NP: Fish, The Complete BBC Sessions (MP3)

One of the other things I've noticed since I've been going to work every day is the pervasiveness of the new, allegedly hip publication from the Tribune Corporation, called RedEye. Because spaces are for squares, and because there is no problem that can't be solved by creating another brand.

I say "publication" and not "newspaper" for a reason, and that reason was made abundantly clear to me today when I broke down and paid my quarter to see if maybe it had gotten better since I last looked. It hadn't. Look, if you have more pages devoted to celebrity gossip and the final episode of Friends than to national and world news, you cannot, in good conscience, call yourself a newspaper. The thing that I keep coming back to with the Trib is that they seem to think that the news, itself, is not newsworthy. They see The Daily Show and laugh, not getting that Jon Stewart and company actually respect the news itself, they just mock everything surrounding it. Which quite obviously includes the Tribune and it's eight million associated brands.

Speaking of news, you know things are bad when Maureen Dowd actually writes a very serious, histrionic-free column about the administration. When she stops using cutesy, pejorative names for DOD officials (title notwithstanding), I think it's time to really worry about how things are going in the Middle East.

It also may be time to really worry about how things are going here at home. I have this vague recollection of the Democratic primary, when everyone was writing about John Kerry and "electability." This is electibility? This is going to get interesting if the rumble of buyer's remorse gets significantly louder by the Democratic convention.