We like this Fishbowl item for its pronunciation tip…

Today, Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth announced that former WSJ managing editor  Marcus Brauchli will replace Len Downie as Executive Editor of the Washington Post. (And yes: It’s pronounced like “broccoli.”)

Makes us want to do this…

Considering the Jesse Helms legacy?  Then also consider these:

Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, March 24, 2006

“Jesse Helms, the old buzzard from North Carolina. I can’t say anything else about Helms that’s suitable for a family newspaper.”

Washington Post’s David Broder, August 29, 2001, under the headline “Jesse Helms, White Racist”:

“What really sets Jesse Helms apart is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country.”

What really sets Broder’s observation apart, by the way, is that it was made after Helms announced he wouldn’t seek re-election in 2002.  Such bravery.

In today’s Post, Bob Kaiser’s focus on focus groups and Peter Hart has this adorable nugget:

Hart reported these reactions to the Mondale campaign, which quickly produced a new television commercial featuring a red telephone with a flashing orange light. A narrator intoned:

“The most awesome, powerful responsibility in the world lies in the hand that picks up this phone. The idea of an unsure, unsteady, untested hand is something to really think about. This is the issue of our times. On March 20, vote as if the future of the world is at stake. Mondale. This president will know what he’s doing. And that’s the difference between Gary Hart and Walter Mondale.”

Mondale won in Georgia, and kept this ad on the air in all the states that later held primaries. “The Hart people never had an answer to it,” Peter Hart recalls.

(Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, that 1984 Mondale commercial can be seen by going to www.youtube.com and searching for “Mondale Video 10.”) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fu-2Ew1ijg .

Ah yes, the “wonders of YouTube,” that mystifying sorcery device we find on our Google machines.

Too intimated to search “Mondale Video 10″?  You can also magically find it by searching “Walter Mondale Phone Ad 1984.”  And even “I’m with Bob Kaiser, YouTube is amazing Mondale 1984 ad phone.”
Will wonders never cease?

Newspaper correction of the week, from the June 23 Washington Post:

Editor’s Note: Because of a computer error, the story about Saturday’s race at Colonial Downs that appeared in the Sunday, June 22, Sports section referred to last year’s race. The correct story appears below.

Good gravy, will those computers ever get anything right?

Maybe this is guy who’s editing the Post these days…

From Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell’s Sunday piece on David Broder’s paid speaking gigs:

He received two speech fees — about $7,000 from the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors, and, in 2006, he accepted $12,000 from the Minnesota League of Cities.

What do you get for that kind of money?  Let’s take a peek into one of his speeches…

Personnel changes?  No. The front page.

Three stories on today’s Washington Post front page ambitiously feature prominently one of life’s most elegant words: ambitious.

This:

In an ambitious maneuver to help restore the Everglades, the state of Florida has struck a tentative deal to buy U.S. Sugar Corp. for $1.75 billion and turn many of its 187,000 acres of farmland into reservoirs.

And this:

One of the most ambitious pay-for-performance initiatives in Washington area schools is drawing strong teacher interest and local union support even though many national labor leaders have long asserted that it is unfair to link teachers’ paychecks directly to their students’ test scores.

And this:

In a speech in Santa Barbara, Calif., McCain (R-Ariz.) vowed to “put the purchasing power of the United States government on the side of green technology” by buying fuel-efficient vehicles for its civilian fleet of cars and trucks and by retrofitting federal office space. The pledge comes months after Obama (D-Ill.) outlined a more detailed and ambitious proposal on the subject, virtually ensuring that the next administration will take significant steps to lower the government’s output of energy and pollution.

Can’t wait to see tomorrow’s front page word-of-the-day.

Well, maybe Leonard Downie wasn’t that soft after all.

How fun to read this in Howard Kurtz’s story today:

More recently, Downie decided in 2004 to publish the F-word after Vice President Cheney used it in a dust-up with Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

The F-word?  You mean, Frak?

We loved seeing this mention in today’s Washington Post “Reliable Source”:

If you ever turned on a TV in the D.C. area in the 1970s or ’80s, you remember the Ourisman Chevrolet girl.

She was Susan Gailey, the radiant blonde who marched through the car lots in all those commercials singing the most indelible jingle of the era: “You’ll always get your way-aay/At Ourisman Chev-ro-let!” The ads, an instant sensation, got her dubbed “Washington’s only sex symbol.”

We remember that ad well.  Alas, it doesn’t live on YouTube, so we couldn’t revisit our childhood memories. But no worries …. another classic ad, also circa mid-1970s Washington, does.

Here at the glass-enclosed nerve center of Extreme Mortman, we’ve always tried to avoid using bad language.  We’re aware that America’s youth is watching, and we don’t want to corrupt their minds or have their parents block our site.

So how do we get around those standards and practices?

Simple.  By copying and pasting from the Washington Post.  Like today’s Food section.

Caesar, not “caeser.” Shiitake, not “shitake.”

We can’t even begin to imagine how many young readers did a spit take over shitake.

Bad photoshopping … from BoingBoing via Instapundit.