a denomination disproportionately represented in power élites and in news coverage (what editor can resist a gay-bishop story?).

I may be the only one to see this parallel, but liberal Republicans have always struck me as the political equivalent of Anglo-Catholics: those high-church Episcopalians who in their liturgy with its “smells and bells” are more Catholic than the pope they don’t acknowledge. Liberal Republicans live a similarly paradoxical existence in the political world, espousing positions (at least on social issues) more common in the opposing party. We should pray –- in an Episcopal Church, of course –- for their resurrection.

AP photo by Charlie Neibergall

There are a lot of odd people around, many of them roaming distractedly about the dusty halls of this downtown Los Angeles institution, who get deeply irritated by overused words and cliches. We in the journalism field often refer to such people as "copy editors," and I like to think I'm not as obsessive as these tweedy nerds. And yet... the word "Veepstakes" is really starting to fry my potatoes.

On New Year's Day, The Times printed an editorial about phrases we'd like to see excised from the lexicon. "Veepstakes" didn't make the list, no doubt because Barack Obama and John McCain hadn't yet even emerged as their parties' presidential front-runners, let alone gotten around to thinking about their running mates. Now that the decision is imminent, it seems impossible to turn on the news or read a paper without running across the word.

"Veepstakes" didn't just pop up for the 2008 campaign -- I know, because I looked it up. In the Los Angeles Times, there have been 11 mentions of the word in 2008 and zero in 2004, but a computer search turned up two mentions in 2000. A more comprehensive search on Factiva, a database of hundreds of news publications from around the world, turned up 546 stories with the word in 2008 and 389 in 2004. Yet even if the word isn't new, there is a pattern here: It's appearing a lot more often in this campaign. In other words, it has crossed that invisible barrier that separates clever from irritating, even to non-word-nerds.

To political writers desperate for a catchy headline, I have some suggested alternatives: Second-Fiddle Riddle. No. 2 Review. Successor Showdown. In the Running for a Mate. Yeah, that last one is pretty awful. Help me out here, folks. Just please, stop feeding us veepstakes.

Am I the only viewer of Rick Warren presidential forum to cringe when Barack Obama and John McCain offered their bona fides as believing Christians? Granted, the forum was at a church and Warren, who asked them about their faith, is an evangelist. Granted, also, that neither candidate discussed doctrine in detail. Still, consider these professions of faith: Obama avowed that "Jesus Christ died for my sins and that I am redeemed through him." McCain said that being a Christian meant that "I'm saved and forgiven."

These are arguably boilerplate statements of Christian belief, and both candidates quickly segued into the political applications of their faith. Still, given the audience, the professions of faith bordered on pandering. Of course, I still think John F. Kennedy was right when he told Protestant ministers in 1960 that "I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office."

That statement sounds quaint now. McCain encountered little flak when he he expressed his belief that the president should be a Christian. Reflecting the conventional wisdom  that Democrats must engage "people of faith," Obama has recanted his previous view that "we live in a pluralistic society, and ... I can't impose my religious views on another." I think Obama was right the first time, if by "religious views" one means "Jesus died for my sins" as opposed to a nonsectarian formulation like "all men are created equal [and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

Also weighing in my reaction is the way religion has been politicized in this presidential campaign. From Mike Huckabee's video Christmas card to McCain's jettisoning of John Hagee to Obama's agonizing over whether to repudiate the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the "naked public square" has been clothed with some pretty garish vestments.

Los Angeles Times photo by Genaro Molina.

Poor Neil Patrick Harris. The talented actor who once played Doogie Howser, M.D. — the teenage doctor who confided his thoughts to a computer — will discover if he logs on to the Internet that everyone is talking about one of his real-life observations.

“Neil Patrick Harris Calls [Anderson] Cooper ‘Dreamy’” is the headline on an Access Hollywood story picked up on the MSNBC site. 

Talk about your misleading sound bites (or bytes). The jocular mash note to the silver-haired CNN anchor was an aside in an interview with a gay magazine that shows Harris to be articulate and introspective. Referring to complaints that he took too long to announce that “I am a very content gay man,” Harris argues that “you can’t fault someone for going through the [coming-out] process at their own time.”

A decade ago I was dispatched to Los Angeles by the Arts and Leisure Section of The  New York Times to interview Harris about the re-launch of his career as an adult actor.  I enjoyed the interview and found that the 24-year-old Harris lived up, or down, to the description of him offered by Michael Greif, who directed Harris in “Rent”: "In some ways he's wise beyond his years and very mature for his age, and at other times he's not.”

I was pleased by the resulting article. But I never heard back from Harris or his publicist, making me wonder if I had included too many mildly critical comments like Greif’s. Then a friend at The New York Times asked me, obviously expecting an affirmative answer, if Harris was gay. I was taken aback; the subject of sexual orientation never came up in the interview. Re-reading the piece, I found one passage that conceivably could have played to stereotypical notions about gays: Harris’ recollection that, when he was 9 or 10, “I loved movies, I loved plays and musicals.’ " But inferring sexual orientation from that autobiographical factoid seemed a stretch.

So why did at least one reader assume from my article that Harris was gay, something I never meant to imply? I may have solved the mystery. The other day I exhumed the article from my clippings file and read all the way to the last sentence, which was meant as a play on the fact that Harris was leaving Doogie Howser behind. “The doctor,” I had written, “is definitely out.”

The FCC today ordered Comcast to stop "discriminatory" techniques for managing traffic on its network, the second time it's taken a high-profile enforcement action against an Internet service provider for such behavior. Unlike the first go around in 2005 (when it sanctioned a rural North Carolina communications company for blocking Voice Over Internet Protocol phone services) the FCC's actions were highly controversial -- probably because it was acting to defend potential competitors, not actual ones. Despite the apocalyptic criticisms from some quarters, however, the FCC's actions didn't amount to a dramatic increase in government regulation of the Internet. That's my take, at least, and you can read it in full at the Bit Player blog. For more on what the FCC did today, check out this post from the Times' Jim Puzzanghera. For a reminder of where the editorial board stands, you can read our editorial from Thursday's paper here.

Photo of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin courtesy of Joshua Roberts of Bloomberg News.

The editorial board urges Inglewood's police chief to answer public concerns about an officer-related shooting, and thinks a state constitutional amendment to ensure special-interest-free judicial races goes too far. The board also notes the end of nipplegate:

You'd think that policymakers would have learned by now that the government runs afoul of the Constitution whenever it substitutes its judgment about offensive content for a parent's choices. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong.

On Monday, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission acted arbitrarily when it fined CBS $550,000 for airing a half-second shot of Janet Jackson's right breast loosed from its studded leather mooring.

Columnist Rosa Brooks says Radovan Karadzic fits right in with a long line of mass murderers before him, all convinced they were healers. Columnist Patt Morrison tells Angelenos to stop being grossed out by so-called toilet-to-tap water. University of Alabama bioethics teacher Gregory Pence notes the 30-year anniversary of in vitro fertilization. And Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says we should actually want a sales tax increase: 

The political will is now here. We have the opportunity to create a greater Los Angeles no longer chained to its cars and dependent on foreign oil, and where we are making smarter investments to ease traffic congestion and improve our quality of life.

The measure other board members and I are proposing -- which will raise the sales tax from 8.25% to 8.75% -- would bring in $40 billion over 30 years while costing the average Angeleno less than the price of half a tank of gas per year.

On the letters page, readers discuss the impending increase in parking meter rates. Encino's Francine Oschin recalls a song: "Along with the recent series of hikes for trash pickup, this will be a tax way beyond what is reasonable or justifiable. As the song says, 'If you drive a car I'll tax the street ... If you take a walk I'll tax your feet.'"

*Cartoon by Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

During my drive in this morning, KUSC personality Dennis Bartel (who is not, I'm afraid, one of my aliases), announced an informal poll result that left me not astounded but disappointed.

The question: Should the station continue using United Kingdom titles such as Sir Edward Elgar, Sir William Walton, Sir Loin of Beef, etc. when announcing musical luminaries?

According to Bartel, either two-thirds or three-quarters of his listeners opted to retain these titles on the air. he didn't provide exact numbers, but it was a landslide in favor of toadying to foreign potentates.

He did mention that folks in the anti-title minority were quite energetic, many of them referring to Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution (though as Bartel noted, correctly in my view, this text only enjoins the U.S. from bestowing titles, not private citizens from accepting or honoring them.) He also invited all and sundry to continue emailing their votes and thoughts to him at dbartel@kusc.org.

Please send him an email. In my America only dominatrixes deserve to be referred to by fancy royal titles, so I'm hoping to flip those poll results around. But it wouldn't be very freedom-loving of me to tell you how to vote. Pro or anti, send your ideas to dbartel@kusc.org.

We hope you're enjoying this week's Dust-Up on the struggles of the L.A. Times.

Yesterday, Patrick Frey and Marc Cooper debated what's causing the paper's troubles.

Today, they take a look at what L.A. would look like without its largest paper. (Survivors, as Krusty the Clown once noted, would envy the dead.)

And tonight they will be part of a whither-the-Times roundtable on KCRW radio's Which Way, L.A.? with Warren Olney. The lineup will include L.A. Times editor Russ Stanton, Dust-Up participants Cooper and Frey and Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum's Emma Schafer, who has canceled her subscription. You can listen by tuning in to FM 89.9 or the KCRW site at 7:00 pm (Pacific), and/or listen to a recording after the broadcast at the Which Way, L.A.? page.

The non-profit news startup ProPublica (in whose service we wish former colleagues well) updates its joint "60 Minutes" report on al-Hurra ("The Free One"), the Arabic television network funded by about half a billion taxpayer dollars.

Before getting to the details of ProPublica's case against the network, I want to note that my colleagues and I at another gem of the non-profit news business long ago made the case against al-Hurra as well as other Arabic journalism efforts by the U.S. government. Briefly, al-Hurra and its U.S.-citizen-funded ilk stood (and stand) accused of misreading the local market, failing to win audiences, being stapled to an obsolete Cold War model of propaganda, not pencilling out in even the most modest financials, delivering a product that people already get in better and more accessible forms and committing the mortal journalistic sin of being boring. (A spokesperson for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees several of these entities, replied with vigor. And more recently, when Karen Hughes departed her public diplomacy post, the L.A. Times editorial board, whose humor is more sanguine and less bilious, tried to find a silver lining in the story.)

To this list ProPublica's Dafna Linzer adds another charge: propaganda against U.S. national interests. I'm going to disagree, however, and say that this is the one area where al-Hurra is actually performing up to expectations.

Speechnow.org's effort to get a preliminary injunction against rules that prohibit 527 organizations from advocating for or against candidates has ended in failure. Here's what the ed board had to say on the group's lawsuit back in February:

According to federal law, two or more people who combine resources to support or oppose a federal candidate become a "political committee" subject to government regulations and limits. But a lawsuit filed Thursday by the group SpeechNow.org, which had planned to air TV spots condemning Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) and Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), will reopen the question of how much freedom of speech must be curtailed in the name of legitimate campaign finance reform.

SpeechNow selected Landrieu and Burton because of their support of legislation that curtails political participation by public interest groups. The ads the FEC advised against were set up as a test case of the 1974 law, and the resulting Catch-22 tautology -- you can't agitate effectively against political speech regulations because that would require you to oppose politicians who support those regulations, which would violate political speech regulations -- was a result SpeechNow had in mind. The advisory opinion by the commission's general counsel seems well within the language of the law.

And that's the problem. The FEC, and perhaps Congress, need to revisit the overreaching rules on campaign ads. Courts have repeatedly stated that the only compelling state interest in limiting political speech is to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption in government -- this was the idea when the McCain-Feingold law rightly banned soft-money donations to political parties. But that is very different from a group of unaffiliated citizens trying to have their say. SpeechNow's suit against the FEC turns on complex regulations, but it speaks to something basic: the 1st Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

A victory for the group would restore some sanity to the campaign finance regulatory structure.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson disagreed, writing:

Plaintiffs’ argument presents a false syllogism that relies on a “crabbed view of corruption, and particularly of the appearance of corruption” that is at odds with Supreme Court precedent...

Second, that SpeechNow cannot literally funnel contributions to candidates, and therefore cannot serve as a vehicle for the direct exchange of dollars for political favors, is not dispositive. The Supreme Court has long acknowledged that “corruption,” in the sense that word is used in campaign finance law, “extends beyond explicit cash-for-votes agreements to ‘undue influence on an officeholder’s judgment.’”...

“Independence” does not prevent candidates, officeholders, and party apparatchiks from being made aware of the identities of large donors, and people who operate independent expenditure committees can have the kind of “close ties” to federal parties and officeholders that render them “uniquely positioned to serve as conduits for corruption,” both in terms of the sale of access and the circumvention of the soft money ban.

Democracy 21 president Fred Wertheimer, who filed a brief against the Speechnow request, is pleased with the decision. The Speechnow-affiliated Center for Competitive Politics is not pleased. Election law blogger Rick Hasen sees an appeal coming.

Just about a year ago, Speechnow's Bradley Smith debated the Brookings Institution's Thomas E. Mann in a Dust-Up on campaign finance.

George Carlin passed away yesterday, just days after receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. While best known for his sketch on the seven dirty words that could not be said on television, the comedian loved to poke fun at Americans by examining linguistic hypocrisy. Check out his routine on "soft language, the language that takes the life out of life":

"Poor people" used to live in "slums." Now the "economically disadvantaged" occupy "substandard housing in the inner cities". And they're broke! They're broke! They don't have a "negative cash flow position," they're [expletive] broke! ... Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It's as simple as that.

The accolades have only grown with his passing. AP called Carlin a counterculture hero — but that doesn't mean everything he did was humorous or well received. The Washington Post points out:

Carlin, who died last night in Los Angeles at 71, was at his least funny when he let his anger and natural anti-authority streak lapse into nihilism. Once, on a tour that came through Washington in the early 1990s, Carlin proposed that "anything could be funny," even rape. He then launched into a cringe-inducing monologue about female victimization. It could essentially be read as an attack on political correctness — a common theme for Carlin — but whatever it was, it wasn't funny in the least. 

Time takes the longer view:

But Carlin's career, and his comedy, was anything but a downer. He was unique among stand-ups of his era in remaining a top-drawing comedian for more than 40 years, with virtually no help from movies or TV sitcoms. His influence can be seen everywhere from the political rants of Lewis Black to the "observational" comedy of Jerry Seinfeld. He showed that nothing — not the most sensitive social issues or the most trivial annoyances of everyday life — was off-limits for smart comedy. And he helped bring stand-up comedy to the very center of American culture. It has never left.

Check back tomorrow for The Times' editorial on George Carlin.

For your weekend reading pleasure, here's the NEA's new report "Artists in the Workforce: 1990-2005." While the percentage of self-identified artists, as a portion of the toal workforce, remained constant over the 15-year period, the report suggests a surprisingly robust creative community. Sez NEA Chairman Dana Gioia:

There are now almost two million Americans who describe their primary occupation as artist. Representing 1.4 percent of the U.S. labor force, artists constitute one of the largest classes of workers in the nation—only slightly smaller than the total number of active-duty and reserve personnel in the U.S. military (2.2 million). Artists represent a larger group than the legal profession (lawyers, judges, and paralegals), medical doctors (physicians, surgeons, and dentists), or agricultural workers (farmers, ranchers, foresters, and fishers).

With plenty of state-by-state and profession-by-profession breakdowns, it's an interesting study. Read the full report.

Somebody -- anybody -- please just get 50% plus one tonight. Otherwise, like the folktale of the political consultant who comes out of his hole on election day but doesn't see his shadow (that's how the story goes, right?) we have five more months of campaigning.

But it's looking grim in these early hours. With a still-paltry 1.35% of precincts reporting, Mark Ridley-Thomas has a comfortable lead over Bernard C. Parks in the race for Los Angeles county supervisor in the Second District. But it's not comfortable enough. Ridley-Thomas has 47.12% of the vote to Parks' 35.57%, but he needs 50% to avoid a runoff.

That might be tough. There are seven other candidates in this race, and even if none of them captures more than a few thousand votes, it could be enough to prevent anyone getting a majority. As it stands now, even Morris "Big Money" Griffin, the man who came up with the idea of an "ethnic lottery" so that winnings would only go to people of the same ethnic group as those who bought tickets, has 2% of the early vote.

So if the campaign ending now was all about Ridley-Thomas and Parks, the next five months will be, well, more Ridley-Thomas and Parks.

It's that way in any non-partisan race with more than two candidates. There will likely be at least a couple judicial runoffs in November.

It's a good opportunity for the New America Foundation to move forward with its plan for instant runoff voting, in which the runoff takes place simultaneously with the election. San Francisco currently uses IRV, as the insiders call it. Hear KPCC's Frank Stoltze report on New America's presentation yesterday at Los Angeles City Hall.

By the way, this 50% plus one issue doesn't apply to partisan primaries, like state Senate and Assembly. A Democrat just needs one more vote than his or her competitors -- same for Republicans -- to win the primary. There is a general election between party winners in November, but most districts are virtually owned by one party or the other, so it's really all being decided today.

No need for a spokesperson for the ex-press secretary. Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan appeared on NBC's "Today" show this morning to discuss his upcoming book, "What Happened." Some of his comments from his interview a few hours ago:

The larger message has been sort of lost in the mix ... The White House would prefer I not speak out openly and honestly about my experiences, but I believe there is a larger purpose.... I had all this great hope that we were going to come to Washington and change it.... Then we got to Washington, and I think we got caught up in playing the Washington game the way it is being played today....

My hope is that by writing this book and sharing openly and honestly what I learned is that in some small way it might help us move beyond the partisan warfare of the past 15 years. There’s a larger purpose to this book. It’s about looking at the permanent campaign culture in Washington, D.C., and how we can move beyond it....

McClellan references the Valerie Plame affair and the president's declassification of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq for political purposes (when the administration publicly expressed disdain for leaks that hurt its political image) as two major "turning points" in his transition from loyal Bush flack to disillusioned ex-spokesperson.

Most striking to me is that McClellan appears decidedly soft in his attacks on the administration officials whom he says disillusioned him the most (Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney) and faults mainly Washington politics for corrupting otherwise well-intentioned people. When interviewer Meredith Vieira presses him on why he stops short of saying the administration "flat-out lied" in the run up to the Iraq war, McClellan replies, "Well, actually, I say in the book, I say that this was not a deliberate or conscious effort to do so. What happened was that we got caught up in the excesses of the permanent campaign culture in Washington, D.C."

Continuing on the general theme of evil Washington politics corrupting even the most well-intentioned of presidents, McClellan says of Bush's vision in Iraq:

He absolutely cares very passionately about what he talks about, which is the freedom agenda and spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. It’s a very idealistic and ambitious vision, and that was really the driving motivation that pushed him forward in Iraq -- this chance to, in his view, to really transform the Middle East by making Iraq a linchpin for spreading democracy.

I'm planning on reading McClellan's book, but I know now that I shouldn't count on any thoughtful critique of the administration's policies. Evidently, McClellan hasn't abandoned every inclination to defend his former boss.

Can anyone find Scott McClellan? Following all the Bush administration blowback and media commentary today over the ex-White House press secretary's book on his apparently miserable years serving the president, McClellan and his publisher have responded with a resounding, "No comment." From CNN.com's morning write-up:

In a brief phone conversation with CNN on Tuesday evening, McClellan made clear that he stands behind the accuracy of his book. McClellan said he cannot give on-the-record quotes because of an agreement with his publisher.

The former Bush press secretary "cannot give on-the-record quotes" per his publisher's orders? Sure, writing a tell-all political memoir has become a rite of passage for disgruntled former Bush administration officials, but McClellan was not just another policy-wonk bureaucrat. His job was more or less to make reporters and the public have a positive opinion of the president. Hell, this guy was a hyper-loyal Bushie dating back to the commander-in-chief's days as the likable governor of Texas. Having McClellan out there defending himself against the administration he so vigorously flacked for a few years ago should make any book publisher drool.

Speaking of defending the administration, McClellan had a few words of his own in 2004 for Richard A. Clarke when the former counter-terrorism expert penned his political memoir "Against All Enemies":

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book. 

UPDATE: McClellan gave an interview on NBC Thursday morning. Click here to read my observations.

The problem with writing for a family newspaper — or being a screenwriter for a TV show on basic cable, for that matter — is that there are times when the most apt possible word for the situation you’re trying to describe or the dialogue you’re trying to convey is forbidden by company policy, or FCC regulations, or common decency. That is why I am so frakking in love with "Battlestar Gallactica."

The Sci Fi Channel hit didn’t coin the word "frak." It was introduced in the original 1978 series on ABC, though its meaning on that show was quite a bit more benign; the context in which it was used made it clear that it was a substitute for a harmless euphemism like "darn." In the new version of "Battlestar," which is free of blow-dried haircuts, adorable robot dogs or former "Bonanza" stars, the writers make it quite clear that "frak" means exactly the same as a common four-letter English word that starts with "F" and ends with "K." Hence you get words like "motherfrakker" and "clusterfrak," and phrases like, "We are well and truly frakked."

This all might seem a little childish, but it’s actually incredibly liberating. Screenwriters can write the kind of dialogue for basic cable that’s normally only allowed on a pay-cable channel. (I challenge even the stoutest frat boy to take a drink every time somebody drops an F-bomb on the HBO show "Deadwood.") You simply cannot accurately convey the chatter of a bunch of sweaty, tattooed, futuristic fighter pilots, who make up much of the cast of "Battlestar," without throwing in some colorful language. With "frak," you can do that without offending a soul: Even the most righteous member of the Parents Television Council would have a tough time objecting to a curse word that only has meaning in an alternate universe.

Which is why I hope this whole "frak" thing catches on. When you’re writing about government policy, sometimes the situation is so frakked up, involving people who know frak-all about basic economics or the unintended consequences of bad public policy, that you just frakking want to tell them to frak off.
Frak, that feels good.

... and soars on hot air from the blogosphere.

After more than a month of studied silence, the reverend has stepped into the public spotlight to defend his controversial remarks on race in America -- and make veiled criticisms of Sen. Barack Obama in the process. On Obama's repudiation of his incendiary statements, the minister had this to say: "He's a politician, I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician."

Obama reacted angrily to his former pastor's comments, calling them "a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in truth." Jonah Goldberg gleefully celebrated Wright's coming-out as "every bit as radical as his detractors claimed."

They're not the only ones with choice words about Wright's recent performances:

The Times' own Top of the Ticket blog asks, "Was Jeremiah Wright's speech set up by a Clinton supporter?"

... we should have been paying a little less attention to Wright's speech and the histrionics of his ensuing news conference and taken a peek at ... who was sitting next to him at the head table for the National Press Club event.

It was the Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds ... an ardent longtime booster of Obama's sole remaining competitor for the Democratic nomination, none other than Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. It won't take very much at all for Obama supporters to see in Wright's carefully arranged Washington event that was so damaging to Obama the strategic, nefarious manipulation of the Clintons.

Jeffrey Weiss over at the Dallas Morning News' religion blog wonders why pundits can't take Obama out of the equation:

After the NAACP speech, the all-news networks talking heads were mostly falling all over themselves to do political analysis about whether or not the speech would help or hurt Barack Obama, rather than attempt even a moment of thought about the meaning of what Wright actually said.

The Caucus over at the NY Times does a roundup of its own, observing:

Voices around the blogosphere say they’re tired of the media kerfuffle surrounding Barack Obama and his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., but they certainly keep writing about it.

They also say they’re sick of the expression “thrown under the bus,” but they keep using it.

For some Wright-Obama commentary with both local and international flavor, Ha'aretz's Shmuel Rosner invokes the "Bradley Effect," but also snarks at the minister's comments about Israel:

At moments he came off as mocking and somewhat vain, but made an effort to soften the hardliner perception his speech had left behind. He was also asked about his views on Israel. "Apartheid?" he asked, adding that Jimmy Carter used this term, not him.

Israel, Wright said, "has a right to exist". His only desire was that the Israelis and Palestinians live in peace. He made no reference to the sermon in which he connected the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the September 11th attacks, but he did make sure to emphasize his "Jewish friends". As it turns out, Jeremiah Wright also has a couple of those.

Daniel Nichanian at the Huffington Post compares Wright's position to one of the 2000 presidential election's most beleaguered political players:

Wright has no obligation to put Obama's interest above his own; dragged through the mud for news, the pastor has an opening to make people listen to him and hear the full context of his theology. Those who today profess themselves appalled that Wright would throw Obama under the bus miss the point that Wright does not think of himself as having any allegiance to Obama or to his election, just as Ralph Nader had no any allegiance to the Democratic Party making it hard to understand why 2004 was "a betrayal."

Wonkette agrees, in an offbeat sort of way:

He's blowing open the racial politics that Obama wants to close and claiming that Obama is insincere when he rejects Wright's "extreme sermons"; he's trying to balance a deserved self-defense with the collateral damage that that brings on Obama. He has an ego. Most importantly, he's just some old preacher and not Obama's surrogate father. He can say whatever he wants and Barry will just have to deal with it. Individual people have a right to defend themselves, and politicians have a right to disown them. That's all, goodnight.

While Sen. McCain had the plug pulled on the North Carolina Republican Party's ad highlighting the Obama-Wright connection, it seems the state party leaders will be getting the airtime they wanted for free.

Listen in as our own Michael McGough does his best impression of Joan and Melissa Rivers catting it up on the red carpet. Hot off his popular story "Papal dress code," McGough schools NPR (a bed of Unitarians if ever there was one) on the ins, the outs, the dos and the don'ts of papal fashion. Audio available here.

This post updated as of 12:10pm Thursday. See below:

I'm a fan of vestigial cultural survivals, but even I reacted to news of the shutdown of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio Orchestra with an incredulous "There are still radio orchestras?" To give some perspective, the legendary Arturo Toscanini-conducted NBC Radio Orchestra was disbanded way back in 1954, and there may be a reason that the Vancouver-based CBC outfit has long held the dubious distinction of being the sole extant radio orchestra in North America. *

Now the life of a working musician is tough, though arguably no tougher now than it's been for the past, say, 10,000 years. And I get the impression that a belief, realistic or not, that Canada's cultural attainment is high has always been a favorite bragging point for our friends to the north. So a little expression of regret is understandable. But take a look at the protests that followed the announcement of the orchestra's closing and you may ask what eon these people are living in. CBC has a little coverage, with video, and the Globe and Mail gives more detail. "No Kitsch! No Philistines! Don't Mess With Our Music!" reads one protester's sign. A music teacher brags of having canceled her class with the following message to her students: "I said this is the most important assignment you could possibly have; to rescue the great culture of your country."

It's easy to riff on Sen. Hillary Clinton's apparent whopper about being subjected to sniper fire in Bosnia. So let me begin, before David Letterman has a chance to taunt the candidate with, "Liar, liar! Pants suit on fire!"

Actually, I have a serious point to make about this gaffe. Hillary is not the first candidate (though she might be the first female candidate) to hype or fabricate combat experience. This sub-species of resumé padding has tripped up other politicians, not all of them prominent, and at least one esteemed historian.

You don't have to be a presidential candidate to get into this fix. Last December the Boston Globe told the familiar story of a school board candidate in Lawrence, Mass., who won election after "touting his 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps," only to be contradicted by a family member and pilloried by other politicians.

Why do they do it? It's true that presidents great and not-so-great have trumpeted their military service, but the most recent decorated warrior to seek the presidency didn't seem to get much mileage from it. And straining to seem like one of the guys can backfire, as Michael Dukakis (a real veteran) discovered. Hillary would have been better advised to say that her scars came from the battle over healthcare.

Why do so many women suck it up and stand grimly by, like a prop for the photo op, as the hubby spills his guilty guts for the cameras? Today Silda Spitzer looked like she might have had a gun at her back — or she might have had one in Eliot's back — but there she was nonetheless, "at his side," as they say.

Stick with the marriage if that's what you want, by all means — but let him twist in the wind alone. Just once, as the husband moves up to the microphone, I'd like to see one of these wronged women just walk offstage behind him, suitcase in hand, exit stage right.

YouTube has scored nearly a half-million hits for the video of a well-known broadcaster crashing a big Olympics press conference and, in front of those five emblematic rings, accusing her husband — an even better-known broadcaster — of having an affair. She dodges and weaves like a champion welterweight, shaking off the musclemen who try to hustle her offstage, to say her piece in front of the world's press.

Now that's what I'm talking about!

Becoming the second cute ad girl apostate in this campaign, the sleeping child from Hillary Clinton's much-maligned TV spot says she supports Barack Obama. It turns out that the Clinton camp bought old stock footage for the ad (probably a common enough practice) and that adorably endangered little girl is now of voting age:

[Casey] Knowles, a senior at Bonney Lake High School who turns 18 next month, has been campaigning for Obama.... If she plays her cards right, she could go to the national convention.

Not to mention that she could be in another ad. After her identity became known, Obama's campaign contacted her.

Until the Knowles turnaround, the phone call ad seemed like an almost fortunate distraction from Jack Nicholson's endorsement for Hillary, released at about the same time. Getting a plug from a definitively cool actor (even if he's starting to show his age) seems like pure gravy, unless, of course, the plug strings together clips of said actor's best-known roles, like The Joker, Jack Torrance (as in, all work and no play make...), and Col. Nathan R. Jessup.

Does Clinton really want Jack Torrance saying "things could be better," and suggesting she's the one to make them so? (By the way, that line's referring to a problem with his wife, whom he refers to later in that scene as "the ol' sperm bank".) And what about Jessup's quip that there's nothing hotter than saluting a chick? Way to alienate those uptight Clinton-loving feminists, Jack! Using two homocidal maniacs and one cruel Gitmo-stationed officer in an endorsement doesn't seem so smart, especially when Obama has will.i.am stringing together pretty young celebs.

The Clinton campaign could use a better ad-star/candidate match, like that cutest of campaigning couples, Chuck and Huck. Oh wait, Norris screwed up too. And though the troops in Iraq may love him, there's one Norris fact that probably rubs war supporters slightly the wrong way: "There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Chuck Norris lives in Oklahoma."

The U.S. Supreme Court is continuing its modified limited hangout when it comes to allowing the public to hear (but not see) its oral arguments in newsworthy cases. This week the court announced that  it will provide same-day release of the audio tapes of the March 18 arguments over the constitutionality of the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. This is the third argument this term to get the same-day treatment.

March is turning out to be the equivalent of sweeps weeks for judicial junkies: The California Supreme Court this week made available audio and video of arguments over the constitutionality of the state’s limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples.

I analyze court decisions so a living, so I can justify my interest in oral arguments without admitting to be the Supreme Court equivalent of those C-SPAN junkies who watch every congressional hearing, think-tank panel discussion and book signing at Politics and Prose.  For listeners with better things to do, Supreme Court arguments can be soporific. It wouldn’t surprise me if some people who tuned into the three hours (!) of argument over the McCain-Feingold law in 2003 are still asleep.

An argument over gun control is about as sexy as it gets in the court — which isn’t very sexy at all. And if past arguments are any guide, the justices and the lawyers will discuss the Second Amendment  in the same mystifying shorthand they use when arguments aren’t being recorded for release. Don’t expect even Antonin Scalia to offer up a sound bite on the lines of “If you want my gun, you’ll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hand.”

But concede that most oral arguments won’t garner a big Nielsen share (or the equivalents for MP3s). Why not make audio of all arguments available on the same day — or even in real time?

Even better, of course, would be video of the argument, an innovation that will be introduced over the dead body of Justice David H. Souter. With video, you can be sure who is asking the question.  Audio alone can lead to confusion unless it’s being aired on television over sketches of the justices. No one would mistake Souter’s New England accent for the Chicago twang of Justice John Paul Stevens, but (especially when they ask short questions) Chief Justice John Roberts could be confused with Justice Anthony Kennedy or Justice Samuel Alito.  And if another female justice is appointed to the court, her voice might be hard to distinguish from that of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — especially if the  new Madame Justice were a New Yorker.

No justice, male or female, will be confused with Justice Clarence Thomas, because he almost never opens his mouth. All the more reason for putting video cameras in the court. At least then we could watch Thomas’ facial expressions.

At the risk of seeming to side with Rush Limbaugh, I am bemused by the controversy over the casting of Fred Armisen as Barack Obama in "Saturday Night Live”’s send-up of the contest between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The skit, which portrayed the media as star-struck Obamaniacs,  got more exposure than usual when Clinton mentioned it in the last Democratic debate. Hillary didn’t mention that the actor impersonating her rival wasn’t black. But others have pounced on  SNL’s decision to cast Armisen, who is of mixed South American and Asian ancestry, as Obama.

"Let's get one thing straight,” Hannah Pool wrote. “The moment anyone starts reaching for 'blackface,' they are on extremely dodgy territory. Anyone who thinks it's either necessary or, for that matter, remotely funny to black-up needs to have the gauge on their moral compass reset." But the point of Armisen’s impersonation wasn’t the mockery of the made-up minstrel; it was to try to create a reasonable facsimile of the senator. And it worked. Modern makeup is pretty amazing: It can make Joe Flaherty look like the late William F. Buckley Jr. and Dave Thomas a dead ringer for the dead Bob Hope. Physique and stature are harder to fake than skin color or Hope’s ski nose, which is why the lanky Armisen beat out his burly African castmate Kenan Thompson for the Obama gig.

So one response to the complaints about Armisen-as-Obama is that all that matters is the final illusion: Armisen may be a non-African-American, but he can convincingly play one on TV.  So why the controversy? I don’t think it’s because the impersonation is the moral equivalent of an old-style minstrel show, or because in casting Armisen as Obama Lorne Michaels was “taking sides” between Obama’s black and white parents or perpetuating the idea that Obama isn’t “really black.” The Washington Post offered another explanaton: the casting seemed to add insult to the injury of SNL’s chronic underuse of African-American performers. Here was an easy opportunity to feature a black comedian, and they blew it.

In this sense the Obama flap is reminiscent of another casting conmtretemps: the objection a decade and a half ago to the casting of the British actor Jonathan Pryce as an Eurasian pimp in “Miss Saigon” on Broadway. Pryce didn’t help matters when he said: ''If the character is half Asian and half European, you've got to drop down on one side of the fence or the other, and I'm choosing to drop down on the European side.''  (Armisen was wise enough not to make a similar comment about playing the biracial Obama.)  Actors Equity, which had refused to agree to Pryce’s casting, later negotiated a compromise with the producer under which he advertised for other roles in Asian-American newspapers.

That sort of outreach is a good idea, but it can’t resolve all the contradictions in the debate over race and casting which has been raging in theatrical circles, amateur and professional, for a long time. (I can be a source of strife in at schools where the racial composition doesn’t match the range of ethnicities in the school play.) Makeup can only do so much, and in some plays — a conventional  dramatization of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” say — it matters that the actor look like the character. But in others, the suspension of disbelief can be extended to accepting a black man in a part written for a white man  . . . or a short man playing a  tall man . . . or a woman  as Hamlet  (or John Travolta as a woman). But sometimes it’s too much of a stretch, as SNL will discover if it tries to cast Fred Armisen as Hillary.

If you aren't checking out Jon Healey's Bit Player blog on a regular basis, break that habit by reading this analysis of Google's China music effort, which aims to make legal downloads available in the Middle Kingdom. Says Healey:

If Google wins support from all the major record companies (only Universal Music Group has signed on so far, according to the Journal, and Silicon Valley Insider questioned even UMG's participation), it will have pushed the music industry closer than it's ever been before to a model that depends on advertisers, not consumers, to pay the freight.

One reason the Long Tail thesis has been so hard for old-school media companies to swallow is that when you're used to selling bazillions of copies of a few blockbusters, it's hard to build a Giganticorp-scalable business around selling less of more. In this case, the problem is taken care of: The music labels are selling nothing in China now.

Notes from two debates:

Homeland security? Please. At the GOP candidates' debate Wednesday in Simi Valley, you could walk in with pretty much anything and no one would know. Cell phones, Blackberries, etc. were not allowed, but guests were on the honor system: You could take out your Personal Digital Assistant and check it, but if you wanted to keep it in your pocket, no one would be the wiser. No ID checks, no pat-downs, no metal detectors. If you're in Simi Valley -- and the Reagan Library, no less -- you must be OK.

At Thursday's Democratic debate in Hollywood, forget it. No cell phones, no exceptions. And no place to check them -- what is this, a welfare state where you want the government to solve your problems? And yes, there were metal detectors. And better get that driver's license out. Democrats may love you, but they don't trust you.

After the Dems' debate, by the way, there were plenty of parties -- but by invitation only. You'd better know someone. And if you got to the Kodak Theater too late, sorry, the bar is closed. For the Republicans, it was generous entitlements all around. Come one, come all -- full bar, roast beef, turkey, vegetables (just in case there was a Democrat in the crowd), full dessert array, and individual servings of red, white and blue jelly beans. This is Reagan Country, after all.

Of course, sometimes Republicans are just Republicans. If you wanted to get to the GOP debate by some way other than a car -- well, you can't. Why don't you have a car? You could see the hoi polloi with their signs and chants (lots for Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee, and one lone Fred Thompson holdout), but only through your car window. Going to the Kodak on Thursday, car or no car, you had to quite literally rub shoulders with, and push your way through, the chanters, enthusiasts, pamphleteers, conspiracy theorists and activists. Getting in was chaos. No special privileges for members of the City Council, the Assembly, the Senate, who had to elbow their way through the masses along with everyone else, hold their driver's licenses aloft and plead with the harried people behind the check-in desk to get their paper bracelets.

That's more like it -- Democrats acting like Democrats, Republicans like Republicans. The world's order is restored.

The biggest ovation at Thursday evening's Democratic primary debates went to former California Gov. Gray Davis.

Art Torres, the state Dems' chair, was introducing the state party's A-list at the beginning of the program. When he got to Davis, there was a smattering of applause as the bigwigs on the floor craned their necks to see where the ex-guv was. Then they spotted the shock of white hair way upstairs, in the first balcony, in the back. The smattering turned into affectionate cheering, which turned into a standing ovation in his balcony, then the other two balconies, finally the floor.

Torres jumped in: Which governor had the biggest deficit? (Hint: Not Davis). More clapping. The warm reception outdid even Hillary's big applause line of the night -- the one about needing a Clinton to clean up after the second Bush, just like the first.

At the GOP debate in Simi Valley the night before, the reception for the man who ousted Davis -- current governor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- was polite enough, no doubt in part because he escorted Nancy Reagan into the room.

How catching is Barack Obama's theme of 'change'? It's practically an epidemic. Every candidate is all about change now — and always has been, they'll have you know.

It started with the jaw-dropping results in Iowa last week, when Obama and Mike Huckabee swept their respective primaries. On both sides, the second-place finishers — John Edwards and Mitt Romney — saw fit to comment.

John Edwards worked change into his main strategy — bring Hillary Clinton down first, worry about Barack later. From his post-primary speech:

The one thing that's clear from the results in Iowa tonight is that the status quo lost, and change won.

Clinton rolled with the punches in her speech:

Together we have presented the case for change, and have made it absolutely clear that America needs a new beginning.

But in this weekend's ABC-Facebook debate, she countered Edwards' 'status-quo' label the way she has of late — by giving 'change' an 'experience' angle:

I'm not just running on a promise of change, I'm running on 35 years of change.

The Republicans, oddly enough, found themselves in a situation symmetrical to the Democrats...

I once observed (though I’m sure I wasn’t the first to do so) that every situation in life can be linked to an incident or line of dialogue from Seinfeld. But who would have thought Mike Huckabee would agree?  Yet, even as he was showing the negative ad that he wouldn't be running, the former Arkansas governor was recycling a classic quote from the show about nothing.

In a posting on his Web site that now seems to have been removed, Huckabee referred to "Mitt Romney's George Costanza Standard: 'Jerry, Just Remember, It's Not A Lie If You Believe It.'"Only in America would a former Baptist preacher and self-described “Christian leader” compare a Mormon opponent to a neurotic half-Jewish, half-Italian New Yorker — with the confidence that at least some of his “values voters” supporters in Iowa would get the reference. Just don’t wish them a Happy Festivus.

When is a Christmas greeting not just a Christmas greeting? When it’s paid-for a presidential campaign. Mike Huckabee’s new television ad, in which he reminds viewers (and Iowa voters) that “what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ,” is notable not just for its explicit invocation of Jesus but for some subtle iconography that recalls the subliminal ads associated with the 1950s. 

Behind Huckabee in the ad are bookshelves whose intersection with a divider forms a cross. In the next ad, perhaps Huckabee could position a picture of Mitt Romney on a shelf in front of a box with two protruding pencils, causing viewers to wonder: Could it be Satan’s brother?

Quote of the Day from the National Journal's Hotline blog:

"I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim."

-- HRC endorser/ex-Sen. Bob Kerrey

Even though he endorsed Clinton, the former Nebraska govenor and senator seems to see this as valuable "experience" that HRC doesn't share. From the Seattle Times:

"There's a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal," Kerrey said after the kickoff of a five-day tour of Iowa by Clinton. "He's got a whale of a lot more intellectual talent than I've got as well."

It's cute and it sounds open-minded on the surface, but it's also part of a larger trend of people bringing up the "M" word all the time, in any context, frequently in ways that can be twisted around to suit smear tactics and have far more staying power than some old drug-use rumor.

Come on, people. Obama's related to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but that's not alienating Dems or endearing him to Republicans.

When I worked in Pittsburgh we had a local politician — since elevated to statewide office — who littered his public and private remarks with the word “frankly” whether or not the comment in question required any frankness on his part.  This tic was tiresome and amusing at the same time. My colleagues and I wondered whether he he used the F-word at home. (“Frankly, that was a wonderful meal!”)

Rudy Giuliani has a similar problem.  In his “Meet the Press”  interview on Sunday, the former mayor introduced an array of explanations and  rationalizations with the phrase, “The reality is…”  My “reality” check of the transcript turned up 13 examples including “The reality is, it was a mistake for me to be on the [Iraq Study Group] panel" and (in response to a question about his protégé and former police commissioner Bernard Kerik, now under indictment) “Now, the reality is I made a mistake.  I made a mistake in not vetting him carefully enough.”

Just as a politician who says "frankly" constantly makes you wonder if he's really being candid, a presidential candidate who is constantly insisting that his opinions are "the reality" insprires suspicions that he's overcompensating. That, you might say, is the reality.

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy: You need to give “The reality is” a rest. And I say that frankly.

The social networking site may have caved and modified Beacon, a controversial advertising system, so that users can more easily opt out of it, but Facebook is still fending off flak over privacy violations.

Beacon sends information on users’ online purchases from participating vendors (like Overstock, Fandango and Blockbuster) to their networks of friends — which soon raised questions about how much information Facebook should be collecting on its users' online activity.

To be fair, the program might have escaped relatively unscathed had it not crashed the holiday party: Many users are still seething over having surprise Christmas gifts ruined, when the purchase stats were sent to the intended recipient. From The Times:   

Sean Lane, who joined the online protest after a surprise gift to his wife of a white gold and diamond ring from Overstock.com was broadcast to everyone in his Facebook network, posted on MoveOn.org's protest wall: "This is a pretty powerful feeling. Honestly, I didn't think that people could make changes like this through civil action. I am very proud to be a part of this!"

(So are people ticked off because the recipient knows about the gift, or about how much they paid for it?)

Okay, so probably no public personality can compare in influence and power to Oprah, who has thrown in her lot with the unbelievably lucky Barack Obama. But 'tis the season for celebrity endorsements, and it seems like this year anyone and everyone is taking a primary interest in the candidates — who in turn are more than happy to take advantage.

Hillary's still standing tall, even though Oprah passed her over:

The Clinton campaign, in an e-mail to The Associated Press, said of Winfrey: ''We're fans and we think it's great she is participating in the process. Everyone has wonderful supporters, and we're proud of ours'' — such as Steven Spielberg, Magic Johnson and Barbra Streisand, who threw her support behind Sen Clinton on Tuesday.

Then again, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark is siding with Obama. You're not out of the woods yet, Sen. Clinton.

It's got to be frustrating, what with so many political celebs shopping around. Earlier this year, the reverend and former White House candidate Jesse Jackson declared, "I reaffirm my commitment to vote for Sen. Barack Obama.... Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed." But in a meeting with The Times' editorial board, he flip-flopped, admitting, "I have very strong feelings for Hillary because we've worked together 30 years." Now, he's even giving a nod to John Edwards, apparently at Obama's expense. In an op-ed for the Chicago Sun-Times, he wrote,

"The Democratic candidates — with the exception of John Edwards, who opened his campaign in New Orleans' Ninth Ward and has made addressing poverty central to his campaign — have virtually ignored the plight of African Americans in this country."

Your more garden-variety stars are also prone to sowing their political wild oats. According to the Huffington Post, before she settled on Hillary, Barbra Streisand "covered her bases and [gave] $2300 to Obama, Edwards and Clinton. "

On the Republican side, forget Pat Robertson backing Rudy Giuliani. Mike Huckabee is milking his Chuck Norris endorsement for all it's worth, even as he flaunts one of his most recent prizes — former pro-wrestler Ric Flair, aka The Nature Boy. Meanwhile, according to AP, brothel owner Dennis Hof decided to throw his lot in with Ron Paul, adding, "I'll get all the (working girls) together, and we can raise him some money...I'll put up a collection box outside the door. They can drop in $1, $5 contributions."

For all you pundits wondering what fueled the Huckabee and Paul surges, look no further.   

With the Dec. 14 cutoff for temporary funding looming, it's time to take another look at what's happening to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, since President Bush refuses to sign Congress' reauthorization bills. Remember those worst-case scenarios? Looks like they're close to becoming reality.

According to Congressional Quarterly:

The Congressional Research Service reported Oct. 25 that 21 states face combined shortfalls of $1.6 billion in their children’s health insurance programs this year. The first of those states will run out of money in March.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Unless there's an infusion of cash - and quickly - California will run out of federal money to pay for its program in June. To prepare for the shortfall, state officials will decide in the next two weeks whether to stop enrolling new children and send letters to 56,600 families telling them their children will lose health coverage on Dec. 31.

"These are horrible options," said Lesley Cummings, who manages the state's Healthy Families insurance program for low-income kids. "We never thought we were going to be in this place."

And if you think this state is screwed?

California isn't alone. The Congressional Research Service estimates that 21 states will exhaust their federal money next year - nine will run out of money in March - if Congress simply keeps the program funded at the current levels.

Georgia's program is already running a deficit, and is surviving only with a temporary grant from the Department of Health and Human Services. ...The state is pulling the medical records of kids to determine who are the sickest, so if they have to drop children from the program they'll start with healthier children.

"Georgia is on the edge of the cliff," said Dr. Rhonda Medows, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Health. "We don't want to think about kids having cancer, but how do you schedule someone for six weeks of chemotherapy if they only have four weeks left in the program? Does the oncologist start the therapy or do they wait? How do you plan? You can't."

From the Los Angeles Times:

The Wirkkalas, with an income that for five years has hovered around $70,000 and a home they bought in 2004 for $535,000, are a family many would call middle class. But they have been priced out of the private health insurance market, and their circumstances illustrate the core of a political battle over how much a family can earn for their children to qualify for a federal-state partnership called the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. If the outcome of Washington politics goes one way, the children could remain uninsured. If it goes the other way, the children might get health insurance.

On a larger scale,

If Congress fails to act, or even if funding is held to present levels, or increased to administration-recommended levels, the California HealthCare Foundation estimates that up to 600,000 children in California could lose their health insurance beginning in 2008. Because of healthcare inflation, California and many other states would have to begin closing off new enrollments and disenrolling some insured children, according to the foundation's projections. "The funding wouldn't allow California to maintain its present caseload, and keep up with inflation," Finocchio says.

As The Times' editorial board said last month,

This bears repeating: President Bush's bullheaded insistence on sabotaging reauthorization of the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program, better known as SCHIP, will hurt the very people -- poor and middle-class Americans -- he claims he wants to protect.

I'd hope that the bitter realities starting to hit many American families would finally bring Bush around, but seeing as stories of children saved by SCHIP don't seem to have moved many Republicans, I doubt that a few million more kids will make a difference.

Amazon, that fearsome Internet peddler of all things — particularly all things media — has consistently led the pack in marketing and distributing products, whether it's selling eBooks or digital movies through Amazon Unbox.

But eBooks never really took off, partly because there's never been an appealing reader. Now, according to Larry Magid of the Mercury News, the online store has taken matters into its own hands:

Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos wants it both ways: He wants to change the way we read without making us feel that we have to change the way we read. The manifestation of this lofty goal is the Kindle - the company's first electronic book reader.

Wall Street seems to think Amazon's new venture is a winner, judging by the way the company's stock rose after the announcement. It's not too surprising: The handheld Kindle has a number of advantages over previous attempts. It's not backlit; the battery lasts for days; and it has a built-in receiver that allows you not only to download books but also surf the Web. And of course, choice and cost don't hurt:

...Amazon has something none of the other players can match - the world's largest online bookstore and a powerful position with the publishing community. Its library of 90,000 e-books includes almost all the bestsellers. And, unlike typical e-book pricing, Amazon is selling electronic books at a very reasonable price - $9.99 for most new books and as little as $3 for older titles. I was on the verge of spending $18 for "Boom," Tom Brokaw's new book about the '60s but am instead reading an electronic version that I bought for $9.99.

And the two-ton gorilla lurking around this blogpost: If it ignited a real change for print media, how would the Kindle affect the newspaper industry?

Right now, newspaper readers can be pretty firmly placed into overwhelmingly online consumers, or dogged print readers. There's something to be said for being able to take in a whole page, complete in its design, providing you information you wouldn't necessarily know to look for. Then again, there's also a whole lot going for the efficient, updateable and individually tailored digests you can get from the Web.

If used for newspapers, the Kindle could change that. When you downloaded the day's paper, what would you see? A page from the print edition? The Web-based news feed? Or would it be some hybrid, an apparently print page featuring clickable ads and active links? Nothing so exciting yet, unfortunately. The current format gets lukewarm praise from Newsweek's Steven Levy:

It's also exciting to get a daily dose of The New York Times and other papers. But the interface for newspaper reading is disappointing—you have to painstakingly go through article lists, and often the stories are insufficiently described. Still, getting the Times in one burst on a daily basis, no matter where you are, is closer to getting a hard-copy delivery than picking out articles on the Web, and it costs $13.99 a month, compared with the $50-plus I pay for home delivery. Do the math.

Then again, not much is likely to happen with the price tag sitting at a pretty $399. Granted, Amazon's first run sold out. But if they really want the Kindle to catch fire, they'll market it less as a luxury item and more as a convenience. Intriguing as this new device is, novels will never rival music in sheer sex appeal and consumer attraction. The Kindle is no iPod. It can't rely on the pop-culture-chic to get people to pay up. Though perhaps they can tap into the Prius effect and market it primarily as a paper-saver. Green is the new cool, after all.

Speaking of iPods, they'd better do it fast, before Steve Jobs works out the kinks and makes a real bestseller out of Amazon's idea. As Magid points out, "It wouldn't take too many Apple programmers to turn an iPhone and an iPod into an iReader."

Well, we already knew left-leaning softies were to blame for Rush, but it's not just because they give the radio personality someone to rail against. It's also because liberals are actually tuning into his program. That's according to a poll conducted by Zogby International and USC's Norman Lear Center.

Given what the terms liberal and conservative are actually supposed to mean, it may not be a surprise that bluebloods value diverse viewpoints, while the red-blooded prefer programming aimed at reinforcing their beliefs. And granted, this is the kind of finding that seems to be right up Zogby's alley. Nevertheless, it's intriguing that the anecdotal evidence has actually been validated by people who know how to handle statistics.

But the research didn't just show liberals' media sources to be more varied than conservatives'. It found that, based on entertainment preferences, people can be clearly grouped into one of three categories: liberal, conservative and moderate. You are what you watch. And read. And play.

A sample of the findings: Liberals like PBS, conservatives dig FOX News. Moderates, meanwhile, watch talk shows and avoid politics as much as possible. It indicates, Lear's deputy director Johanna Blakley told KPCC's Larry Mantle, that Oprah's endorsement of Barack Obama may turn out to be a crucial victory for him.

The whole thing seems to reflect better on lefties than on right-wingers — though happily, they both love Hugh Laurie. But moderates (or "purples," as the study calls them) come out looking the worst of the bunch. Then again, don't take my word for it — go read Zogby's summary yourself, and tell us what you think.

Opinion L.A.: We blog. YOU decide.

I'm always looking for material in my one-man jihad to rehabilitate the reputation of the pre-Otis-Chandler Los Angeles Times, so I was excited to come across an interesting tidbit recently. A few weeks ago the editorial board reacted to the second fall of Karen Hughes by noting that centralized government information offices are never as good at promoting America's image as is the private sector. Sample:

The challenge has never been getting fair-minded people to agree that there are things to admire about Americans and our society. Hughes was fond of noting that the initials PD "remind us that public diplomacy is people-driven." But people do not make diplomacy. Governments do. New York and Los Angeles already do a creditable job of selling American culture to the world. Washington's job should be selling U.S. policy.

This is just a rehash of the brilliant thesis, laid out half a decade ago by Chuck Freund, that vulgar culture -- of exactly the sort that both leftwing and rightwing American politicians have always deplored -- is actually among the most powerful weapons in this country's "soft power" arsenal. It's not a new idea that Elvis did far more than the Congress for Cultural Freedom to win hearts and minds behind the Iron Curtain, but I did think this was the kind of notion that would get a more sympathetic hearing among post-Goldwater libertoid types than among the center-right, Nixon-boosting, foreigner-disdaining, reliable-men-in-charge-of-everything types I imagine running the mid-century Times.

But the following editorial from March 9, 1952, arguing that Voice of America is a waste of time, makes me rethink that stereotype. Between their skepticism about an anti-communist boondoggle and their lengthy citation of Henry Hazlitt's The Freeman, I'd have to say those editorial board alter kockers of yore knew a bit more about freedom (and not just True Industrial Freedom either) than history has given them credit for. As background you may need to know that the Coast Guard cutter Courier, which is pictured at right (buy the postcard at eBay!), was a vessel outfitted with powerful radio equipment that spent more than a decade cruising the Mediterranean and broadcasting the sounds of liberty into Eastern Europe. The editorial board, which was as anti-Red as any in the country, nonetheless argued that this was a straight-up waste of taxpayer money:

A Better Job for Less Money

As the President was launching the Coast Guard cutter Courier on her maiden voyage as a floating radio transmitter (with three times the power of any American station) the newsstands had an article by George Creel, who did a similar job much better and for very much less money during World War I. 

Voice of Experience

Creel's article, called "Study in Planned Futility," in The Freeman, is criticism of the Voice of America by a man who can justly be called an expert. His campaign as head of President Wilson's Committee on Public Information, during the full two years of World War I, cost just $4,912,553. In addition to running the propaganda office, which was highly successful, Creel also ran the censorship.

In World War II the Army and the Navy and the other so-called "information" offices — really propaganda agencies — spent at least $500,000,000 for the same purposes; with so little success that the administration felt it necessary, as Creel remarks, to "continue the courtship of other people on a larger and even more lavish scale."

Here's what we've had at Opinion L.A. over the past few days:

Pakistan's and the stock market's unhappy upheavals prompt some digging through the old archives.

Past boards on healthy international relationships:

It comes hard to blame the Pakistanis for breaking off their affair with the United States.

Pakistan has given the United States whole-hearted support from Korea on, siding with us in hot and cold crises.

We have failed to back Pakistan as stoutly in the dispute with India over Kashmir. India's Nehru has broken his pledged word to allow a decision by plebiscite in Kashmir. He has temporized, brushed off the recommendations of neutral commissions, and still hangs on to the province.

On nationwide money woes:

This country has withstood graver dangers than the present, and when it was not half as strong. Stand fast! The Republic lives! Long live the Republic!

Catholic author Gregory Popcak objects to Garry Wills' argument that religion has nothing to say about abortion:

Scripturally, the basis of Christian condemnation of abortion comes not only from the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" as Wills asserts, but from the fact that the Bible considers children a supreme gift and blessing from God. One does not reject a gift from God lightly. Jeremiah 1:5 tells us that God knew us in the womb, and Exodus 21:22-23 imposes a penalty for those who cause the miscarriage of a fetus.

Web editor Tim Cavanaugh, in a Swift turn of logic, argues for restrictions on problem-breeders like himself. Editorial researcher Paul Thornton, meanwhile, bonds with Stalin over their shared atheism.

Finally, LAPD superstar Chief William Bratton joins the editorial board to chat about overtime, drivers licenses for illegal immigrants and, or course, crime. Some candid remarks on that last topic:

I don't think it has anything to do with warmer weather, it has nothing to do with lead poisoning, it has nothing to do with abortions, and if it does those are very minor influences on the crime rate. What does influence crime is people deciding to break the law, or unintentionally finding themselves in violation of the law.

Tell it like it is, Chief.

Blogger David Ehrenstein performs last rites for Barack Obama's "relevance to gay and lesbian African Americans":

Now a gospel star may have driven a wedge between Obama and his gay supporters and roiled others as well. For, by putting McClurkin in the spotlight, Obama has broken black America's 11th Commandment: "Don't talk about it in front of the white people!"

Environmentalist Andrea Kavanagh finds a National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition very fishy, and Rollins College professor Paolo Spadoni advises the While House that if it wants to free Cuba, it "should stop pandering to a shrinking group of Cuban American hard-liners and start listening to that world he claims to represent." Sharon Browne, Linda Chavez and Ward Connerly condemn a Caltrans plan to "use race, ethnicity and gender when awarding contracts under the federal highway program. What are the agency and the governor up to?"

The editorial board shakes its scandalized head at the news that State Department officials, apparently acting without authority, promised Blackwater USA contractors immunity; and plays down the significance of class-action attorney William S. Lerach's guilty plea. In the wake of a new report on healthcare in South L.A., the board states its case on King-Harbor Hospital:

To be clear: We do not trust the county to run this hospital, and we will oppose, as anyone should, any recommendation that would involve the county in its future management. But we will insist, and others should as well, that the county find alternative ways to care for a population whose needs are so profound.

Readers react to Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky's Op-Ed on dividing Jerusalem. "In reality," writes George Epstein, "giving up a part of Jerusalem will not solve the problem, nor will removing settlements from the West Bank." George Saade reframes the idea: "It's not about 'dividing' Jerusalem; it's about sharing it."

Remember last year when a flock of hipster towns were promising to provide free citywide wireless networks? Apparently financial issues have forced that idea out of fashion. From Sacramento and San Francisco to Houston and Chicago, Wi-Fi plans have been hitting snags or falling apart altogether.

That's a shame, since total coverage in our high-tech age would be a pretty valuable service. Is there a way for cities to provide wireless coverage?

But, as Tim Wu of Slate.com points out,

The basic idea of offering Internet access as a public service is sound. The problem is that cities haven't thought of the Internet as a form of public infrastructure that—like subway lines, sewers, or roads—must be paid for. Instead, cities have labored under the illusion that, somehow, everything could be built easily and for free by private parties. That illusion has run straight into the ancient economics of infrastructure and natural monopoly. The bottom line: City dwellers won't be able to get high-quality wireless Internet access for free. If they want it, collectively, they'll have to pay for it.

Establishing a citywide wireless hotspot is a matter of scale. Wu goes on to point out that Wi-Fi has succeeded not in high-tech metropolises, but in smaller municipal venues:

St. Cloud, Fla., a town of 28,000, has an entirely free wireless network. The network has its problems, such as dead spots, but also claims a 77 percent use rate among its citizens.

Business models and laws of scale aside, the San Francisco Chronicle says that clear purpose and tangible benefits also help:

The most popular uses that are motivating municipalities are public safety, remote worker access, meter reading and surveillance cameras. The city of Ripon (San Joaquin County) recently installed 71 Wi-Fi-enabled video cameras that allow police to monitor intersections and trouble spots remotely. Police officers using the city Wi-Fi network can pull up pictures from their cars and also broadcast live from cameras in their vehicles, allowing other officers to get a sense of what's happening at a specific location.

"What you'll find is cities are now selling the networks on things that are quantifiable, like public safety or public works," said Craig Settles, a Wi-Fi consultant. "You've got to establish that before you can pursue other social goals."

And apparently, in Minneapolis, the city's public safety wireless network took pressure off cellular networks and made rescue efforts easier following the August bridge collapse.

So perhaps, in the near future, those cities will be able to build public-access service from existing networks like these. Before giving up on the muni-Wi-Fi dream, cities should consider models like these. According to the Chron, leaders in the Wi-Fi industry

are backing off some of the talk of broad public access and bridging the digital divide. The more immediate goals are concrete applications and services that can be sold to cities looking to go Wi-Fi.

Despite the slowdown in the municipal Wi-Fi space, leaders say there is still a bright future ahead, especially with the introduction of new Wi-Fi-enabled devices such as the Apple iPhone. Metro-Fi CEO Chuck Haas said 6 percent of Metro-Fi users last month accessed the network through an iPhone. [...]

Here's a thought: If you have an iPhone, you're already on the right side of the digital divide, and you don't need a city government to provide you with free wireless. Muni Wi-Fi was meant to be a public service; under this model, it becomes another way for private enterprise to benefit the privileged. Let's hope that as plan Bs for municipal Wi-Fi evolve, cities remember why they took to this idea in the first place.

Think Americans are the only ones with a God-given right to groundbreaking TV? Think again. Granted, this season showcases the morbidly adorable Pushing Daisies, the grimly hilarious Reaper, and the culture-clashing Aliens in America, whose young protagonist finds himself saddled with a Pakistani Muslim exchange student.

But even that last move by the CW is overshadowed by Iran's hot new drama, Zero Degree Turn, in which a young Iranian man rescues his beloved, a Jewish woman, from the concentration camps. And on state-run television, too.

Pause, and rewind: President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has publicly denied the existence of the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the month of Ramadan is prime TV-watching time throughout the Muslim world, and the romantic drama is probably a refreshing change from the clerics that normally feature on the "Bearded Box."

Iran may be trying to reshape its image through fiction, but across the border, entertainment is thumbing a televised nose at the state. Iraqis currently have a choice of at least three (count 'em) shows satirizing their beleaguered government, according to NPR:

One show is called Government. With a slight change in Iraqi Arabic, this phrase means, "Help me, I'm dead" — a pun lost on no one here.

Ouch. And I thought Warner and Levin were harsh.

Columnist Joel Stein asks if Paris Hilton is a plagiarist:

I've spent five weeks e-mailing and calling Elliot Mintz, Hilton's publicist, making it clear that the L.A. Times was about to run a story about this accusation. Though he said he'd get back to me, he hasn't. I'm guessing when you're Hilton's publicist, you're a busy guy. In retrospect, I should have gotten his attention by saying Hilton wore the same dress as [Judi] DeBella.

Meanwhile, DeBella's family and friends -- who mocked her ruthlessly when she told them she was writing letters to Hilton -- are encouraging her to sue.

Columnist Rosa Brooks imagines the Columbia University president introducing Bush the way he did Ahmadinejad. Claremont McKenna's John J. Pitney Jr. explains why the California GOP is at war with itself. And Ohio State Univeristy's Daniel P. Tokaji argues that asking for ID at the polls could burden poor and minority voters.

The editorial board advises the governor how to reach his goal of reduced carbon emissions by 2020. The board shows how a pro-choice group has inadvertently made a strong case for net neutrality, and praises the mayor for bringing in a major private donation for L.A. schools.

Michael Moore crusading against the machinations of the healthcare industry is one thing. But when the American Cancer Society takes up arms against low-quality healthcare with a $15 million campaign, it looks like the beginning of a good long siege.

Normally the organization devotes its campaigns to the dangers of cigarettes or the benefits of regular cancer screenings. But after crunching the numbers, CEO John Seffrin told NPR, it was clear that

Lack of access to timely and adequate healthcare has now become a major cause of cancer deaths in America. We were advertising to get people in to do the colonoscopy ... or to stop smoking, and the truth is that many people said, we couldn't get in to get it done, or it cost too much, or I couldn't afford it, or my insurance didn't cover it. So we began looking into it and sure enough — more than race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education — it's whether you're covered with insurance that most correlates to excess cancer mortality in America.

Seffrin said he hopes that the effort will motivate all presidential candidates to come out with platforms on healthcare. He's probably halfway to that goal — many of the major candidates have produced some vision for affordable universal coverage, and HillaryCare 2.0 is generating respectable buzz.

If candidates are already touting their positions on healthcare, what does the cancer society's pitch have over them? Simple: It's not a candidate. It has little political capital to gain from using the problem as an election '08 hot topic. Chiming in to the national dialogue on healthcare adds both value and urgency — and in the midst of campaign frenzy, provides a stark reminder of what's truly at stake.

Radio Hall of Famer Mel Karmazin, co-founder of Infinity Broadcasting, former Viacom COO and now CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio, stopped in to see the editorial board Monday. Sirius is in the midst of a troubled negotiation to merge with XM, its only rival in the satellite-radio space. The merger, which would leave Karmazin in charge of the combined company, has been intensely scrutinized by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice and has raised questions ranging from antitrust to content decency. (The ed board has opined that the Houses of Howard and Oprah, respectively, should be allowed to unite.) Sirius now has 7.1 million subscribers to XM's 8 million, and part of the two companies' argument is that their combined power will provide strong competition for terrestrial radio stations. Some highlights from Karmazin's talk:

On whether Sirius and XM are in trouble:

Sallie Hofmeister: There were a lot of people who made the argument that without the merger, both of you would go out of business. Is that part of your argument?

Mel Karmazin: No, because I, I mean I can't make that argument. If I, if I could make that argument I would make that argument, and we'd get the merger approved. Because the...

Sallie: There's no...

Mel: ...the government would say... There's not an argument in there... As a matter of fact the reverse is true, because I can't make an argument that I can't back up, is that if in fact we believe... So let's assume, an epiphany came to us because we suddenly realized our cost structures were just crazy, then we would file comment, and we would be a troubled company, you know, and we'd sit there and say, "The reason you should approve this merger is that if you don't approve the merger — right? — the country would be without any satellite, and isn't it better to have one than..."

David Hiller: Are both companies profitable now?

Mel: Neither company has made a dime.

David: Neither?

Mel: Neither company's made a dime. You know, it's, we are unable to make the failing-company argument so, you know, some people have said, you know, it's ailing but not failing. And I believe it's not failing. And, and I bought personally a whole bunch of our stock, you know, I mean a lot, you know. And um, I believe that the company will be successful without the merger or with the merger. I just don't know why... 

Sallie: You have to say that because if the merger's not approved, your stock would sink I guess.

Mel: Well it's not, it's a real issue but if you take a look at the equity the companies have right now, there's a substantial amount of equity, so below the deck, I mean, you know... 

David: What is the equity?

Mel: $10 billion.

David: Combined, of the two?

Mel: Yeah. So I mean how do you, you know, look at, you know, an equity value of $10 billion — you can sit there and go, Wall Street... It's hard to make the argument that you're failing because you're growing. Our number of subscribers is growing. You know, we're going to have a billion dollars, Sirius will have a billion dollars of revenue this year. Now, you know, I mean in my opinion that's substantial. Now our costs are, we're at high fixed costs. It costs us three hundred thousand — three hundred million dollars for each of the three satellites we have up in the air today.

Tim Cavanaugh: $300 million per year per...

Mel: Per satellite, no. To buy them. Right? You buy a satellite, it costs you $300 million; satellite life is 12-13 years. So if you looked at the investments the company has made: we've invested $5 billion, right? We've spent $5 billion in cash, and we're still not making money. Now, I wasn't here then. I would not ever have gotten into this business, OK? I mean, I came in at the end of 2004, as I saw profitability on the horizon. The reason I'm not expanding into Europe... I mean, just think about it, look: You know, if satellite radio's a good thing in the United States, why aren't you doing it in Asia and China? Because it's going to take you 12 or 13 years of losses before you make money.

On why the satellite radio giants might be able to win:

As the Erwin Chemerinsky saga continues, the man himself writes in:

Tenure has many costs, but it exists so that academics will feel free to express themselves without fear of reprisal. It is based on the idea that everyone benefits from the free exchange of ideas. Without academic freedom, the reality is that many faculty members would be chilled and timid in expressing their views, and the discussion that is essential for the advancement of thought would be lost....

My concern is that the message from this episode, especially for my more junior colleagues who may aspire to be deans someday or, for that matter, judges, is that if you speak out -- liberal or conservative -- you may lose your chance at a position that you really want.

That's why I decided to answer questions about what happened and to accept the invitation to write this article. [UC Irvine] Chancellor [Michael] Drake initially asked that I simply say that we had mutually agreed to end my prospective deanship. I refused and said that all I wanted was that the truth be told.

Drake offers his side of the story. Columnist Rosa Brooks says that the Iraq war and the debate around it should make it clear why Americans lead the world in medical narcotics use. And columnist Joel Stein offers a no-nonsense assessment of career comeback benchmarks achieved by Britney Spears.

The editorial board thinks it's time for democracy to come to D.C., in the form of a House seat. The board also argues that, after the switch from analog television, newly opened spectrum 'white space' should be used wisely rather than left empty. Finally, the board laments that Sacramento failed at redistricting again.

Readers respond to the Chemerinsky hiring and un-hiring. A former student, Anthony Sbardellati of Los Angeles, writes, "I can attest that Chemerinsky never forced his political views on anyone in the classroom and always presented all sides of the constitutional issues he taught in an evenhanded manner."

You knew they held a Republican debate last night, right? Here's a transcript. Can you guess without looking how many GOP presidential debates they've had this year? Five. The Dems have had nine of the damned things, apparently. And we can all look forward to four more presidential debates in the next three weeks alone. I was just about set to invoke the Law of Diminishing Returns, but I see that Matt Drudge is calling last night's gabfest the "most watched debate of '07 election season," with "3.1 million viewers." Say what you will about the democratic process, but there is no lack of easily discoverable source material on and by all the candidates. I only wish that the Nine Dwarfs season didn't so quickly devolve into one-on-one, with third-party spoilers sidelined unless they attract an unreasonable 15% support at the polls.

Newt Gingrich published his ideas about debates here two weeks ago.

Greg Braxton's Calendar-section examination of Hollywood's "Black Best Friend" (BBF) phenomenon was reminiscent not just of the classic Hollywood-stereotypes flick Hollywood Shuffle, or its white-guilt mirror image in Crash the Short Cuts to the Grand Canyon, but also to one of my favorite bits of recent L.A. Times op-edifying: David Ehrenstein's Obama the 'Magic Negro.' Which itself, in another fantastic leap of inversion, was converted into a Rush Limbaugh song to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon" ("Barack the Magic Negro," don'tcha know).

Ain't America grand?

In his latest column, Ronald Brownstein ponders why Republican candidates are narrowcasting their primary-season advertisements and media appearances to Fox News and YouTube. Which has left the Sabbath-gasbag shows gasping:

Perhaps even more revealing of the campaigns' growing desire for control is their bipartisan caution about dealing with the broadcast networks — which, as Pew found, maintain substantial audiences in both parties. Candidates from both parties are making themselves available for interviews on the morning news programs — which provide broad exposure while subjecting the candidates to relatively brief questioning — and, to some extent, the evening news broadcasts as well. But with the exceptions of Democrat John Edwards and Republican John McCain, the leading contenders so far have ducked the Sunday interview shows traditionally considered a rite of passage for presidential candidates. Clinton and Giuliani have not yet appeared on "Face the Nation," "Meet the Press" or "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," while Romney has only submitted to one of Stephanopoulos' somewhat more informal "on the trail" interview segments. [...]

Jim Dyke, who was the communications director of the Republican National Committee and is now advising Giuliani, says the relative blackout reflects a straightforward cost-and-benefit calculation by the candidates as their options for reaching the public expand. "If you do a Sunday show and you get through it unscathed...then nobody cares," Dyke said. "Maybe the inside-the-Beltway types notice a little bit, but it's not going to change the narrative of what you're doing...that week. But let's say you go on and you have to face all this 'gotcha' stuff and you don't get through it very well, you have at least a day's worth of stories about how you're...not ready for prime time. They used to be big because they defined the commentary and punditry so much. I'm not sure they do that anymore. Plus it was an opportunity to reach so many people, which you have so many ways of doing now."

Whole column here; Brownstein archive here.

Also, in case you missed our previous Opinion Daily, Swati Pandey assessed India's 60th birthday.

Like birthdays for those of a certain age, Pakistan’s 60th anniversary has provided an opportunity for gloomy reflection. In the midst of political strife, religious violence and calls for Gen. Pervez Musharraf to relinquish his dual role as president and head of the army, this birthday has caused some Pakistanis to wonder: Where did it all go wrong?

Not least of those was Musharraf himself, who in a recent speech blamed the past lack of leadership for Pakistan’s economic and political problems.

Interesting words from a leader in one of the most embattled periods of his tenure.

Musharraf's statement, no matter how ironic, does raise a good point. The exception to the rule remains Pakistan's first leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

A revered figure in Pakistani history, Jinnah was not a radical or even a practicing Muslim. He never saw the new nation as an Islamic state, let alone a hotbed for radicalism. Just take a look at his presidential address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on Aug. 11, 1947.

Jinnah dreamed of a secular state for all faiths, not just Muslims:

You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.

He envisioned India and Pakistan as allies:

If you will work in co-operation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed.

He imagined a pluralistic, yet integrated society:

We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community — because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis and so on — will vanish.

Pakistan's founder was a powerful and charismatic leader. But Jinnah's dreams, linked as they were to him, couldn’t survive his passing just one year later.

And it shows. This year’s anniversary has been marked by the rise of radicalism, in the form of the bloody struggle for the Red Mosque. That’s not to mention Pakistan’s incessantly antagonistic relationship with India and the increased isolation of populations such as those in Waziristan — populations that provide fodder for extremism and violence near the border with Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, Jinnah’s death, rather than Pakistan’s birth, better explains the nation’s history and its troubles.

Dick Cheney was one of the primary proponents for war with Iraq. So imagine my surprise when I heard, on radio station KPCC last night, a 1994 interview with then-ex-Secretary of Defense Cheney that sounded uncannily prophetic. Almost in one breath, the current vice president rattles off the reasons that invading Iraq during the Gulf War would have been a bad, bad idea:

Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

CHENEY: No.

Q: Why not?

CHENEY: Because if we’d gone into Baghdad we would have been all alone, there wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got into Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off—part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim, fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

Who IS this guy? And where was he four years ago?

Granted, this is a worst-case scenario, but where it hasn’t happened exactly as our balding Cassandra predicted, it has come close. The only major ally we’ve maintained in our policies in the Middle East has been Britain — a partnership that’s already looking shaky with Gordon Brown in office. We had a hell of a time creating a viable government, which remains ineffectual—the Iraqi parliament achieved little before its August recess. We’ve seen Iran rise in power, Kurdish separatists seek more autonomy and Turkey bridle over border issues.

This interview is making the rounds thanks to YouTube, and it's no surprise. I'm sure many could accept that the occupation of Iraq has been mishandled and that the war in Iraq was an unforseen political snafu. But this revelation — that the second-in-command must have known what we were getting into — could have far-reaching political consequences if it percolates through to major media outlets. Cheney would certainly have to answer some uncomfortable questions, and it could seriously demoralize those Bush supporters still holding the line. If the White House knew what would happen all along, why bother defending Bush's Iraq policy?

I suppose that if nothing else, it’s a testament to the folly of man — particularly politicians. 

Cheney goes on to make a more poignant argument:

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families, it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad [and] took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many. And I think we got it right.

Too bad they got it so wrong the second time around.

At the risk of seeming obsessed by SCTV, I must note that “Wheel of Fortune,” “Jeopardy!” and hotel deals weren’t Merv Griffin’s only achievements. Griffin inspired three of the most inventive and free-associative parodies produced by SCTV, all of them anchored by Rick Moranis’ impersonation of Griffin, which consisted of a gray wig, a padded rump and two vocalizations: “Oooooooh” (Merv/Rick’s sycophantic response to anything his B-list celebrity guests said) and “We’ll be right back!”

In the “Merv Griffith Show,” which built on the frail similarity between Merv’s last name and Andy Griffith’s, Merv was the sheriff of Mayberry. In “Merv Griffin: The Special Edition,” Steven Speilberg directed Merv, Orson Welles (John Candy), HAL the Computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey,”  George Plimpton (Joe Flaherty)  and Griffin regular Phyllis Newman in a televised space flight that managed to parody all concerned along with “Star Wars,” the rivalry between Spielberg and George Lucas and Plimpton’s sideline as a pitchman for Intellivision video games.

Then there was the tribute to Merv’s “theme shows”: a clueless salute to the psychedelic '60s with a Nehru-jacketed Merv singing, “There must be some kinda way outa here,” and bantering with Dennis Hopper (Dave Thomas) and an out-of-it Jackie Vernon (Candy). Oooooooh!

Sound off about recent web-only content from the folks at Opinion L.A.:

Opinion Daily: "Foreclosure heaven" Sometime house hunter Paul Thornton looks at all those defaulting borrowers and longs to give them a Rupert Pupkinesque "Tough luck, suckers; better luck next time." But will Democratic busybodies ruin his only chance to afford a home?

Dust-Up: "Golden state, gay marriage" Lorri L. Jean and Ron Prentice lock horns over same-sex nuptials.

Opinion Daily: "Was Ted Kennedy right about Scotus?" Michael McGough reviews the Roberts-Alito court's record and finds both more and less reason for concern than originally advertised.

Dust-Up: "Rumor romp" Luke Ford and Eric Spillman get to wrasslin' over blogs, ethics, gossip and the fall of the destination media.

Opinion Daily: "Torrent trackers get RAMmed" Jon Healey tracks the indexers, indexes the trackers, and finds a world of confusion in efforts to crack down on online copyright infringement.

Dust-Up: "Subprime players" Should the government bail out bad loans? How many people will lose their homes? Can Paul Thornton ever afford to buy a house? Robert Camerota and Paul Leonard to duke it out on these issues and more.

There's plenty more where those came from, and more coming every day. So make your opinion known in the comments, or email us at opinionla@latimes.com.

I am just old enough to remember back when Tom Snyder was just an ordinary Joe on Channel 4 newscasts here in the Southland. (Also, I'm just native enough that the word "Southland" doesn't set my teeth on edge, unlike some of my colleagues, partly because at the height of Latchkey Nation I was raised at least in part by the Tom Snyders and Jerry Dunphys of the world.) There are some good remembrances of Tom's breakout "Tomorrow Show" triumphs on the Internet, including a bit of thanks from Mickey Kaus and a delightful little anecdote by the Huffington Post's Bill Barol. Excerpt:

I met Snyder and his crew in a gigantic suite at the Waldorf, and we waited for [Jimmy] Carter. And waited. And waited. Snyder grew visibly more restive. Carter finally arrived, something like 30 minutes late, and introductions were made. The ex-president sat on a couch, Snyder in an armchair. "Are you sensitive, sir, about the glasses in your breast pocket?" Snyder asked. "You might want to do something about that."

Read the whole thing. Also fine are the various videos flying around, including this interview with The Clash. As that latter link aptly demonstrates, Snyder was just about the last of an era (actually, early David Letterman, to whom Snyder played John the Baptist, has some claim on that, too); when popular culture and news felt like it had been all shaken up, and Establishment-looking types like Tom Snyder and Mike Douglas enthusiastically sifted through the pieces, trying to figure out punk rock, Charles Manson, and campus radicals gone wild, not in any particular order. People any younger than me will probably have a hard time understanding that there was a time when people genuinely cared what a New York Jets quarterback thought about politics, the best novelists of a generation could be found at the same heavyweight boxing championship in Africa, and the pop charts could be topped by a song that celebrated jogging in the nude. It took a while before the promoters and the professionals not named Bill Graham realized that there was money in them thar counterculture, and that intimate journalistic access was a pointless risk of untold millions. I'm not saying that life was any better then, but the celebrity journalism? You betcha.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that Democrats, in arguing for withdrawal from Iraq, are giving the go-ahead for genocide:

It's worth at least pointing out a key difference between the potential genocide in Iraq and the heart-wrenching slaughters in Congo and Sudan: The latter aren't our fault. But if genocide unfolds in Iraq after American troops depart, it would be hard to argue that we weren't at least partly to blame. Yes, the mass murder would have more immediate authors than the United States of America, but we would undeniably be responsible, at least in part, for giving a green light to genocide. Obama offers precisely that green light in his proposed Iraq War De-escalation Act.

Orange County teacher Jeffrey K. Wallace suffered a guilty conscience for having looted antiquities as a child, but now he's sending his bit of rock back to Athens. The Heritage Foundation's Brian M. Riedl sounds off on farm subsidies, and Douglas Ring and Diane Donoghue warn city officials that without better housing policies L.A. could become a "gilded ghetto".

The editorial board explains why it's OK to root for the Islamists in Turkey, why the Fairness Doctrine is unfair, and why the county needs to be open about using taxpayer money to settle lawsuits.

Letter writers respond en masse to William Lobdell's personal story of losing his faith. Los Angeles' Harry Shragg notes, "I am convinced that he has finally found his faith. It is faith in himself that is most important...."

I've been an admirer of Pete Wilson, the ABC-7 news anchorman and KGO radio blabbermouth in San Francisco, and was shocked and saddened to hear of his death Friday. The Bay Area media market is raucous enough to handle some old-school prickly figures who keep the region more dynamic and exciting than its self-regarding cult of niceness would suggest. Wilson was one of those, but his higher-profile gig was in local network TV, where his opinions were at most suggested by a cocked eyebrow or heavy sigh. (Read between the lines of the SF Chron obit above about how annoying Wilson's fellow TV-news drones actually found his habit of trying to debate issues with them during off-hours: because, you know, why would anybody who works in news ever want to discuss issues of the day at any kind of ideological level?)

To get the real Pete you had to listen to his radio show, where he was a witty and eloquent exponent of a set of political philosophies I never quite nailed down: I'd say it  was a sort of free-ranging, cranky, vaguely conservative populist skepticism, but he contained his share of contradictions. The Chron obit contains a bit where he took some shots at my old friend Bevan Dufty for a gay/lesbian reproductive decision. I guess that position could actually square with free-ranging, cranky, vaguely conservative populist skepticism, but he wasn't much of a values conservative as far as I could tell. To the degree you can know a man by his fans, here are some words from Pete's.

His death, in a weird heart-attack-during-surgery-for-something-else, seems especially needless and leaves California media much poorer. I'm sorry he's so unknown down here that the only reaction seems to have been thank god they weren't saying it was our beloved former governor who died. 

"Silicon Valley old-timer" Andrew Keen asks what Google wants from us:

On iGoogle, we all get to aggregate our lives, consciously or not, so artificially intelligent software can sort out our desires. It will piece together our recent blog posts, where we've been online, our e-commerce history and cultural interests. It will amass so much information about each of us that eventually it will be able to logically determine what we want to do tomorrow and what job we want.

The real question, of course, is whether what Google wants is what we want too.

James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn of Williams College explain why Bush is the anti-FDR. Columnist Patt Morrison parses missing people statistics and sets the "Captivity" marketing campaign straight. And Altagracia Perez and Raphael J. Sonenshein explain why limits aren't the way to fix L.A.'s neighborhood council system.

The editorial board reminds Democrats of their promise to disclose earmark sponsors, and applauds the FCC for opening up some spectrum to a variety of uses. And, having put P.E. safely behind them, the board wants stricter physical fitness programs for California kids.

Letter writers disagree with UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau's support for the DREAM Act. Long Beach's Dan Halderman asks a broader question: "Birgeneau laments that without $25,000 a year in aid, a student will never be able to attend UC Berkeley. Why does UC Berkeley cost so much?"

You, the FLP, continue to shower us with white-hot reactions to our Opinion Dailies:

Michael McGough's "Unions labeled" draws a flinty rejoinder from a man of the cloth in Chatsworth, CA:

Sir:

Michael McGough writes in "Unions Labeled" that the Employee Free Choice Act would ". . . give unions an unfair--one might even say un-American--advantage." Implicit in this statement is that unions and employers are on a level playing field.

The number of union-affiliated employed workers has fallen from one-third in 1945 to 14 percent in 1998. Although there are many suggestions for the decline, employer anti-union tactics--often illegal--have included: firing union activists, captive indoctrination of workers, showing anti-union videos, intimidating supervisor one-on-one meetings with workers, bribing of workers, open or veiled threats to close the business or facility, and actively supporting anti-union committees of workers. These tactics typically are designed, promoted, and managed by a growth-industry of high-powered anti-union consultants.

The facts are well-documented: the playing field is not level, and organized employer opposition to unions is the principal explanation for the decline in union membership. Much of this is true because of the incredible weakness of U.S. labor law and NLRB practices. Given this scenario, it's hardly unfair--or un-American!--to allow unions an advantage that would barely begin to level the playing field.

Rabbi Moshe ben Asher

Jon Healey's "Sirius, XM and American values" brings in some sound advice from a Phoenix, AZ student:

As a Sirius user...

I block any bad content. I just wish also that they get a dedicated fm channel. Even NPR overpowers them. Regular radio needs only one FM station just one not 2.

A reader in Afghanistan gives Sonni Efron a browbeating for "Dead reporters and the information gap"...

This article is a sad statement on the perverse and tortured logic that guides the thinking of the press.  All deaths caused by terrorists are lamentable.  The cost to society in the lost potential of those lives is incalculable.  However, to pretend that the information gap is caused by the deaths of reporters is simply journalistic narcissism in its most dangerous and deceptive form.

The true cause of the information gap in the United States and throughout the world is not the deaths of reporters on the front line in war zones.  The information gap is caused by the death of integrity in the reporters and editors in the news rooms thousands of miles behind the front the lines.  It is the fallacious concept that the newspeople have the ability and the duty to shape the news that is responsible for the information gap. 

The article refers to reporters asking impertinent questions of those in power as if this is an everyday occurrence.  The problem is that the media only questions those in power who disagree with their predetermined story line.  The public needs and deserves a media that will step back and report the story without the bias and backhanded remarks of the enlightened journalists. 

War is tragic and its toll in lost lives and suffering is enormous.  The only thing worse than having to fight a war against terrorists and fascists, be they Islamic, Nazi or any others, is to lose that war because the media undermined the Nation's will to win through its biased, one sided portrayal of the issues.  That is the only thing that can truly render the sacrifice and suffering of all the victims of this war meaningless.

Patrick D. Clonan
Police Advisor, Herat, Afghanistan

...while a reader in our nation's capital sees ominous similarities between being killed in Iraq and paid by Rupert Murdoch:

There are many disturbing points made in this article.  All made me cringe for the horror of possibilities.

As I read this I also thought of Rupert Murdoch’s probable takeover of Dow Jones.  The imminent launch of Fox News Channel?!  Where can you find the highly-regarded news sources (of the near-future)?  We seem to be racing toward a global society where pertinent, objective, reliable information will be available to fewer and fewer people—if it can be found (and recognized).

Is there anyplace left where the determination or the essential aspect is ruled by something other than the ability of the highest bidder? 

DJH in Washington D.C.

Finally, the eternal revolutionaries come out to denounce my own "Semper Fidel." Larry Maxcy provides some biting wit:

Hi,

You have to admit that Fidel and Hugo have quite a bit in common. The United States has failed on multiple occasions to kill them. I imagine this promotes a certain camaraderie.

All best,

Larry Maxcy

From Belize, bestselling author Cervantes sets quill to paper:

Dear Mr. Tim Cavanaugh,

I believe that the system that has not worked is the system that shamelessly left many poor and black people in New Orleans homeless and left to die like animals after hurricane Katrina.  Fidel's system has succeeded in giving every citizen of Cuba dignity and a decent life as human beings for almost 50 years consistently.  Of course, Fidel's system is very unlike the American capitalist system in which only a tiny portion of the population enjoy and control the greater mass of the wealth of a nation.  Katrina exposed the American system for what it is in its raw form.  And we, the whole world, saw it disappointedly and dejectedly.

People like Chavez, Morales and Correa are rightfully looking to Fidel for guidance because the his system puts the welfare of the society first, over the welfare of just one or a few privileged individuals.  The American system is based on money and the accumulation of wealth regardless of who is stepped on or at whose expense, as long as the victim is not an American.  America follows the doctrine of arrogance through power and right through might.  It is there for everyone to see.

Fortunately, the people in Latin America have realized that while they were being blinded by the glitters of the promised wealth through the capitalist system, they were being robbed of their nation's wealth and intelligence by the empire and its local collaborators.  Please realize that when you speak of Hugo Chavez, you are speaking of  man that is democratically supported by the popular will of 2/3 of Venezuela's population and a man that as fairly won about 8 elections and referendums in 8 years, so unlike George Bush and Felipe Calderon, who both had to cook and concoct many questionable deeds to beat Al Gore and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, respectively.

Definitely, you, nor anyone high up in Washington, cannot deny the fact that those same leftists, that you criticize for investing the nation's wealth back into the development of its citizens, have the overwhelming support of the people of their nations.  After all, is this not true democracy?  The only thing wrong with these true democracies is that the fair and open democratic process did not deliver the preferred outcomes and results that the empire so much desired.

The people are speaking.  You must listen to us.  Any other way is definitely anti-democratic.

Sincerely,

Ramon Cervantes
Belize

And from the great white north, Heather manages to bring the subject around to why Canadians are better than Americans:

I was in Cuba three times in the past year Tim.  How many times have you been there?  I cycled from Santiago to Havana, three quarters of the island.  How much of Cuba have you really seen up close, Tim? How many real, everyday Cubans have you been able to speak with at length?  Get their heartfelt views, etc.  That sort of thing.

You didn't mean Canada in your reference to the "Cream of the Global Left", did you?  After all, we have stayed friends and invested in that brave little country these past 50 years or so." Google " Ian Delaney's recent comments about how much more money Sherritt International is going to invest there in the near future. Course he isn't allowed in the United States due to the Helms Burton Law.  He says it hasn't produced a dent in his lifestyle.  Some of us non-americans just have this chip on our shoulder about other nations trying to tell us who we can associate or do business with.  Go figure.

Want to know what is always surprising to most of your "socialist neighbours" up here in Canada? ( Yikes! We even have universal health care here, just like the Castro Regime!)  It's when you watch some television show and they are interviewing americans, and the interview subject says something like " I just don't know why the world is so angry at the United States...why bad things like 911 happened.  We americans are good people...",  etc., etc.  No one wishes bad things to happen. But anwser me this:

We in other countries just wonder why the average american, with a reasonable level of intelligence does not see what the rest of the world sees: that your government is run by big business and lobby groups like those folks down in Miami Dade who sponsor terrorism themselves.  You can make all the jokes about Fidel you want.  He will pass on one day. When he does the world will show their respect at his funeral.  No one from the US government had better dare show theirs.

Heather
Canada

That's it for this installment. Keep those cards and letters coming!

Columnist Jonah Goldberg has a not-so-modest proposal to get rid of public schools:

[O]ne of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run 90% of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run 90% of the schools — particularly when it gets terrible results?

Dickinson College's Crispin Sartwell remembers Richard Rorty, while the U.S. Naval War College's Christopher J. Fettweis declares the Iraq war lost, and lays out what that means. Erika Schickel reminds the South Coast Air Quality Management District that humans have a "prehistoric jones" for fire.

The editorial board calls for immediate peace talks in Iraq, serious energy reform in the Senate, and a payroll system that actually works for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Letter writers respond to Sally Denton's assessment of how Mitt Romney's Mormonism will impact his campaign. See why Robert P. Sechler of Seal Beach thinks "an analogy between Romney and John F. Kennedy is a bucket with some big holes."

Online, in this week's dust-up, publisher Kurt Hanson and attorney Jay Rosenthal discuss the economics of online music. Today they ask if webcasting should be open to hobbyists, or just those who can make money for labels and artists.

Magazine editor Michael Patrick Leahy writes this week's blowback, critiquing coverage of the Creation Museum in Kentucky.

A deal announced today by Sling Media and the National Hockey League shows off not only an intriguing TV-PC convergence app, but also a content provider recognizing the opportunity to make it work for them. Read more about it at the Bit Player blog.

Right-wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh has been having a ball throwing the N-word at presidential candidate Barak Obama—that's N as in "Negro." Limbaugh, who calls Obama "Halfrican American,"  has been airing a song by Paul Franklin Shanklin* on his radio show called "Barak the Magic Negro," which is to be sung to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon."

The shock jock legitimizes his use of the phrase "magic negro" by noting he plucked it came from an Op-Ed by commentator David Ehrenstein that ran in the L.A. Times. Ehrenstein wrote, in a nuanced argument, that Obama fulfills the classic Hollywood role of a "noble, healing Negro" who assuages white guilt over slavery and segregation....

"while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest. As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic—embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic."

Demonstrating the principle that there's no aesthetic woolgathering so rarefied it can't be turned into a raspberry, Limbaugh uses the phrase mainly to emphasize that, in case you didn't notice, Obama is black. Oh, and Al Sharpton is black too. The song actually mocks Sharpton more than Obama, having the phony Sharpton sing that he has more street credibility and is therefore is more authentically black than the senator.

Actually, all questions about Obama's blackness should have been laid to rest last week when he was given secret service protection—the earliest ever for a presidential candidate—amid concerns raised by  racist chatter on white supremacist Web sites.

Oh, and Obama simply calls the song "dumb."

* Thanks to reader Eric for the correction.

Lou Dobbs is the gift that keeps on giving. You'd think it couldn't get much better than his non-fact-checked CNN.com column last week on the immigration protests and Law Day. Quick recap: Lou wrote that no major media outlets to his knowledge reported that May 1 was Law Day; I pointed out that The New York Times ran an editorial that day titled "Law Day."

Alas, it is I, not Lou, who is wrong—per his own fiat. In a back-and-forth with Lesley Stahl last night on 60 Minutes, the CNN anchor declared that anything he reports is fact. The provocation? Stahl confronted Lou on his show's report that absurdly linked the increase in leprosy cases in the U.S. (7,000 new cases in three years!) to all those dirty, diseased illegal immigrants invading America. Turns out the huge increase in American lepers never happened—the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said (and 60 Minutes told Lou) that there have been 7,000 new leprosy cases here over the last 30 years, not three. (Click here to read about the exchange and watch the video.)

Perhaps I should have a little more confidence in Lou. This is the man, after all, who debated our own L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa a year ago on CNN and trumpeted his own honesty in the illegal immigration debate:

DOBBS: Look. The mayor has different constraints than I do. He is a good man with the interests of the people of Los Angeles at heart. I'm sure that we could come up with some considerable agreement. But I don't—I have a different set of constraints on me. My constraints are to be honest, straightforward and as accurate as possible ...

VILLARAIGOSA: I don't need the last word I just want to say to you that I think this is a debate that needs to be civil, it's a debate that needs to center around the idea of what is best for the American people but also what is best for the values that this country was built on.

DOBBS: May I just put in one value that's critical? Honesty. I'll even pass on civility as long as we're honest.

An aside: Stahl doesn't get off that easily. Eleven years before she confronted Lou over his less-than-factual reporting and declared, "Reporters don't take on issues; reporters report issues," Stahl "took on" a topic herself—the unproved claim United Nations sanctions in the 1990s led to the death of half a million Iraqi children. (Read Matt Welch's article in Reason.)

Earlier this week, as the editorial board was bruiting whether and how to weigh in on the brouhaha over Don Imus and the Scarlet Knights (whom I thought of as the "Scarlet Ladies" back when Mr. Magoo and I were waving the RU pennant by the banks of the old Raritan), I made the case that A) yawn, who cares, everybody knows that Imus sucks; B) if we were going to weigh in, our only comment should be that Imus' suspension should be turned into an expulsion because Imus sucks; C) that this issue has no larger implications for American society, and only demonstrates that Imus sucks; and D) Imus sucks.

How am I, generally a circumspect character, so confident in my assertion that Imus sucks? Because I've been listening to Howard Stern for more than 20 years. This is not an attempt to convince you of the value of Stern's show or to dissuade you from whatever objections you may have with him. It's merely to note that anybody with even a passing familiarity with Howard's work has long been aware that Imus doesn't just suck, he morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably sucks. For the evidence, check out any of the Stern back catalogue, wherein the First-Amendment hero and satellite radio pioneer never misses an opportunity to critique Imus' lameness at exhaustive length; or take a look at Betty Thomas' surprisingly good Private Parts (critics agree! 80% on the tomatometer), which contains a bristling takedown of the mummified radio personality; or just dig the Imus references at the essential Marksfriggin.com, of which this week's offering is particularly apt:

Howard said that last week it came out that Imus is racist again. He said he used to work with Imus at NBC and he saw him go up to this black woman who worked there and called her the N-word. He said that this woman, Brenda, was a lovely woman and very nice. She wasn't even allowed to talk to Imus.

Howard said Imus is 100 years old and has no ratings on his show but they call it ''the wildly popular Imus show'' in the paper. He said it's not wildly popular, it doesn't get any ratings. He went on to say that Imus called the Rutgers woman's basketball team a bunch of ''nappy headed hos'' or something like that. He said that's actually nothing compared to what he said behind the scenes at WNBC when they were there. They should have fired him at NBC when he called Brenda the N-word but that never happened.

Good riddance, Imus. If we'd just been paying attention to Howard all along, we could have spared ourselves all this heartache.

I have zero sympathy for Don Imus, but in the Rev. Al Sharpton he has found a critic-cum-father-confessor with his own blabbermouth problems.

It isn’t just that Sharpton still bears the baggage of the Tawana Brawley case; in railing against Imus for his offensive comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, Sharpton is hinting at reprisals by the Federal Communications Commission that are unlikely and probably unconstitutional.

On CNN Sharpton said: "The FCC [has] rules. You cannot sit up on public-regulated television and make just racist remarks ..and claim that's free speech."

Well, not really. Racist actions by television stations do come under the FCC’s purview—in 1971 it revoked the licenses of a Mississippi station that refused to provide access to African-American candidates for public office—but racist speech is a different story.

The FCC does sanction “indecent” speech on the airwaves, but “racist speech” is not a priority for the agency and is likely protected by the First Amendment even on the regulated airwaves.

Unlike England, which criminalizes the incitement to racial hatred in broad terms, this country errs on the side of free expression. Imus is in a lot of trouble, but I don’t think he has to worry about the FCC knocking on his (or his employer’s) door.

The GEICO caveman—whose intelligence is comically at odds with his brutish appearance—may be the creation of an ad man, but a respected science magazine is now floating the possibility that heavy-browed Neanderthals may have donated a gene for high intelligence to modern humans.

In “The Neanderthal Inside Us,” an article in the March 3-9 New Scientist, Dan Jones cites a theory by Bruce Lahn, a geneticist at the University of Chicago, that microcephalin, a gene that may be associated with intelligence, could have migrated to modern humans through, uhm, interbreeding with Neanderthals.

The question of whether modern humans and Neanderthals “did it” is a perennial subject for science writers and a prime example of what I call the “toggle” story—a story that obliges copy-starved journalists by switching a thesis on and off again. This year, we can run a story titled “Universe Older Than Previously Thought, Scientists Say,” knowing that sooner or later we will be publishing a story headlined “Universe Younger Than Previously Thought, Scientists Say.”

I have lost count of the number of times the human-Neanderthal interbreeding story has toggled back and forth between “OMG it happened” and “No way, dude!” And, unlike the age of the universe, the question of what is politely called hybridization appeals to the prurient interest of readers.

The real vindication for GEICO will come when scientists trace the gene for reckless driving to the Neanderthals.

Another Super Bowl, another year on the sidelines for Los Angeles. There is zero impetus among NFL owners to move a team to L.A. or create a local expansion franchise, largely because they don't want to play ball with a city that refuses to kick in hundreds of millions in public money to build a modern stadium. And why should they? Angelenos are still watching football on TV even if they don't have a local team, or so the theory goes. One wonders if last week's Super Bowl ratings bear it out.

Super Bowl XL got a national rating of 42.6, and a share of 64. In Los Angeles, it got a 33.5 rating, 60 share. The rating is the percentage of TV-owning households watching a show, while the share represents the percentage of TVs in use that are tuned to that particular program. This means that a lot less people in L.A. were watching TV on Sunday than in the rest of the country, but of those who were, about the same percentage were watching the Super Bowl. The discrepancy is a little sharper than last year, when the national rating was 41.0 with a 60 share, while in Los Angeles it was a 34.2 rating and a 61 share. That may be because last year's game featured a West Coast team, the Seattle Seahawks. Or it may be because Angelenos are giving up on pro football, and increasingly have better things to do.

Ratings aside, it's hard to imagine that the absence of a local team will have no effect on support for the NFL in the nation's second-biggest TV market. The owners' need for immediate gratification in the form of public subsidies is going to have a long-term impact on their bottom line. The best advice for local football fans who want to send that message might be to stop watching football.

About 11 days ago, I picked up a very strong signal of the Howard Stern satellite show at 88.1 FM while driving east on Washington Blvd. The signal, a rebroadcast of the no-cusses-barred Stern Sirius show by an unlicensed station, broke decisively into the jazz station KKJZ at the Culver Blvd./Wash. Blvd. intersection, dropped out until the other side of the Selznick International plantation house (now known as The Culver Studios), then grew in strength and clarity, particularly once I got east of the 10. From about LaBrea to Vermont, Stern guest Evil David Letterman vied with Ella Fitzgerald singing "Sleigh Ride" on KKJZ for control of the 88.1 band. What initially seemed to be a dinky signal pointed out a window in Culver City turned out to be a fairly strong broadcast. When I reached the dowtown cluster, KKJZ regained control of the band. I was unable to raise the Stern signal again by scanning up or down on the dial. This was about 8:00am on a Tuesday: Checking my hearing against MarksFriggin.com, I see that I was listening to that day's show.

Daniel at LosAnjealous.com relates a similar experience this past February, at 6:15pm, traveling south on Coldwater Canyon Blvd., and picking up the signal at 88.3 FM. NBC11 news in the Bay Area reports that this is Pirate Cat Radio, which is run by Monkey Man from a Mission district theater in San Francisco and broadcasts at 87.9 in both S.F. and L.A. An email from Pirate Cat Radio tells me only "Yes we are!" (In reply to my question: "Can we say that you're still broadcasting, and still available at 87.9 FM, and can we give our readers any advice on where to pick you up?")

I haven't picked up PCR again since last Tuesday, though I've tried with various car radios on 88.1 (nothing but jazz), 88.3 (nothing at all), 87.9 (strong but fuzzy Spanish language) and 107.9 (pretty good Christian programming from KWVE, the station that is not ashamed of the gospel). Nor have I picked up Monkey Man's signal while traveling along Beverly Blvd., Santa Monica Blvd., the 10, various downtown routes, or for that matter Coldwater Canyon. KKJZ did not return phone calls—not that I would really want the jazz station to take any action; better to leave some mystery around Monkey Man's unreliable piratecast.