It may become part of the decathlon known as the Republican road to the White House -– to get down and potty-mouth about the news media.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum's base is probably cheering him to the rafters after he took a vulgar swipe at a New York Times reporter's question Sunday following a Santorum speech in Wisconsin to the effect that Mitt Romney's Massachusetts healthcare law made him "the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama."

After Santorum's remarks, New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny zeroed in on that remark, asking Santorum to elaborate:  "You said that Mitt Romney is the worst Republican in the country. Is that true?"

Santorum asked, "What speech did you listen to?"

Zeleny asked again, and Santorum, jabbing a finger toward Zeleny, said "stop lying" and "quit distorting my words. If I see it, it's bullshit. C'mon, man, what are you doing?"

The next day, and evidently in a more cheerful frame of mind, he used the incident as a kind of campaign medal, telling the Fox News Channel, "If you haven't cursed out a New York Times reporter during the course of a campaign, you're not really a real Republican, is the way I look at it." And he told CNN that he was making the case that Romney could not criticize President Obama’s healthcare law because Romney "wrote the blueprint" for it. "And to then say, you know, spin this as Rick Santorum said he's the worst Republican in the country." 

Candidates can never go wrong slamming the news media. Santorum may have been referring to an incident during the 2000 presidential campaign when then-Gov. George W. Bush, talking to his running mate Dick Cheney at a Labor Day event, was picked up by an open mike when he indicated the press corps and said, "There’s Adam Clymer, major-league asshole from the New York Times." Cheney evidently agreed and said, "Oh yeah, big-time."

Bush said he didn't realize the mikes would pick up his voice, but he did not apologize.

(Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry made a vulgar comment about a Secret Service agent during the presidential campaign, but he made it on the record to a reporter, after the agent on Kerry's detail accidentally knocked him down on a ski slope in Idaho. "I don't fall down. The son of a bitch" -- the agent -- ran into him, Kerry told the reporter. Different circumstance from Obama's gaffe to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, caught on an open mike in South Korea on Monday: "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.")

Maybe one of the most renowned press attacks was President Nixon's, heard on White House tapes siccing the IRS on L.A. Times Publisher Otis Chandler.

On Oct. 7, 1971, more than a year before election day, Nixon ordered the attorney general to check on whether Chandler's gardener was a "wetback," and mentioned that he had ordered an Internal Revenue Service investigation of the Chandler family. "I want this whole goddam bunch gone after.... Every one of those sons of bitches," Nixon said.

He also told the attorney general, John Mitchell, to have the Immigration and Naturalization Service raid The Times looking for illegal immigrants.

A day earlier, The Times had reported on 36 illegal immigrants taken into custody during an immigration raid at a tortilla factory owned by Romana Banuelos, whom the White House had just nominated for the position of U.S. Treasurer (she would become the highest-placed Mexican American in government).

The president told Mitchell that "as a Californian, I know. Everybody in California hires them. There's no law against it, because they are there, because -- for menial things and so forth. Otis Chandler -- I want him checked with regard to his gardener. I understand he's a wetback. Is that clear?"

The Times had decades earlier steadfastly supported and encouraged Nixon; in the midst of Nixon's 1952 ''slush fund'' scandal, The Times' headline had been "Sen. Nixon's Defiance of Smear Hailed."

And George McGovern, the Democrat running against Nixon in 1972, didn't say it to a reporter but to a heckler. McGovern leaned forward and whispered in the man's ear, "Listen, you son of a bitch, why don't you kiss my ass?"

Like Santorum, McGovern too made some political capital out of the incident.

By the next day, McGovern supporters were showing up at rallies with buttons reading "KMA." 

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COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS: Presidential Election 2012

-- Patt Morrison

Photo: Rick Santorum speaks on March 25 at South Hills Country Club during a public rally near Racine, Wis. Credit: Gregory Shaver/Journal Times, AP Photo

A Washington Times reporter who made some amazingly inaccurate statements while questioning Gov. Jerry Brown deserved the tart replies she received from Brown and his press aide Gil Duran.

If Kerry Picket wanted to take on the governor's record, she should have done a little reporting beforehand. Instead, she asserted that things "changed" in California when Ronald Reagan was voted in after Brown (he preceded Brown), that Brown had lost a reelection campaign for governor (he lost a U.S. Senate race, not a gubernatorial reelection contest), and that California was going into bankruptcy. (It just feels that way sometimes.)

But what on Earth could have led the governor to ask whether she was a Moonie? Yes, the conservative newspaper was founded by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, but how are her religious beliefs, whatever they are, relevant or fodder for attack? It's her failure to do her homework that was the issue here. 

The strange part about the interchange was that Picket started on more solid footing. She questioned concessions to the teachers unions, and Brown did indeed approve restrictions on how schools could make spending cutbacks, banning them from teacher layoffs and requiring them to base expenditures on an overly rosy budget picture (and no, I am not a Moonie). He now proposes to cut back on the number of standardized tests, which he might sincerely believe is a good idea, but it's also sending shivers of joy down the spines of teachers unions.

Without specifics to back up her questions, though, the reporter was quickly in over her head.

Brown made an equally strange assertion that criticism of his current administration has come solely from the Washington Times. The Los Angeles Times editorial board would surely differ with him on that score.

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Photo: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks with reporters as he leaves the Governors Luncheon at the National Governors Association winter meeting in Washington on Feb. 25. Credit: Cliff Owen / AP Photo

Mimi Beardsley Alford's memoir about her affair with John F. Kennedy when she was an intern is certainly a reminder of how things have changed since the 1960s. In those days a politician's private dalliances, even if they were known to reporters, never made it into print. Today, of course, that gentleman's agreement has mostly broken down (though John Edwards benefited from some indulgence by the MSM).

But that's not the only change. Strangely, other developments since the '60s may have neutralized the damage caused by politicians' extracurricular sex lives, resulting in the same insulation that JFK enjoyed for other reasons. It's interesting that in a more recent intern-related scandal, advocates of Bill Clinton's impeachment took pains to say that it wasn't his affair with Monica Lewinsky that damned him but his lying under oath. More recently, Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary after his second wife alleged that he had asked her for an "open marriage" so that he could keep his mistress.

To be sure, many Christians conservatives were appalled by the open marriage story, and both Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney clearly hope to capitalize in the long run from their history of marital fidelity. But if John F. Kennedy were running for reelection in this era, would news of an affair with an intern doom him at the polls?  Given Bill Clinton’s post-Monica popularity, the answer may be no.

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Photo: John F. Kennedy in California. Credit: William S. Murphy / Los Angeles Times

Readers of my column know I'm fascinated by the basic, eternal comment-board questions: "Why are people so mean?"  "Is vitriolic spewing on the Web just another sign of the apocalypse?"  

Of course, plenty of others are just as interested in the way "instant response" (you know, typing fast and then clicking a mouse, rather than getting a pen, finding the paper, writing a letter, sticking it in the U.S. mail) has changed the nature of reading, writing and just being a person.

I heard from some of them last week via Patt Morrison's KPCC radio show. I was on it because I wrote a 5,000+-word essay, "Haterade" -- about the vituperative nature of certain forms of online interactivity --  for the January issue of the Believer magazine (which, by the way, doesn't allow for comments on its website).  Cheryl Cox in Woodland Hills posted this on Patt's KPCC page, "With all due respect to you authors, I learn as much from the discussion that follows an article as from the article itself."  Ryan Johnson  said,  "I'm horrified by the hate that people freely express" and added that "genuine discussion rarely happens in a comments section." Meanwhile, "Eleanor in Los Feliz" wrote that she appreciated the "meta" aspect of "comment-conversing on a story about comment-conversing."  Me too. 

Offline, lots of people  have told me they would like to take part in online discussions but that the ugly rantings of the few too often drown out the good intentions of the many, and it ultimately doesn't seem worth the trouble. Others pine for the days, pre-blogosphere, when conversations about political and cultural issues generally took place in person among friends or colleagues who knew how to combine vehement disagreement with respectful listening. Meanwhile, many young people, some of them fledgling writers, admit they sometimes censor their most original, daring ideas out of fear of the "haterade." 

No one wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater, not that we could  at this stage in digital history. As we learned last year, the anonymity of the Web can help topple dictators, but there's no foolproof way to prevent people from also using that cover to air their most venomous, gratuitous grievances in a manner they wouldn't think of doing in real life. Even comment-by-comment monitoring doesn't help much. It's impractical, and besides, whose standard should prevail; where do you draw the line?  

At The Times, comments on some blogs are implemented through Facebook, which may engender more civility than utterly anonymous threads. But is it fair to force people to join Facebook if they want to post a comment? (Personally, I think not.) Moreover, if someone is determined to spew invective while hiding behind a false identity, don't The Times' Facebook comments prove it's  pretty easy to do?  (Not to give you guys any ideas. ) 

If  you think you have the key to civil discourse, by all means let us know.  Meanwhile, read the piece, if for no other reason than to snicker over the embarrassing opening anecdote, which describes an ill-conceived, messily argued and (rightfully) lambasted (without benefit of comment boards) article I published in the mid-1990s when I was a fledgling kulturkritic/opinionator/navel gazer. No doubt my loyal haters will appreciate the opportunity to make up for the online pummeling I dodged back then.

Oh, and here's a comment footnote:  What's the real derivation of "haterade"?  I always thought it was coined by young, snarky blogger types, but I'm hearing that it is actually a hip-hop expression (the Urban Dictionary’s first entry calls it "a figurative drink representing a modality or thought" and doesn't mention hip hop). So if you know the answer, please speak up. Just try not to use all caps if you can help it.

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Photo credit: Christina House / For The Times

City Council districts change every 10 years as lines are redrawn to reflect demographic shifts recorded in the decennial census. This decade's current redistricting effort is now underway. But except for gaining or losing a few blocks at the far northern end, where Watts joins South Los Angeles and the central city, Council District 15 doesn't change. It can't, and it won't, because it has nowhere else to go. It's fenced in by the harbor on the south and the very strange shape of the city boundaries from there northward. Unless more territory is annexed to or detached from Los Angeles, this district will look pretty much the same in 50 years as it does today.

Take a look at these maps of the City Council districts today, in the 1990s, the 1980s and the 1970s (maps courtesy of the city's excellent Bureau of Engineering online map gallery). Not much change, save for some gradual addition in territory linking Watts to Harbor Gateway.

Politically, too, it's a somewhat odd district. San Pedro may be in some respects the city's most conservative enclave after the far northwest San Fernando Valley. But it's a conservatism built on and tempered by a strong union presence in the port, and when joined with more liberal voters in Watts and Wilmington, this district is one of the few in the city that is just as likely to choose a liberal Democrat, a conservative Democrat or a Republican.

Janice Hahn, a Democrat who left the office earlier this year after her election to Congress, was one of the council's most liberal members. She was elected in 2001 in the same election that made her brother, Jim Hahn (also a liberal Democrat), mayor. Janice Hahn succeeded Rudy Svorinich, a Republican; Svorinich in turn defeated Republican Joan Milke Flores in 1993 in the post-riot election that saw voters elect Mayor Richard Riordan, Los Angeles' first GOP mayor in decades.

Flores had been secretary, planner and then chief of staff to City Council President John S. Gibson Jr. before succeeding him on the council in 1981. Gibson, a Democrat, represented the 15th District for 30 years, from the 1950s into the 1980s. In the early part of his term he was deemed one of the council's few liberals. The city's politics changed over the decades, but his didn't, and Gibson left the council as one of its more conservative members.

Both candidates vying for the post in the Jan. 17 runoff -- LAPD officer Joe Buscaino and Assemblyman Warren Furutani -- are Democrats. Furutani has the support of much of the Democratic Party establishment, including the Los Angeles County Democratic Party and elected Democrats such as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, county Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, City Council members Bernard C. Parks and Paul Koretz, and a bevy of lawmakers in Congress and the Legislature. He also has labor backing from the politically influential UNITE HERE Local 11, representing hotel and restaurant workers. On Thursday, he won support from the city's largest civilian public employee union, SEIU Local 721. The union, a major player in City Hall, backed firefighter and union activist Pat McOsker in the Nov. 8 nominating election.

Buscaino is backed by his own union -- the Los Angeles Police Protective League -- and decline-to-state-party City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and Councilman Dennis Zine. Add support from Democratic council members Tom Labonge and Jose Huizar, and the Los Angeles County Young Democrats.

The candidates split endorsements from construction and building and trade unions and teacher unions; United Teachers Los Angeles is going with Buscaino, which is interesting given that Furutani is a former school board member. But all in all, does Buscaino's backing represent a slightly more conservative shade of Democrat than Furutani's? Yes. And no. But perhaps we can say Furutani's people are more the entrenched political establishment and Buscaino's are more the insurgents, or at least the outsiders? Kind of, sort of. It's the 15th District. It's complicated.

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--Robert Greene

Christopher Hitchens' influential life was lived out in public argument on panels, at lecterns, in books, magazines, newspapers and on Internet screens, including the Los Angeles Times. He wrote Op-Eds and book reviews, stretching back to 1990. In our pages he quoted W.H. Auden and might as well have been speaking for himself ("All I have is a voice/To undo the folded lie"). He objected to the death penalty ("It is for Congress to pass legislation removing the United States from the company of Islamic despotisms, banana republics and totalitarian dictatorships that still practice this barbarism") and to the "rushed, vindictive" execution of Saddam Hussein, when his reckoning should have been "sober, meticulous and untainted." He unraveled human connections ("We are all brothers and sisters under the skin long before pigmentation was evolved"). He examined celebrity ("Beware of too easy a surrender to the vicarious identification that makes us address people whom we have never met  by their first names"); royalty ("archaic, celebrity freaks"); George Orwell ("Truth, it turns out, is great after all, and can prevail"). He poked,  prodded and opinionated; he annoyed. 

Another occasional contributor to the Op-Ed page, physicist Lawrence Krauss, had this to say Friday about Hitchens, who before he got too ill was writing a foreword to Krauss' upcoming book, "A Universe from Nothing":   

Just before leaving his company the last time I saw him, in a poetic accident,  I was reading a newspaper piece at his kitchen table about an emerging effort to ensure that young people at elite institutions preserve their Catholic upbringing during and after college.    When describing the temptations to depart from piety, the author wrote:  'Exposed to Nietzsche, Hitchens, co-ed dorms and beer pong, such students are expected to stray.' 

I reflected on what a remarkable tribute to the man this simple sentence represented.  To be so overpowering in one's cultural impact that one can be mentioned without explanation is one thing, but to be sandwiched between Nietzsche and beer pong is an honor that very few of us can so hope to deservedly achieve.

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Photo: Christopher Hitchens. Credit: Christian Witkin / TwelveBooks

LAPD officer Joe Buscaino and Assemblyman Warren Furutani are running hard to win the open City Council seat in District 15, which extends from Watts south along the two shoestring strips that are Harbor Gateway to Harbor City, Wilmington and San Pedro. The runoff election is scheduled for Jan. 17, but early mail voting begins next week. In a special election like this one, with nothing else on the ballot and no one from outside the district voting on anything, the mail-in vote is key.

Buscaino and Furutani came in first and second, respectively, in the Nov. 8 race to succeed Janice Hahn, who left the council earlier this year after she won a special election to Congress to replace retiring Rep. Jane Harman. The Times endorsed Hahn in that race, so chalk one up for us. On the other hand, we endorsed Hahn's deputy, Gordon Teuber, in the election to replace her on the council -- for all the good it did him. Teuber came in sixth in a field of 11.

Why Teuber? Members of the editorial board were pretty unimpressed with all the candidates, including Buscaino and Furutani. Both seemed too tied to labor and unable to exert sufficiently independent stances when it comes to making important budget and personnel decisions. We thought Teuber had the best combination of know-how, independence and perspective for the job. That doesn't mean we expected him to win it, and frankly, we probably didn't help by waiting until the weekend before election day, after so many mail votes were already cast, to publish our endorsement.

Long gone are the days (the turn of the 20th century up through the very early '60s) when this newspaper alone could crown a candidate with its endorsement. That power now belongs to labor unions, business groups, political parties, other elected officials and, sure, sometimes a thumbs-up from The Times, other newspapers and, increasingly, blogs and websites. Except, of course, in the too-rare election when a candidacy itself motivates voters to consider all points of view and then act completely independently.

Our goal with endorsements in the modern era is neither to designate winners nor predict them, but to give as honest and straightforward an assessment as we're able of who we believe the best candidate is, and why, and what voters should demand of that person. It's different from the approach of interest groups, which choose based on what the candidate can do for them. Of course, we'd like our pick to win. And we're an opinionated bunch, so we have very definite thoughts about what qualities and qualifications would serve the city best. We do our best to be clear to our readers about those thoughts.

Members of the editorial board interviewed the candidates on Monday, and this time we tried something different. Endorsement meetings are usually off the record, but for the runoff we made our discussions on the record, and recorded them. Over the coming days we'll include on this blog recorded portions and/or transcripts of our discussions. And we'll be frank about what we thought of the candidates' answers to our questions.

We will publish our runoff endorsement later this month. In the meantime, feel free to offer up your own questions of the candidates, and if we find them especially interesting, we'll pass them along and share their responses.

(Click on map to see full-size image)

--Robert Greene

Photos, from top to bottom: Harbor Gateway, Joe Buscaino and Warren Furutani. Credit: Robert Greene / Los Angeles Times

It's nice to know that in Britain, tradition is still important.

And I don't mean the royal family.

No, I'm talking about the proud tradition of blaming others when scandal erupts.

Its latest practitioner is James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch. As The Times reported:

Assured, aloof and at times combative, News Corp. scion James Murdoch insisted to Parliament members that he had been kept in the dark as evidence mounted that corruption was widespread at one of his company's British newspapers.

The 38-year-old News Corp. deputy chief operating officer was grilled for 2 1/2 hours Thursday by a committee of British lawmakers investigating a phone-hacking scandal and attempted coverup at the now-defunct News of the World tabloid.

Murdoch came across as the kind of boss many of us have encountered in our careers -- unfortunately.

"He's someone who finds [it] almost impossible to say he was wrong -- an interesting contrast with his father," said Claire Enders, a media analyst with Enders Analysis research group in London.

Given the chance, did Jimmy take the high road? Surprise -- he did not:

Instead, he blamed his underlings. Murdoch said they did not disclose vital information or show him an email unearthed in 2008 that showed several people at News of the World were involved in the hacking. The email undermined News Corp.'s position that the wrongdoing was limited to a private investigator and one "rogue reporter." Murdoch said he was never shown the email.

Ah, the old "I never got the email" dodge, eh?  Clever.

Unfortunately for Murdoch, others remembered things, uh, a little differently:

Hours after the hearing, Tom Crone, former legal advisor to the tabloid, released a statement disputing Murdoch's version of events.

"The simple truth is that he was told by us in 2008 about the damning email and what it meant in terms of wider News of the World involvement," Crone said. "At best, his evidence on this matter was disingenuous."

See how polite the British still are?  In the U.S., a lawmaker shouts "You lie" at the president, even when he doesn't. In Britain, a business tycoon lies and they simply call him "disingenuous."

Of course,  we in the former colonies can't afford to be too smug, what with the Penn State sexual abuse scandal  and the Herman Cain sexual harassment scandal.  Not to mention the long-ago Richard Nixon Watergate scandal (with fascinating details revealed Thursday in newly released grand jury testimony) and, closer to home, Sheriff Lee Baca's L.A. County jails inmate abuse scandal. 

In all of those cases, the guys at the top, oddly, didn't know anything. Makes you wonder how such dumb guys got so far, huh?

I could be wrong, but it's not always been this way.  I seem to remember one Robert E. Lee, watching his battered troops retreat at Gettysburg, who said: "All this has been my fault."

Then were was Dwight D. Eisenhower.  He prepared a message if the D-day landings failed that said in part: "If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."

And after the Bay of Pigs debacle, President John F. Kennedy said: "What matters is only one fact; I am the responsible officer of the government."

Not to mention Harry Truman's famous "The buck stops here" sign on his presidential desk.

I guess at News Corp., for those making the big bucks, the buck stops down the hall.

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Photo: News Corp. executive James Murdoch speaks in London to members of Parliament investigating the phone-hacking scandal at the now-defunct News of the World tabloid. Credit: Reuters  

Not every news day is "Man lands on moon" or "Obama elected president" or even "Black Friday on Wall St."

No, some news days are, well, different.  Like Wednesday:

"Dangerous exotic animals deliberately freed in Ohio, officials say." 

 "Georgia Supreme Court to hear case of woman eaten by alligator." 

 "Lindsay Lohan taken away in handcuffs after probation is revoked."

Sure, the Republican presidential candidates bashed one another Tuesday night, attempting to prove they can run the country much better than President Obama.  The Times has plenty of coverage of that.

But really, how in the world can you resist reading a story about lions and tigers and bears roaming Ohio? 

I mean, for SoCal residents of a certain age, it's Lion Country Safari déjà vu time:

"We are not talking about your normal everyday housecat or dog. These are 300-pound Bengal tigers that we had to put down," [Muskingum County Sheriff Matt] Lutz said.

Schools in the area were closed as a precaution, and motorists were warned to stay in their vehicles.

 

Plus, grisly as the subject matter may be, who doesn’t want to know what kind of court case has been filed involving a woman-eating gator?  Certainly I learned something new:

A key issue the Georgia court will address is whether the homeowners' association should be shielded from the lawsuit under a doctrine known as "animals ferae naturae."

Which apparently means that, when an alligator kills and partially eats your 83-year-old mother-in-law who is house-sitting while you and your wife are vacationing in Europe, it's a case of animals will be animals.

Finally, though you may claim to be tired of Lindsay Lohan, there's something about her train wreck of a life that makes you want to just take a little peek at that story -- just so you can shake your head in righteous indignation, right?

Lohan's crime this time?

[L.A. County Superior Court Judge Stephanie] Sautner reviewed Lohan's probation progress as part of a sentence stemming from a 2007 drunk-driving conviction and the May theft conviction.

Sautner said Lohan deliberately "blew off" the 360 hours of community service that she had been ordered to complete at the Downtown Women's Center, missing nine appointments and logging just 21 hours.

Lohan's defense this time?

Lohan's attorney, Shawn Holley, said the actress "had to earn a living to support herself and her family" and her opportunities are in Europe.

So, she was busy. A girl's gotta work.  Wonder if that would work for the rest of us?

But fortunately for Lohan, California can't afford the prisoners it already has.  So what will happen to her?

The judge, however, admitted that jail is not really a place for Lohan because that is now where felons are being sent by the state. The judge said that if the actress does make bail, she must perform two days a week of her 120 hours' community service at the morgue.

The morgue! Now that's tough on crime.

But perhaps the Solomonic solution would be for Lohan to do a movie about working in a morgue?

Still, enough of "news lite." There must be something else.

Ah, this just in:  "Man accused of trying to break into Southwest cockpit."

As they say in those Bud Light commercials:  Here we go.

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Photo: A sign posted on Interstate 70 on Wednesday warns drivers of dangerous animals loose in the area around Zanesville, Ohio. Credit: Matt Sullivan / Reuters

The above picture is what newspapers used to be; the picture below is the future of newspapers.

On Thursday, the Onion posted this story:

"Congress Takes Group Of Schoolchildren Hostage"

'We Need $12 Trillion Or All These Kids Die'

Also on Thursday, the L.A. Times posted this story:

"Congress seals deal to fund government for a few more days."

The Onion's story, and accompanying tweets from the site, prompted Capitol police to look into the "incident."

Uh, yes, it was a fake story, though not everyone got the joke.

Still, when a real story like The Times' sounds almost as implausible, who can blame them?

Of course, this kind of thing isn't new.  More than 70 years ago, Orson Welles fooled a lot of people with a radio broadcast of a fictitious Martian invasion of Earth.

Radio then, the Internet today. Who can you trust?

It used to be people turned to newspapers.  But that's changing.

As Times media columnist James Rainey wrote this week:

Americans turn to their newspapers (and attendant websites) on more topics than any other local news source, according to a survey released this week by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. But, despite their own reading habits, more than two-thirds told pollsters that if their hometown paper disappeared, it would not seriously hurt their ability to keep up with the news.

Now, as someone who works at a major daily newspaper, you might think this would be upsetting news.

No daily newspaper, no daily newspaper jobs.  No more job, no more Ferrari.

But I'm not a complainer.  I'm forward-thinking.  I have a plan. 

And I got it from, well, OK, from reading the newspaper.

The Times' Business section ran this story Wednesday:

"Food products described as artisan go mainstream."

In the food world, "artisan" used to mean a meticulously handcrafted product, made in small batches.

No more.

This week, Domino's Pizza introduced its Artisan Pizza line at its nearly 5,000 outlets across the country. It joined the trend of major companies in describing products as artisan.

Wendy's has its Artisan Egg Sandwich, Ralphs markets offers Private Selection Artisan Breads and Starbucks sells Artisan Breakfast Sandwiches.

OK, so the article is about food.  But I was intrigued by this paragraph:

The term, from the Italian artigiano, was coined as far back as the 16th century to refer to a skilled craftsman who carved or otherwise hand-tooled an item.

Talk about a "eureka" moment.

It's the future of journalism.  We'll no longer be writers, ink-stained wretches -- we'll be artisans.

Everything we write will be hand-tooled, honed to a fine edge, polished until you can see yourself in it.  The Stradivariuses of the blogosphere.  (Or should that be Stradivarii? I'll look it up and repost later if I need to correct it.)  

You can laugh. You can sneer. You can post snarky comments. (C'mon, what do you want for free?)

But consider this from The Times' artisan story:

Domino's is on a roll lately — shares in the Ann Arbor, Mich., company have risen 80% this year, gaining 19 cents Tuesday to $28.80.

So if a savvy company like Domino's is on this bandwagon, count me in.

And if it doesn't work, there's always the Onion.

Oh, and by the way, I was kidding about the Ferrari.

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The artisan: Bread baker Mark Stambler

--Paul Whitefield

Credit, top photo:  Los Angeles Times; credit, bottom photo: Jeff Padrick / Domino's