Children And Their Expensive Toys

When Michele Bachmann was invited on Jimmy Fallon's show late last year, his house band played "Lyin' Ass Bitch" as she walked on stage. He later apologized. During a Sarah Palin segment yesterday, CNN played "Stupid Girls" and later expressed regret for any misunderstanding.

Rage As Performance Art

Will Newt Gingrich's slashing populist attack on the allegedly anti-conservative U.S. news media deflect criticism of his checkered personal life and allay concerns about his obvious temperamental unsuitability for the White House? It would probably help if other conservatives joined in, but they didn't.

Ron Fournier on tonight's GOP debate:

The first question from CNN moderator John King was posed to Gingrich: Would he like to respond to his ex-wife?

"No," Gingrich replied. "But I will." While the partisan audience applauded in support, Gingrich glared at King and blamed the messenger. "I'm appalled that you would begin a presidential debate with a topic like that," he said.

In hindsight, perhaps Gingrich had been preparing for the moment for months by leading the attack against the media at nearly every debate. Partisan audiences, especially Republican crowds, generally believe the media are slanted against them. Journalists are easy targets.

"Every person in here knows pain. Every person in here has someone close to them going through painful things," Gingrich said. It was a brash bit of political theater: A thrice-married man who has admitted to cheating on two wives ducked his ex-wife's charges and dismissed his infidelity as merely "painful things."

Despicable? Trash? Those are not words he used to describe his actions. Rather, Gingrich called ABC's decision to broadcast the ex-wife's story two days before the South Carolina primary as "as close to despicable as anything I can imagine."

He denounced CNN for taking "trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate."

Gingrich described King's question as an example of an elite media attack against Republicans designed to help Barack Obama. But when King asked the other candidates if they thought Gingrich's personal life was a legitimate issue, the GOP voted 2-1 in favor of CNN's editorial judgement. Rick Santorum said he was thankful for God's forgiveness but added, "Issues of character are for people to consider...for everyone in this audience to look at." (Later in the debate, he accused Gingrich of grandiosity, "worrisome" behavior, and political cowardice and reminded the audience of Gingrich's policy ADD and the GOP coup that ousted him from the House speakership.) Ron Paul said, "Setting standards is very important" and mentioned his wife of 52 years. Only frontrunner Romney urged King to get to the real issues, though he'd already pointedly introduced himself as an implicitly faithful husband and the father and grandfather of multitudes.

My Nixon buddy Hugh Hewitt, no booster of the MSM, hasn't blogged about tonight's debate yet, but he wrote this morning that the Marianne Gingrich interview was "devastating." At NRO, Jonah Goldberg wrote:

Newt’s opening answer was very strong and will be replayed a lot. But I thought it was overstated and, as he kept going, it became clear he was trying to squelch the issue rather than express his true rage. When he was all lovey-dovey with John King after the debate, it underscored that it was as much performance as anything else.

Republicans are lucky to have such an entertaining performer to enliven their debates. But they won't nominate him to run for president.

What We Did

The president began to tighten the noose around Osama bin Laden's neck in August. He managed the operation personally in a series of secret meetings. Nothing leaked. According to CNN, it was during last Friday's royal wedding that he gave the order for today's breathtaking raid. As he and his family were wandering around the Kennedy Space Center, young American volunteers under his command in Afghanistan were preparing to extend and flex the arm of justice.

Last week, it briefly appeared that Barack Obama had permitted Donald Trump a moment of parity by appearing in the White House to talk about his birth certificate as the bumptious tycoon gave a press conference in New Hampshire. How wrong I was. Tonight, as grateful crowds gathered at the White House and ground zero, as CNN replayed Obama's carefully nuanced address, words we'll remember every May Day for many years, Trump was starring with Meat Loaf on "Celebrity Apprentice."

Great live-blogging here by Andrew Sullivan.

Well done, Mr. President.

Easy For Him To Say

Should the U.S. use its influence to facilitate regime change in Egypt? The opposition leader being mentioned as the new boss sure thinks so:

[Mohamed ElBaradei] criticized the Obama administration, which has expressed support for the rights of the protesters but pointedly refrained from calling on Mr. Mubarak to step down. In an interview with CNN, Mr. ElBaradei called that approach “a failed policy” that was eroding American credibility.

“It’s better for President Obama not to appear that he is the last one to say to President Mubarak, it’s time for you to go,” Mr. ElBaradei said.

Strength Rooted In Collaboration

Last week, after Barack Obama visited Gabrielle Giffords' hospital room, three of her colleagues stayed behind, Rebecca Traister writes:

In addition to her husband and parents, three of Giffords’s colleagues stayed in her room after the president left: Pelosi, now the House minority leader; Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida; and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who has lately edged away from her own pro-gun politics by removing the rifles she once kept under her bed. As Gillibrand told CNN, Giffords was squeezing her hand while she talked about how they wanted to grab pizza and beer together, and Wasserman Schultz was promising a New Hampshire vacation when Giffords first opened her eyes, a moment that Wasserman Schultz compared to the birth of her children. In this tableau are embedded hints of other kinds of mythic female strength, rooted in collaboration, friendship and support.

Andrew's Balloon Boy, Trig

Andrew Sullivan has never admitted that he erred in lending early credibility to the most effective libel of the 2008 campaign: The fabricated story that Gov. Palin and her minor daughter, Bristol, and countless others in Alaska government and private life, had entered into a massive conspiracy to trick the public into thinking that she rather than Bristol was Trig Palin's mother.

Even six-year-old Piper Palin would have had to have been in on the coverup, subject to such ruthless family discipline that Sarah could let her go on national TV without risking that she'd tell what she knew about Trig's real mommy and when she knew it.

Here's how the balloon boy, same age as Trig, went on TV and blew the buttons off a real hoax:

[The Fort Collins, Colorado sheriff] said the "a-ha moment" came when the 6-year-old boy, Falcon Heene, said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he thought "we did this for a show."

The Need For Health Care Reform In Gaza

CNN on the perils of getting breast cancer in a society where "it's very taboo to speak about the woman's body."

An Historic First

CNN fact-checks -- you read that correctly -- a Saturday Night Live routine. Other investigative teams are preparing to depose Chevy Chase about whether President Ford ever really talked to a plastic dog and Will Farrell...well, you know.

Drifting, Not Driven, Away From Church

A Pew study reveals that while half the people in the U.S. have left the religion they were born in, it's not necessarily because of the big issues:

"The reasons people change religions are as diverse as the religious landscape itself," [researcher Gregory Smith] told CNN by phone.

Some factors that might be expected to drive people away from religion -- such as sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, or a belief that science "disproves" religion -- actually play a very small role, the study suggests.

"I've been struck by the very large number across all the different groups who say they just gradually drifted away. Not all of this is the product of carefully considered, conscious decision-making that happens at a specific point in time," Smith said.

"You're Here With Your TWO-Year-Old"

This CNN segment about an anti-tax "tea party" demonstration in Chicago is getting a lot of attention. It would have been better if the reporter had just covered the story instead of dedicating herself to the enlightenment of those present. Of course over at Fox News, Sean Hannity isn't exactly a good listener, either, so who can blame CNN for lapsing into overt advocacy?

Smell The News

Since I got my Kindle for Kristmas in 2007, the Nixon Foundation's copy of the New York Times has languished in my office until, after the decent interval I have decreed in the event I should for some reason choose to bestow my favor, a colleague takes it to be enjoyed by those who still read newspapers on newsprint. After all, the entire editorial content downloads to my Kindle every morning, for about $14 a month. On a handy device the size of a trade paperback, I can read it (or any one of 25 books, blogs, magazines, or other newspapers I've downloaded) before getting up or while having breakfast. Since Kindle news consumers pay for content, the device and ones like it seem to me to hold the key to the revitalization of the newspaper business.

Or so I believed until this morning. For whatever reason, I didn't read the paper before coming to work. As usual, the printed Times awaited on a credenza. It asked nothing of me. It has grown used to my neglect. But this morning, across five columns (shrunken columns, since the paper got narrower a couple of years ago), was a color photo of the US Airways Airbus A320 floating in the Hudson River. The Kindle edition would've had the photo, but small and black and white. I've seen plenty of on-line photos of yesterday's miraculous event, and it was all over the cable and broadcast news last night.

But five columns in the paper! That means something right off the bat, because usually a photo above the fold in the Times is three or maybe four columns. They invite a glance. For an experienced newspaper reader, five columns demands special attention and even wonder.

And yet the emergency landing wasn't the lead article, according to the Times's lights. That privileged spot was reserved for a one-column headline on the far right that read, "Senate Releases Second Portion Of Bailout Fund; A Victory For Obama; Democrats in the House Offer an $825 Billion Recovery Plan."

And yes, I can see their point. The miraculous saving of 155 lives is a big story, and so it got five-column art plus a five-column hed over a news story and human-interest sidebar, all above the fold. Last night on TV, the plane was almost all we heard about. But while CNN and Fox News were hyperventilating, editors at the Times wanted to make sure that readers realized it may even be more important that our representatives, on the same day, took a giant step closer to spending $1.175 trillion in taxpayers' money within weeks or even days after Jan. 20. That's what newspapers do -- they reach beyond the urgent to the important. They whisper in our ears what we need to know while other media shout what we want to hear.

Below the fold there was another dramatic photo from the Hudson, showing three women in their orange and yellow life vests in a raft floating near the stricken aircraft. The remaining articles are on Gaza (where the three-week war has resulted in 1,000 deaths), AG designate Eric Holder's confirmation hearings, and Japan's so-called outcasts, the buraku. That's not a subject people will usually go looking for with their browsers and BlackBerries, not something that will make the "CBS Evening News" or the "O'Reilly Factor," but deserving of our attention nonetheless, and available only because highly paid editorial professionals have done their work covering a world that they know better than most of us do.

Across the bottom of the page, a 12.5" ad for a new cable TV series. I really haven't been paying attention. For decades the Times has run classified ads on the bottom of p. 1, but I don't remember seeing a color display ad. All power to them if it helps them stay afloat. Thumbing through the sections, I came to Weekend Arts, with a breathtaking photo above the fold of the White House (brilliantly lit thanks to Pat Nixon, who raised the money to install the lights) and looming against a royal purple sky. It's a 16-page section on Washington during Inaugural week, with information about restaurants, historic sites, art galleries, and logistics. Reading on my Kindle, I might've skipped the section entirely. The paper version is someone you want to slip into your briefcase to look at later.

But what actually seduced me this morning was the paper's odor. Do you remember the acrid and yet sweet smell of ink on newsprint? I grew up with it. My parents and godfather were newspaper people, and on Saturdays my mother would take me to her office at the Detroit Free Press or the Arizona Republic. While she worked, I'd play with the thick black copy pencils, Underwood manual typewriters, and smelly three-ply NCR paper (my mother called them "books") reporters used to write their stories. When she had something to send down to the composing room, she'd let me roll it up and put it in the pneumatic tube.

The composing room itself, with the now long-gone Linotype machines clattering madly, was an explosion of sound and sparks. The smell of ink and paper was everywhere, and it came off my spurned newspaper this morning like pheromones. Not even a Kindle, with its lightning fast Internet access and revolutionary text pricing, can make a newspaper kid that happy.

I imagine people my age are equally nostalgic about the memory of thumbing through our Zeppelin and Stones albums even as we thumb our iPods and let the records rot in the garage. But while digital music sounds just as good as vinyl, no new medium has as yet replaced the experience of absorbing, in one evocative and intelligently-ordered and -designed package, the creative work of editors and reporters. And since that work is essential to a well-informed public and thus to freedom and democracy, we should think twice before spurning newspapers unless and until something better (if not necessarily their olfactory equivalent) comes along.