Gee, do you think ...

A

And for the time and location of a spontaneous outburst of popular anger against your congressman next month, be sure to click the link below!

The "inverted pyramid" is a bit of a misnomer. Up close, a news story tends to look more like a series of upward-pointing triangles: there's a broad assertion at the top of the triangle, followed by specific bits of primary and secondary evidence that support it or show why contradictory voices are wrong. So a story asserting that the public is angry might typically start with that claim, then follow with a couple of survey results or an anecdote about a demonstration, then follow that with some individual voters' anger, then bring in some experts (who indicate that "both sides" are at least talking about the issue), and so forth. From the frontpage teaser above, this looks like a news story, but when you get inside, it's different:

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Bridge-buying with the Post

What happens when clueless journalism runs head-on into jackleg social science? Well, we get the Washington Post buying itself a shiny new bridge to Arlington or Brooklyn or nowhere. Since this tale has brought such tidings of comfort and joy around the nattersphere, let's go for a drive:

Well, that's a relief! I wonder how we know.

A new analysis of political signs displayed at a tea party rally in Washington last month reveals that the vast majority of activists expressed narrow concerns about the government's economic and spending policies and steered clear of the racially charged anti-Obama messages that have helped define some media coverage of such events.

There's a lot to unravel here -- not just what constitutes a "vast majority" and how we tell "narrow concerns" about policy from "racially charged" messages about that Kenyan Muslim socialist colored guy in the White House, but what constitutes the sort of "new analysis" that rises to the attention of the Washington Post.

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Flies in my beard

  Within this story is a candidate for Most Profound Paragraph to Slide Right By a Living, Breathing Editor of the Still-Young Century:

A website calls Kansas City “a hotbed of UFO activity.”

I wonder how long it would to take to find a website that calls the Kansas City Star a hotbed of deep-catalog moronhood that actually justifies dumping any remaining McClatchy stock in the portfolio, even if that means paying people to take it, on the chance that, should you cross the bar unexpectedly, your far-distant relatives will make endless fun of your heirs and assigns for having been dear to someone who ever cashed a McClatchy check in the first place. Oh, wait.

Granted, America's Newspapers have a habit of ignoring common sense, their own eyes and all sorts of things they should have learned in junior high school when the occasional UFO story rolls in. That's not much of an excuse, even when USA Today does it, and it doesn't get any better when the familiar nonsense is tricked out with local names and clever references to area landmarks. The UFO tale should be quietly sent off to sleep the big sleep, whenever it occurs, no exceptions.

It's bad enough to find this at the top of the Sunday frontpage, but there's worse. When you set your standard for top-of-the-front coverage to "something is out there," you don't have much to distinguish yourself from -- well, say, the Washington Times and its coverage of the APSA convention!

Tea party leaders laughed off the scrutiny and chuckled when they heard the names of the papers.

“This is good. You’re making my day,” said Mark Meckler, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.

“Statistics show that the vast number of folks that are in the world of academia are liberals,” he said after collecting himself. “Liberals don’t like the tea party movement. I don’t think that’s news.”

“From my perspective, they’ve literally become a caricature of themselves,” he said of the academy, adding that there are a “few exceptions.”

See the problem? You don't judge the likelihood of alien invasion by whether Local People too have seen the triangular lights, and you don't judge the validity and reliability of somebody's multivariate analysis of what stuff predicts other stuff by asking people to call academics funny names. The Star isn't being openly corrupt in the way the WashTimes is, but it's being stupid in the same way. If you want to keep the barbarians away from the gates, you don't want to spend a lot of time explaining why you made all the other barbarians welcome.

Remain calm. All is well!

Is it just me, or should The Fox Nation* spend a little more time in the Great American Film Canon before it puts together some of its its heartwarming illustrations?

And should it be a little more careful in its copy-pasting?

While liberals “leaders” were crowing for the cameras and pretending to pray, St. Louis conservatives were taking some positive steps toward actually helping the Ferguson community torn up by rioting.

The St. Luis Tea Party is organizing a “BUYcott” of businesses along the now-infamous Florissant Avenue where some of the worst looting took place.

One can only hope the Tea Party is there to ask this "St. Luis" for some photo ID before he votes in the next election.

* "Committed to the core principles of tolerance, open debate, civil discourse, and fair and balanced coverage of the news." Srsly!

Out-of-tune lede of the month

It's the new(!) improved(!) AP, covering the talk shows with wit, creativity and a direct phone link to the Planet Mxyzptlk:

Damn the tea bags. A top adviser to President Barack Obama takes a dim view of last week's anti-tax "tea parties," promoted by organizers in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party.

As a general rule, the lede isn't a good place to be cleverly ambiguous. "Damn those tea bags!" is one thing. "Damn the tea bags, full speed ahead" is another.

"The thing that bewilders me is this president just cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. So I think the tea bags should be directed elsewhere because he certainly understands the burden that people face," David Axelrod said Sunday.

OK. I think we're at Door No. 2 (full speed ahead). And if that's the case, the AP has grossly overshot its mark. Adm. Farragut didn't complain that Confederate anger was misdirected. He took his fleet through the minefield. Could we have just a touch, maybe, of reckless defiance or bring-it-on daring somewhere in the interview? Or if no one wants to go quite that far, could we at least jaywalk a little on the way home from the studio?

This wouldn't be so worrisome if the wholesale bloodletting in U.S. newsrooms hadn't made wire editing -- in most cases -- a quaint relic of the past. It doesn't take much time or effort to fix this one. (Select the first sentence and hit "delete." Wasn't that easy?) But if your favorite news source has decided those units of time and effort are needed elsewhere,* then consarn those teabags! You're stuck with 'em.

* I'm not saying this is a wrong or unreasonable decision. A wire story isn't going to get you sued; a novice reporter on the cop beat might. DTFM.

Daleks on helium

Now that the pesky GDP report has fallen to 24th (and last) place on the Fair 'n' Balanced hit parade, maybe we should look at the lead story from a little earlier in the day:

House Republicans have dug up emails from Lois Lerner in which the former IRS official refers to some in the Republican Party as “---holes” and "crazies" – an exchange they say shows her “animus” toward conservatives.

As with much of Fox's reporting on the party's pet scandals, the presentation here is only partly made up. The emails by themselves don't "reveal disdain for Republicans"; that's the claim of the particular Republican who released them (Dave Camp of Michigan, if you're scoring along at home), but what's a little attribution between friends? And who exactly she called "- - -holes" (Fox Nation opted for "a - - holes"; after a phone call to confirm, the AP boldly went with "assholes") kind of depends on how hard you squint and what you're willing to overlook:

In the email exchange, Lerner appears to be chatting with another unidentified individual about a vacation in Great Britain. She describes how she overheard “some ladies” talking about how America is “going down the tubes.”

The person she tells this to responds that “you should hear the whacko wing of the GOP. The US is through; too many foreigners sucking the teat; time to hunker down, buy ammo and food, and prepare for the end. The right wing radio shows are scary to listen to.”

Lerner responds: “Great. Maybe we are through if there are that many ---holes.”
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Through the looking-glass

So much Fox, so little time!

We're fed up and we're not gonna take it anymore.

Such is the rallying cry building across the country as taxpayers take a stand against what they see as reckless spending in Washington -- all part of a peculiar and rather sudden movement called "tea parties."

Some small, some large, locals* converge at the parties to voice their frustration over the federal government's economic policies. The protests have sprouted up from coast-to-coast and city-to-city since late February.

"People are getting killed -- they're getting hammered with taxes and it's not the way this country is supposed to be run.** ... We want to fight back," said Kristina Mancini, who's helping organize the April 15 rally in Fishkill, N.Y.

Don't miss Fox's commanding grasp of the historical analogy!

The historical parallels may seem sparse. America is no longer a colony. It is not ruled by a king.

But just as the 18th century decrees of the King of England drew outrage from American colonists, several acts of modern U.S. government intervention have stirred similar upheaval.

The Stamp Act? Now it's the Wall Street bailout.

The Tea Act? Now it's the $787 billion stimulus package.

The Quartering Act? Now it's the pork-filled omnibus spending bill.

The Boston Massacre? That would have to be the proposed $3.55 trillion 2010 budget, seen by tea partiers as a fiscal massacre.

The Sons of Liberty of today is led by people like Rick Santelli, the CNBC reporter widely credited with helping spark the tea-party fever nationwide (though tea parties were being held before Santelli plugged them).

... Though he was mocked by the White House, Santelli might as well have yelled, "Give me liberty or give me death!"

Digest the thing in its delightful entirety. Admire the skills of Judson Berger, whose reporting prowess elevated the Chia Pet story from obscurity to top-of-the-front play. Garnish liberally*** with comments. Chase with a shot of Deputy ME Bill Sammon recycling last fall's Joe Biden story like -- well, like a veritable Joe the Recycler. Every meal a banquet on Planet Fox!

* Mostly large, I'm betting. Best dangler I've seen all week.
** It isn't?
*** He'll be here all week, folks; don't forget to tip.

SlimGhazi update: Eyes and ears of the Party

Those wacky college kids! What are they up to today, Fair 'n' Balanced Network?

A Wisconsin college professor warned her students they wouldn't be able to get all of their homework done because of the partial government shutdown, and put a partisan spin on the bad news.

And how do we know that?

At least one student in the online course reported the professor's political spin to the education blog The College Fix, which first reported the story.

And the e-mail's* political content?

“Some of the data gathering assignment will be impossible to complete until the Republican/tea party controlled House of Representatives agrees to fund the government. ... The Census website, for instance, is closed. Please do what you can on the assignment. Those parts you are unable to do because of the shutdown will have to wait until Congress decides we actually need a government."
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Fun with news standards

And how do the big-name correspondents at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network handle campaign news from the home team?

Senior insiders to Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann say the Republican founder of the House Tea Party caucus is now very likely to run for president.

In the wake of both Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump opting out of the 2012 race, calls to Bachmann's offices "have been burning up our lines" according to a Bachmann confidant who marveled, "one guy called her our Margaret Thatcher!"

Like a lot of other rules and guidelines (that pesky innocent-until-proven-guilty stuff, for example), the standards for anonymous sourcing tend to be thrown out the window pretty fast when something seems like Big News. I don't know what rules Fox plays under,* but here's a representative entry from the AP Stylebook:

... Material from anonymous sources may be used only if:

• The material is information and not opinion or speculation, and is vital to the news report.
• The information is not available except under the conditions of anonymity imposed by the source.
• The source is reliable, and in a position to have accurate information.

... Explain in the story why the source requested anonymity. And, when it's relevant, describe the source's motive for disclosing the information.

The story also must provide attribution that establishes the source's credibility; simply quoting  "a source" is not allowed.

It's fair to infer, I think, that the intent of sourcing policies like this is more to keep you from looking evil than from looking stupid. It's to encourage "the secret report says X, Y, and Z" as opposed to "he sure sounds guilty to all right-thinking patriots." And it's hard to say that even a casual reader would be surprised to find that Fox -- its news operation, not its opinionators -- is in essence the armed propaganda wing of the Republican Party. But one function of the lowly copy editor is to remind even the stars on the payroll that appearances are to be kept up. That means not letting too many unnamed confidants do too much marveling, particularly with direct quotes and exclamation points.



*If anyone knows of a Fox stylebook or standards-n-practices guide, I'd love to see one.

Wanna buy a bridge?

The (hem, kaff) liberal media seem to be taking the Fox bait quite happily:

South Carolina is at the center of a national grass-roots debate on Tax Day, with thousands expected to attend two rallies in the city today protesting the country’s tax burden and tax system.

Here's a particularly naive entry from the nest of commie spies at Stonewall and Tryon:

Some groups like “Fair Tax,” which seeks to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, will try to sign up members today. But there appears to be no common agenda other than reducing taxes and spending.

Let's have a look at the discourse and see if there's a "common agenda" in there:

Alleged columnist Cal Thomas: While the deficit last week raced past $1 trillion, the federal government and many state governments are trying to pry more of our money from us so they can finish creating a dependency culture from which we'll never escape.

Fox blogger Dan Gainor: It’s obvious the left understands. ... To see a grassroots movement rise up against Democrats’ crazy spending just a couple months into their mis-administration terrifies them.

Fox blogger Peter Roff: Just like King George III, Obama and the Democrats want to make us believe they are doing it for our own good and in our own best interests.

Fox blogger Andrea Tantaros: The message is simple: repeal the pork, cut taxes and cut spending. But there is much more at stake than the money. The impact these actions will have on our culture is key. Massive government control is a clear threat to our liberties and our values of American exceptionalism.

And that would mean?

As power is increasingly transferred to the government, it will seek to dilute and destroy our most precious values — from the sanctity of marriage to the right to bear arms, free speech and other fundamentals of our constitution. The Obama Doctrine seeks to do just that: strip power from people, put government — and ultimately the tenants of radicalism — in control.

Are things starting to sink in yet? It isn't the taxes.* It's the colored fella in Washington who wants to take all your money and impose European communist socialism and quarter British naval officers in your home so he can gay-marry your sons to them! WAKE UP, AMERICA!!!!!

You don't have to take the commentators' word for it. Fox has kindly put all its news coverage together for your convenience. You can find out how to organize a successful protest, which craven solons are sitting it out, how the liberal ACORNs are planning to identity-theft protesters so Obama can send them to Guantanamo -- everything a carefully orchestrated movement needs. As Fox has made clear, it might say spending on the surface, but it's all about the "intervention."** If you're still not clear on the distinction, I'm looking out the window at a really neat bridge that could be yours for a song.

I'm looking forward to the tea party coverage. I'm expecting careful crowd counts, lots of questions about the actual impact of tax rates, and quotes out the yazoo whenever the word "grassroots" appears.

* By the way? If your story forgets to ask the mad-as-hell protesters whether their federal taxes have gone up or down in the past two months, it's incomplete.
** Isn't it cool that "intervention" started showing up during the week that two states took the distinctly anti-interventionist step of not restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples? Reporters could ask about that when they're covering tea parties too!

Today in constructivism

Common cold cured! Fractious Near East at peace! And our second-most-important story of the day at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network is ... can we zoom in on the lower left there? That's better:

A panel at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism comparing the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements was stacked with liberal journalists who offered one-sided conclusions, according to one alumnus who attended the event.

Panelists at the event, which was held on Oct. 1 in the prestigious school’s Pulitzer Hall, made “little attempt to hide their sympathies” to the Occupy movement, author Harry Stein wrote in City Journal, a quarterly magazine published by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

Or, to take another whack at the hed: Guy in Audience Still Whining About Something Panel Discussion 10 Days Ago Wasn't About. (The announced topic of the event, after all, was coverage of social movements, not "comparing" two movements.) Given the throngs that normally pitch tents ahead of time for panel discussions on Monday nights at journalism schools, you can be forgiven for marveling at this one's rise to the top of the national news agenda.

To its credit, Fox does produce a candidate for no-comment of the year, from the panel's moderator, Todd Gitlin:*

“You have nothing to do with news,” Gitlin said. “And you’re wasting my time.”

He's half right. His time was being wasted, but other than that, the story's a pretty sharp illustration of how much Fox really does have to do with news. Columbia may be "no longer Joseph Pulitzer's school," to borrow the whiner's title, but Fox went to the Charles F. Kane school of journalism, and that's alive and well.

Journalism tends to have a pragmatic and fairly scornful reaction to ideas like constructivism. We deal with the real world, after all, and we deal with it quickly, accurately, and without fear or favor, and that's all ye need to know. The idea that news is a constructed commodity that presents socially appropriate conclusions about constructed realities -- often quite well, and often at some physical and social risk to the people doing the work -- doesn't draw a lot of water. But it's the way Fox manages to sneak onto the track and look, at a casual glance, a lot like real journalism.


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Welcome to the monkey house

In case you want to see some of the collection from the past few days, enjoy. This is how the world -- a small part of it, at least, that you're probably all quite tired of by now -- looks through the methane clouds of Planet Fox.

I really don't know where to begin with this. I suppose that in some technical sense, it's even more amusing to get a Sarah Palin lecture in the history of political communication than a Sarah Palin lecture in journalism ethics, but -- did no one have the sense to tell this preening moron what the "blood libel" is? Or why and how perfectly her tone-deaf turn captures the wounded self-righteousness of the entire Fox family?

Perhaps we can sum this up with the apologia of the youngest of the NYT's stable of right-wing columnists, Ross Douthat:

From the Republican leadership to the Tea Party grass roots, all of Gabrielle Giffords’s political opponents were united in horror at the weekend’s events. There is no faction in American politics that actually wants its opponents dead.

Think so? Let's look over the files:
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The year on Planet Fox

Dunno. Where was they?

Anyway, the year-end roundup at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network is as nice an illustration of the "paranoid style" as we could ask for:

From radical advisers in the Obama White House to hacked e-mails showing questionable work by climate scientists, 2009 has seen its share of scandals. But if you only followed the mainstream media, you might have missed some of the biggest stories of the year.

This is the sort of clever, bank-shot question-begging that the F&B's excel at. Through the rose-colored 4-D glasses sold on Planet Fox, all those advisers are "radical," the e-mails actually illustrated "questionable work," and the tea party movement really was a national groundswell born of the Boston Massacre, the shelling of Fort McHenry and the Manchurian candidacy of B. Hussein O-Bow-Ma. One "czar" wants mandatory abortions, another wants the children raised at least to molestable age and your neighborhood ACORN office is ready to import enough teenage prostitutes to swing the balance either way as soon as the prevaricator-in-chief stops dithering.

There's a reason, of course, that "the mainstream media never touched the controversy" about John Holdren. There wasn't one, and no amount of lunatic quote-mining could bring one into existence. If there's a controversy at all amid this torrent of fabricated threats to the American way of life, it's the Times's apparent willingness to roll over in the face of it.

Anybody still need a New Year's resolution? When the herald from Planet Fox shows up at your newsroom demanding to know why you're suppressing the 2010 version of Climategate, let your model of responsible journalism be Walter Burns: Tell him his poetry smells and kick him downstairs.

Your press corps at work

I'm starting to think of the No. 4 slot on the Fair 'n' Balanced homepage -- the right-hand story under the lede -- as the Two-Minute Hate position. This remains an untested hypothesis so far, but at a guess (H1), when there's red meat, that's more often than not where it goes.

Our example here (the TMH story from Friday morning) is actually an AP tale, illustrating that charming literalism in the press corps that sometimes manages to mistake the ordinary for the sublime. Add a faint hint of cover-up thwarted:

The president made his off-the-cuff remarks with donors as he took questions and after reporters had been ushered out of the event. But the question and answer session was piped back to Washington by mistake and into the press briefing area where a few reporters were still working late.

... and you get the AP's breathless "Obama Unplugged":
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Drugs, sex, furriners, Bible, flag

Most perfect front page in Fox history! Murderous Mexicans stalk your border, spurned commie spy rat's ex-hubby spills all to the Torygraph, godless schools scorn the Bible, and California pees all over the flag* and the memory of September 11.

The last of these comes with a genuinely Frankensteinian lede:

Governor Schwarzenegger issued an apology Friday after California residents are up in arms that a flag mural — paying homage to victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — was painted over after the state ruled it was graffiti.

... and the usual sort of evidence to support a claim like "California residents are up in arms":

Sandy Kraft said, "I drive this every day and to not see it up there waving at me, even though it doesn't wave, it's still waving at you."

Ever wonder why Planet Fox seems so different from the world you saw when last you peeked outside? That's the basic agenda-setting hypothesis, summed up in a metaphor that Max McCombs and Don Shaw** borrowed from Bernard Cohen's "The Press and Foreign Policy": The press isn't very good at telling people what to think, but it's really, really good at telling people what to think about. Thanks largely to the groundbreaking 1972 M&S article, Cohen's book has probably got the highest ratio of times-quoted-to-times-read of anything that doesn't claim to be scripture, so here's the sentence after the famous one, just so you can say you've seen it:

It follows from this that the world looks different to different people, depending not only on their personal interests but also on the map that is drawn for them by the writers, editors and publishers of the papers they read.

The big papers donned the sackcloth and ashes in a hurry last year as they bemoaned their failure to take the Tea Party folks and the climate deniers seriously. That was a mistake; for as long as we've had "objectivity" as an ideal in journalism, malicious people have been able to beat the system at its own game. We don't need to give these folks the time of day. But we do need their map, and -- conveniently -- some days they publish alarmingly detailed copies.

* It's hard to find any plausible meaning in English under which Schwarzenegger could have "nixed" the flag mural, but was it over when the Austrians bombed Pearl Harbor?
** For the record, yes. Your Editor got a C in journalism history from Don Shaw back in the (ahem) Ford administration.

A tarantula on a slice of angel food

The game was as taut as the preceding paragraphs. 

Raymond Chandler's dead. Throw strikes.

In this grinder, there came a display of the lineup depth that makes these the highest-scoring teams in the American League: When have you seen a 2-1 game in which the Nos. 9 hitters drove in all the runs?

"Nos. 9 hitters" could be the awesomest Safire plural in the history of the world in space. Do writers actually do this to themselves, or was the copydesk making the new guy carry the grammar bags back to the hotel or something?
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America in peril!

So how is freedom under assault today, Drudge Report?

Tea Party activist Norm Novitsky’s In Search of Liberty, a crowdfunded feature film about the U.S. Constitution, has been shut down in Savannah, GA, after 30 members of his crew walked off the job. The group, made up mostly of students and recent graduates from the Savannah College of Art and Design, had been seeking union representation, living wages and reclassification as employees rather than independent contractors.

Never mind the verb voice in the first clause -- let's hear more about the particular pillar of freedom that the labor goons are eroding!

The film, which stars Food Network host Bobby Deen, son of reality star Paula Deen, bills itself as a “a straight-to-DVD release that tells the story of a captivating statesman from America’s past” who takes a present-day family on a series of wild adventures that “opens their eyes to the origins and importance of the U.S. Constitution, the degree to which it is under attack and what can be done to save it.”

So ... sort of the freeware version of Rush Revere and his talking horse?

The film’s crew had worked on the shoot for three weeks. Dissatisfied with their wages and working conditions, they approached IATSE for representation. They walked off the job en masse on July 2, and the producers shut down the film Thursday when they couldn’t find a replacement crew.

Good thing the employer always "offers" and the union always "demands" -- otherwise, we'd be stuck with a hed like Teabilly Filmmakers Halt Production As H'wood Glamour Fails To Pay The Rent, and that's never going to fit in a 1/36, let alone a narrative of union thuggery. 

What with the existential threat to freedom and all, it's unfortunate that the beleaguered filmmaker declines to comment, leaving the reporter to recite pesky details:

... IATSE has filed unfair labor practices charges with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming union reps were subjected to threats and acts of intimidation during their efforts to organize the workers. A member of the crew is scheduled to present evidence Monday to the wage and hour division of the U.S. Department of Labor that crew members were not paid minimum wages and did not receive overtime pay.

Given that somewhere around 40% of the country seems to hope a Dean Trump would revoke the little hoodlums' charter, one hopes for coverage of the hearing.

Two steps forward, three steps back

When the candidates in your own backyard commence to going deep-catalog unhinged on you, there's some sort of journalistic obligation to put it on the front page and talk about it. But there are better and worse ways of talking about it. We'll go from not-very-good to awful.

Here's the story as it appears on the N&O Web site (the image is from the right side of today's front):

Republican congressional candidate Renee Ellmers has released a television advertisement that calls the planned Muslim community center in New York City a "victory mosque" and associates it with terrorists.
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Trending topic

One of those enduring topics over at certain Fair 'n' Balanced Networks is evil bureaucrats getting in the way of patriotic impulses, particularly veterans who are just trying to fly the flag:

Students Sue Over Removal of American Flag T-shirts (June 23)

Mom: R.I. School Bans 8-Year-Old Son's Patriotic Hat With Army Figures (June 17)

Wisconsin Veteran Must Remove Flag After Memorial Day, Wife Says (May 26)

WWII Vet Ordered to Remove American Flag From Outside New Hampshire Home (May 20)

Decorated Veteran, 90, Fights to Raise Flag in His Yard (Dec. 3)

Pennsylvania Firefighter Suspended for U.S. Flag on Locker (Oct. 17)

Oregon Apartment Complex Bans Flying the American Flag (Oct. 14)

... so you'd like to think that when it's the Marines and the Tea Party-favored "Don't Tread on Me" flag, maybe somebody could be bothered to read the heds before publishing?

Is "don't trend on me" a Cupertino error? Is it a fingerfehler by some new hire who heretofore couldn't imagine a Cooler. Verb. Evar. than "trend"? I don't know, and I don't want to spend too much time picking on one-off typos. But when you're holding the line alone against Those Liberal Media and all their minions and catamites, you should expect a tad bit of public ridicule for being such a public doofus.

Bernieversary!

Here's a semi- regular off-topic update for interested parties. Think of it as sort of the HEADSUP-L pledge drive; regularly scheduled program- ming will continue shortly, but you can leave your credit card number in the comments if you're feeling guilty about not helping newspapers stay afloat or something. Or you can turn the page.

Anyway! April 15 is a special day around here for several reasons. Yes, there are those freedom-loving tea parties, and yes, it's the first day the local bistros can set out their sidewalk tables,* but it's also Bernieversary, whereby hangs a tale.

A bunch of the sharp undergraduates at the World's Most Refulgent J-School came in one morning to report a litter of abandoned** kittens under the hostas. Permission was granted*** to bring the little monsters indoors, and after a fairly consensual discussion, an overnight office stay and some minor tactical hoop-jumping, everybody**** had a forever home. Woodchuck (left) and Bernie -- formally, Woodward Woodward III and Bernstein J. Firecat -- moved into the cottage on the Lane on April 15, 2005. Usual Suspects will be happy to know that they have become upstanding young gentlemen.

It's Bernieversary because, well, Woodward has a genuinely iconic piece of American asphalt named after him (about a mile west of here, a few blocks east of the midtown bureau). So we had to equalize where we could. Either way, best Bernieversary regards to you members of the original rescue party and all you other cheezburger-eaters out there.

* Honestly. In about a month, this is going to sound a lot better than it does now.
** Not by hoomans; Language Czarina is fairly sure she saw their mom doing the Mehitabel thing around campus on several later occasions.
*** Where would journalism be without the passive voice?
**** At last report, sister Pickle was a happy farm kitteh in central Missouri.