And what’s the deal on egg timers …  Do eggs really need to know what time it is?

And what’s the deal with choosing between Viagra and birth-control medication.  Can’t you just have both?

And who hid my cheese?

And don’t you just hate it when you wonder what the deal is with Bob Schieffer sounding more and more like Andy Rooney these days?  Like he did Sunday:

So here’s where we are in the campaign for the most powerful office in the world:

McCain’s man Phil Gramm said America is a nation of whiners and that the economic recession is just in peoples’ minds.

McCain said Gramm didn’t speak for him. Really? They why was he speaking? I thought they were old friends, and Gramm was a trusted advisor.

And there was Obama man John Kerry saying McCain hadn’t learned the lessons of 9/11. Yes, the same John Kerry who seriously thought of asking McCain to be his running mate when he ran for President himself in 2004.

And then along came Jesse Jackson with an observation about Obama that sounded like something out of the Ken Starr report.

Which reminds me, what’s the deal with Bill Clinton? Are his feelings still hurt? Will he campaign for Obama if Obama helps the Clintons pay their bills?

And will McCain get better at reading the teleprompter?

We’ve been treated to endless conversation, speculation and analyses of all these pertinent topics, to the point that a friend of mine said the other day that he thought Obama and McCain would be better served if both of them just suspended all campaigning until Fall, after the nominating conventions.

Just shut it all down - the surrogates, the press conferences, the talking points, the conference calls, all of it. Give all of us a rest.

It’s not my idea, but I wish it were! What we’ve been hearing from both sides lately isn’t helping them, or us.

And if there are five people you’d like to meet in heaven, aren’t there also five people you’d like to meet in hell?

And what’s the deal on folks at CBS who are getting up in the years and starting to ask what the deal is on everything all the time?  Don’t you just hate that?
And what’s all this fuss about Ali G?  I mean, what kinda of name is that?

Oh, how funny to see a fake Maureen Dowd column getting wide circulation (Instapundit coverage here).
Certainly it’s up for a fake Pulitzer Prize, a fake book tour, and a fake fancy book party and accompanying fake commencement address.

It sure is fascinating how things get murky when Maureen Dowd is involved.

Happy news over at Fishbowl:

Indeed. Super antibiotics for a super hero.

Fun item in Yeas & Nays:

Who says journalism needs ethics? Certainly not the Newseum.

Visitors to the new, popular Pennsylvania Avenue museum about journalism might notice that the “Ethics” exhibit doesn’t get much real estate. (This despite the seemingly endless ethics scandals — Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, Jack Kelley — that have tarnished the fourth estate’s credibility in recent years).

It clocks in at 800 square feet.

What’s that, you say? Sounds like some sizable space? Well, then, consider this: The Newseum’s gift shop — all two floors of it — occupies a whopping 2,600 square feet.

We’ve got an explanation for the disparity.  Space allocation.  Surely these books are available for purchase in the gift shop?

A rare night out for the glass-enclosed nerve center of Extreme Mortman yesterday, as we attended the Media Research Center’s “2008 Dishonor Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2007.”

It occurred to us, while in the cement-enclosed basement of the Grand Hyatt on a gorgeous spring evening, that conservatives really shouldn’t hope for the demise of Katie Couric.  She gives conservatives such great fodder.

Emcee Cal Thomas made a joke along the lines of he’s been in the media so long, he remembers when Katie Couric had ratings.

And although she didn’t win the dishonor for “Dan Rather Memorial Award for the Stupidest Analysis,” it’s worth repeating the entry here:

“Do you worry at all that non-believers may feel excluded and diminished at a time when we’re so divided about so much?”
— Katie Couric to The Nativity Story’s Catherine Hardwicke and Mike Rich in a December 4, 2006 CBS Evening News story about Hollywood movies based on Biblical themes.

So, now that we’ve done some solid celebrating of conservative editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez winning a Pulitzer Prize, has anyone else noticed?  Or is this just a party of close friends?

Let’s run the Nexis numbers to find out.

• Search “Pulitzer” and “Washington Post” (with date after April 6) this morning and you get 78 results.
• “Pulitzer” and “Bob Dylan”: 65 results.
• And “Pulitzer” and “Ramirez”?  50 results.

Looks like when our celebration is over, we’ll have lots of food and drink left over.

Just announced, this Pulitzer Prize:

For a distinguished cartoon or portfolio of cartoons published during the year, characterized by originality, editorial effectiveness, quality of drawing and pictorial effect, in print or in print and online, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Awarded to Michael Ramirez of Investor’s Business Daily for his provocative cartoons that rely on originality, humor and detailed artistry.

Who would’ve guessed they’d give an award to someone who thinks like this…

or this …

or this …

or this…

Look at me!  Look at me!  Look at me!

Today’s nominees for the Richard Cohen award for self-referential media content …
In the category of best look-at-me national media video, CBS News.

In the category of best look-at-me DC area video, WTOP radio.

(hat tip to Fishbowl for both videos)

How fitting that in last night’s “Bonfire of the Vanities”-esque finale of David Simon’s “The Wire” on HBO, grizzled Baltimore Sun city editor Gus Haynes makes a reference to Tom Wolfe.

In Wolfe’s sprawling big city drama, the people on top — no matter how crooked or how lying, and no matter whether their stated purpose is to do the public good or harm — always finish on top. In “The Wire” conclusion, the ending appears upbeat — lots of smiling faces, lots of individual accomplishment, peppy music. But the folks who succeeded are, for the most part, crooks and liars.

The point was driven home — actually, bludgeoned home — by the Sun paper winning a coveted Pulitzer Prize, for essentially knowingly lying. David Simon (and did our eyes deceive us, or was that Simon himself in a brief cameo sitting at a cubicle with a sticker that says “Save The Sun”) has the paper winning an award for public service that they most certainly did not deserve. That comes after Haynes, in a newsroom rant, cites journalistic luminaries Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass.

The irony is that today, in real life, newspapers are being done in by the Internet, by bloggers. In Simon’s “Wire,” the Internet is acknowledged — but it’s not the reason for the newspaper’s black eye. It’s their own fault. It’s trampling on the truth, and disinterest in fact checking if it means missing a prize.

There’s an old media anecdote that reporters are told: You mother says she loves you? Check it out. And there’s the oft-told line that a New Yorker fact checker once made a call to verify that the Empire State Building was, indeed, still there.

In last night’s “Wire,” all of that good public will that newspaper have fought long to build up came crashing down. Not through disgrace or firing, but through an award. Actually, a silly award.

Yes, Tom Wolfe deserves his shout-out. And old media deserves its Simoniz.

We learn a couple of fascinating tidbits from the Post’s preview of the Newseum grand opening.

First, it cost $450 million to build this journalists’ tribute to journalists.

That’s right, $450 million.  Imagine how many newsroom layoffs and forced buyouts $450 million could have prevented.

Second is this excerpt from the architectural review:

Journalism is a frenetic profession, caffeinated and hyperactive, and Polshek has responded in kind. The interior has been sliced and diced into multiple small galleries and little theaters, many of them bearing the names of the large corporate donors (Cox Enterprises First Amendment Gallery, Time Warner World News Gallery, News Corporation News History Gallery) that seeded the Newseum. Large open spaces have been set aside for a Journalists Memorial and a section of the Berlin Wall with guard tower (which has something to do with press freedom and democracy).

Hold on.  Rewind.  Galleries and theaters named after corporate donors?   Aren’t corporations supposed to be the evil empire?  Aren’t they the ones prompting media consolidation and lack of diversity in news and opinion?  Now corporation have galleries named after them in a journalism shrine — because they, egads, donated huge sums of money?

That’s so conventional?  Maybe.  That’s so corrupt?  Nope.  That’s so First Amendment — yes, free speech applies to the folks in the boardroom in addition to folks in the newsroom.

Time will tell whether rank and file journalists boycott the Newseum because it’s clearly complicit in the corporate takeover of the media.  I’d prefer to be an optimist, however.  Time will tell whether someone someday spends $450 million on a building that salutes bloggers.  I’d like my own theater.