My television pretty much stays dark during the week, so it took until the weekend for me to twig to it.

The Sci Fi channel has vanished.

The same shows were there, but the name wasn't.

In its place is something called the Syfy channel.

Whose dopey, dumbed-down idea was this, anyway? 

Do the network honchos think this is the next, hip iteration of the texting-literate generation? Or that we R 2 dum 2 no betr?

Sci fi. the venerable shorthand for science fiction -- a noble genre of literature and art and entertainment in its own right, with giants like Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin -- has been reduced by this phonetic and simple-minded un-word to something that looks like it's traded on the stock market.

I read that the execs who thought of this say it will allow them a ''broader range of content'' in programming. Terrifying words, those. Don't think for a minute that they mean more original programming, or more film classics like ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' and ``Blade Runner'' and even ''Barbarella.'' More likely infomercials. The slick thinking must go that spelling it  ''Syfy'' absolves them of any responsibility to the spirit of ''sci fi.''

The Syfy channel exhorts me to ''imagine greater.''

All right, I will:

I am imagining Rod Serling siccing the Kanamits on whoever thought this was a great idea. ``Let's do lunch,''  they'll say. ``You be lunch.''

Obviously, some California public services will have to be cut, the editorial board observes, but what sense does it make to eliminate CalWorks, a program funded mostly by the federal dollars that enables people to get jobs and pay the rent? The board also notes that this is the big day for switching to digital TV, and it calls on the Federal Communications Commission to define the broadcasters' public-service obligations for digital channels.

CIA Director Leon E. Panetta might be right in saying that he can't possibly make public a single paragraph within 65 documents describing his agency's interrogation techniques, the board says, but that doesn't mean the federal judge in the case should take his word for it. The judge should review the documents personally before making a decision, the board advises.

 On the other side of the fold. a teacher of history and education says the use of the term "Hispanic" to denote an ethnic group is a relatively recent phenomenon in the nation's history, and one that has served to make those of Latin American descent feel more "other" than they used to. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor should be seen as the first person of Puerto Rican descent who might be appointed to the high court, Jonathan Zimmerman argues, rather than as Hispanic. And Bill Maher has had enough with the puppies and the hamburgers; he wishes President Obama were less visible and barking more orders over the phone. The man is in serious danger of cute media overexposure, Maher huffs:

We like you, we really like you! You're skinny and in a hurry and in love with a nice lady. But so's Lindsay Lohan. And like Lohan, we see your name in the paper a lot, but we're kind of wondering when you're actually going to do something.

Illustration: Pedro X. Molina

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

TV networks give plenty of free airtime to presidential candidates (at least the ones from the two major parties). They televise their debates. Their news programs frequently cover stump speeches and campaign ads, while soliciting the candidates' views on big stories. Some networks go even further, offering (short) segments to the major parties' nominees in the run-up to Election Day. But Barack Obama's campaign has raised so much money, it can afford to buy more prime-time TV face time. It's spending an estimated $3 million to secure a half an hour slot -- 8 to 8:30 p.m. Oct. 29 -- on CBS, NBC and Fox. Expect it to drop another million or so to get the same treatment from ABC. (I mean really -- can ABC afford to say no to the guy who may soon choose the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission?)

John McCain's campaign, meanwhile, is federally funded (by McCain's choice), so it probably doesn't have enough cash to do its own TV "roadblock" in the waning days before the election. (In case you're wondering, the so-called "equal time" provision of federal law requires stations only to make time available to all candidates on equal terms, not to give McCain the same amount of time that Obama bought.) McCain can certainly run as much video as he likes online, where the cost is far lower -- but the audience is much smaller, too.

Which brings us to the point of this windy post: Is Obama's TV purchase a symptom of a flawed campaign-finance system? I'm discomfited by the idea of one candidate harnessing -- alone -- the country's most powerful communications medium in the last days of the campaign. Yet it's happened several times before in the TV era. I'm also uneasy about the idea of using public funds to close the fundraising gap between candidates. Nor do I much care for the idea of forcing broadcasters to give candidates more free airtime to address the public. What do you think?

Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

No wonder Sarah Palin appears to be out to get her former brother-in-law, Alaska state trooper Mike Wooten -- he can read minds! What if he reveals to the world what Palin really thinks about John McCain? Worse yet, what if he detects nothing in there but static?

Actually, it's possible that Wooten's phenomenal resemblance to psychic cop Matt Parkman from NBC's "Heroes" is merely coincidental. But if they ever make a movie out of Troopergate, you can bet actor Greg Grunberg, who plays Parkman, is going to be first on the casting director's list.

*Photo of Matt Parkman, left, from NBC Universal. Photo of Michael Wooten, right, by Al Grillo / AP

Well, for a while there I thought the only thing that would make tonight's debate between Joe "Gaffer" Biden and Sarah "Caribou Barbie" Palin bearable would be making it a drinking game (you have to chug every time Biden says "Scranton" or Palin says "Maverick"). Thankfully for my liver, though, there's another option: Palin Bingo.

I can't think of very many things I'd rather hear than a spontaneous chat between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin on a broad range of issues, but that isn't what we're going to be presented with tonight. The two campaigns have structured the rules of the debate to ensure there's only 90 seconds for each response and very little challenging of answers by the moderator or either side. That will allow each candidate just enough time to spit out the scripted answers they've been memorizing over the past weeks, whether it's responsive to the question or not. Despite all the anticipation, and the high ratings tonight's debate is expected to draw, it should be about as interesting as watching sliced apples turn brown.

I've got to hand it to whoever is behind Palin Bingo, though, they've collected an impressive assortment of the Alaskan governor's buzzwords for each bingo card. Just one I'd like to add: "I'll bring 'em to ya."

*Image from the Palin Bingo website.

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?

A scene from a 9/11 memorial ceremony today in New York City. (AP Photo/Chris Hondros, Pool)

Preventing another attack on the homeland isn't a war, it's a security challenge. It's not so much a question of "winning" this conflict, which will be with us until the Islamic extremism movement fades away, as it is deciding when it ceases to be a so-called war on terror and becomes a fight against terrorism.

Today also happens to be the 35th anniversary of the coup led by Chilean army General Augusto Pinochet, which overthrew the country's elected socialist leader, Salvador Allende. Former dissident Heraldo Muñoz, now Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, offers an even-handed appraisal of Pinochet's legacy as a free-market reformer, as well as the U.S. role in his rise to power:

The real economic miracle occurred after Pinochet, between 1990 and 2007, when his reforms were legitimized and improved through democratic debate and consensus. Successive governments also made many of those reforms more palatable with heavy social investment to help those left behind during the Pinochet era. As a result, growth rates almost doubled those of the preceding three decades, and poverty was cut by more than half.

Also in Op-Ed land, scholar Timothy Garton Ash warns of a "new world disorder" that is proving to be more of a global political phenomenon than Islamofascism -- and no less a challenge to the U.S. and other liberal democratic nations. Finally, bringing the focus back to domestic affairs, columnist Rosa Brooks writes about the economic advantages of beauty, real or surgically obtained. (Yes, she does work Sarah Palin into her column. She can't help herself.)

(For a balanced and thought-provoking debate over various Palin-related topics, check out this week's Dust-Up between Reason magazine's Katherine Mangu-Ward and blogger/author Amanda Marcotte.)

Elsewhere on the editorial page, the board calls for a public debate over the schools' role in promoting the arts and other social goods, and it urges L.A. city and county officials to step up preparations for the digital TV transition.