That cloying asslicker from hell Jane Pauley has just signed to take on Oprah. (Sort of: NBC is pitching her new daytime talkshow to stations for late afternoon, so she may go head to head in many markets.) If God is watching us, he will give Oprah the power to smite her.

{more heinous newsmodels here, here and much of the way through here, though of course not in the title character.}

(I love Oprah, by the way, which never ceases to stun friends and colleagues. Yes, she turns it on a little new-agey sometimes, but she's sharp (REALLY sharp), sincere, articulate and candid. That's a pretty strong combination. I find her incredibly genuine, and self-deprecating, though not in a self-conscious, self-serving way.

(SEE: I managed to turn something horrible about someone horrible into something nice about someone wonderful. For a minute.)

Jane is also publishing two books with Random House (I pray my old editor Jon Karp has nothing to do with this--love that guy, would hate to see him soiled that way). First comes a memoir--couldn't we just reread the CliffsNotes to Joan Lunden's silliness? Oh, does Cliffs not take on trash that odious? THEN a self-help book. Well to be fair, we really do need another one of those out, especially from someone who may still escape the tenth circle of hell. (Oh hadn't you heard? They added a new one. If this is news to you, check out this informative piece from The Onion: "Tenth Circle Added To Rapidly Growing Hell" (sic: i.e., THEY left off the hyphen after rapidly).

If you don't have time for the whole story, let me tempt you with this alluring final line:

"We're really on the grow down here," Grogar added. "This is an exciting time to be in Hell."

Heeheehee. 

 It's all laid out very effectively in this handy little diagram:

Well this is kind of sad. Always liked that guy. And yet, it just struck me as rather sad, not a rip to the heart like June Carter Cash leaving us last month. Or even discovering the final resting of Open Letters.  Hmmmm. I'm a newsman myself sometimes, why isn't this bothering me more? I'll have to set on that one a spell. I'll get back to you on that, perhaps by the end of this post. 

(And I'll also get back to you with more on June Carter, as promised. I'm going to delay it, though: So many other things have been popping into my pretty little head since I started this thing, and she's been decomposing for a month already, so I imagine there's no rush.)

Of course my very first thought (when I got the news on David) shot right back to election night 96, when he let loose over and over about what a windbag Clinton was. And not because my mind makes a beeline for the bad times (not this time, anyway)--I consider that his most stellar achievement.

That was the passing, really. The night the media finally jumped the shark, perhaps. Clinton was a huge bore: a tireless, tiresome motormouth who went on and on with all the right issues but none of the feeling. One of the least charismatic politicians in a generation, and all the media were always fawning all over about how MUCH charisma he had. I always felt his great skill was reading the public mood and mirroring it perfectly. Never got any whiff of any stirring passion of his own. And he just was unbearable to listen to: on and on and on for hours (literally, with some of his state of the unions) without so much as a fresh thought or a moment of genuine passion. Put me right to sleep.

And David Brinkley had the nerve to SAY SO! On national TV! Scandal.

The image I remember more clearly than David say it all, was the terrified Peter Jennings (who I normally really like, one of the few newsmodels out there I actually respect), interjecting off-handedly then sternly then alarmingly, "I might remind you the microphone is on David" ... "We're live, David, the microphone is on" ... "DAVID! The MICROphone is ON!" Something like that anyway. Please don't quote me on that. But that's how I recorded it.

Imagine, pointing out your candid opinion about something. Isn't that what all those talking heads are there for, opinion?

It bugs me that no matter WHO the president, the press feels the need to nearly always find a way to say he did a good job. The guy can be as inept as Prince George, and they're all about "how much he's improved" or "he's really coming into his own." Yeah, he's not nearly as embarrassing as a few months ago. Great.

And most of our recent fearless leaders have been quite charismatically challenged. The last three for sure. But that lame little lapdog press corps ...

But for one brief shining moment in 1996, just minutes after Bill Clinton was rehanded the presidency and therefore at the height of his power, one brave and/or senile TV newsman sat up straight in his chair and said: What a bore! repeatedly.

Hard to imagine that now, when even a man so profoundly challenged by the English language and by basic skills of expression as Bushie The Younger gets lauded by the press. Maybe that was the last time. (Especially since he was forced to apologize.)

I was slightly surprised to see the AP story mention the incident, and pretty high up. I skimmed the story quickly going right for it. Reuters mentions it too, though much lower and even more briefly.

Shit, this was supposed to be about Brinkley. Well, I really did enjoy his Sunday show, and the way he kept out of the discussion most of the time, sitting there quietly, waiting for the moment someone needed to bust in and call bullshit on something, and then he burst in and called bullshit on it.

Still, it's hard to get worked up about the passing of a newsman. (Or is it just a TV newsman?) God, is that why I'm so unmoved? I think so. They (we, yikes!) are so discredited as a class right now. It's hard to think of a journalist having any real impact on society right now, in spite of their self-appointed place right in the center of it. It's hard for ME to think of the loss of a newsman as a truly great loss in the scheme of things, no matter how high he stood in that sinking class.

Please understand that I don't mean it's no loss to this world, or especially it's not a very sad day, especially to his friends and family. But I was never a close friend of his--having never met or spoken to him--and I've never gotten wind of any blood relation. So deaths really take it out of me. The dead-actors segment is always the most moving segment of the oscarfest. Even the oldtimers I never heard of--which is most of them, especially the makeup artists and cinematographers--and yet, I feel the loss of a great, or possibly quite good or at the least winningly-mediocre art force in this world. Just hard to feel that kind of emotional strain for the loss of a newsman.

Update:

Dancesafe is one of the few honest outlets out there, expressing the good with the bad, regardless of which side you're not interested in hearing.

The slideshow of what your brain REALLY looks like on drugs is incredibly enlightening. No dumbing it down like the morons in the anti-drug movement. Twenty-three detailed slides that start with the basics--slide #1 introduces the Parietal, Temporal and Occipital lobes, the Cerebellum and the brain stem--and ramps up quickly. To give you an idea, here is the diagram and copy from slide #2 (in the basic section):

This is a model of a typical brain cell, or neuron. Your brain contains billions of brain cells. A brain cell consists of a cell body, which stores the DNA, dendrites which receive chemical signals from other cells, and an axon, which carries an electrical signal from the cell body to the axon terminals. The axon terminals contain chemicals, called "neurotransmitters," which are released in order for the cell to communicate with nearby cells.

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, and some brain cells have axons that contain only serotonin. These are called "serotonin neurons." Other brain cells produce and release different neurotransmitters, like dopamine or norepinephrine, and some produce and release more than one neurotransmitter. However, your serotonin cells only produce and release serotonin.

{end slide}

And here is slide # 12 (intermediate level) (Each cute little icon represents a specific chemical or cell body, outlined in the earlier slides. It might be a bit hard to follow everything dropping in 10 slides later, but this will give you an idea of the level of information you'll receive):

Along with binding to the dendritic recepters, serotonin molecules also bind to "reuptake transporters" on the axon's membrane. These transporters take the molecule and transport it back into the axon terminal. They are sometimes called "pumps" and can be thought of as a revolving door. The serotonin enters one side, and the door spins around pushing it out the other side. We have shown here four reuptake pumps in various stages of transporting serotonin. Imagine them spinning and transporting serotonin from the synapse back into the axon.

Reuptake transporters reduce the amount of serotonin in the synapse. Keep in mind that these are one-way doors. Serotonin doesn't go through them the other direction. It can only be released into the synapse from the vesicles. As the reuptake pumps are pulling the serotonin back into the axon, some of this serotonin makes its way back into the vesicles, where the MDMA may cause it to be released again. However, some of it gets broken down by Monoamine Oxidase. We show this in the next slide.

{end slide}

Not bad, eh? It gets a lot more complicated from there. And it should. Candid information from people who don't assume you're a moron just because you're considering taking a drug.

. . . seem to be everywhere lately, and they're really making my blood boil. 

Why don't they pick a drug that's actually dangerous, relative to the other drugs people are taking? With all the dangers of crystal, g, coke, heroin, alcohol and nicotine, what an odd drug to get all worked up about. What is it, exactly? This whole RAVE mystique--it's like they've gotten the whiff that something really wild and mysterious is going on out there and ...

And WHAT? And so what? And they're pissed off that they got

old and crotchety before they ever had a chance to get to one? And the kids are having WAY too much fun, so there must be something really dangerous going on. Jeez, they should be glad their kids are taking x if that's the worst they're doing. Probably a lot safer than drinking. MUCH safer than most of those other drugs. What exactly is the infatuation--and yes, that's the word I mean--with x?

And what kind of asswipes designed these ads, anyway? 2/3 of the ones I keep seeing are narrowly-focused on helping parents ID the warning signs: a stream of pix of x-related paraphernalia popular in the late 90s. Nice work guys. Right on top of things. And why on earth are you running them wall to wall on The Daily Show and The Real World? JAG and Touched by an Angel were all booked up?

Like I freaking care. (Is that how you spell his name?)

That line, however, is stolen, from mobylives (scrowl down to Tuesday, 10 June 2003--I don't know how to link to the exact spot). Exactly what I thought, but not exactly how I put it when I read the odd story surrounding The Da Vinci Code Monday. You can get the background in the AP story, but the gist is that another author is saying the Da Vinci author swiped the essence of his book: too many similarities in plot, character, details . . .

It was the Da Vinci author's responses that were really amusing. I was cackling out loud at this one: "Swiss bank accounts are so often in thrillers they are cliche."

I'm probably the last to know. I knew Open Letters folded at least a couple years ago--before I even discovered it--but I just assumed it would still be there in archives for awhile. That's the great thing about great sites (great books? great everything?): just because they've stopped producing, doesn't mean they're irrelevant.

I kept reading little bits at a time, not wanting to gobble up too much, because there was only so much and then it would be gone and I would be sad. (Sort of like my approach to Nabokov's Speak, Memory, surely my favorite book ever, though I've claimed a few others on occasion. But the one claim I can't make on Catcher in the Rye is refusing to finish it. I'm afraid to finish Speak, Memory, because then it will all be gone. I can still reread it, and I do, frequently, but there's nothing like the thrill of that rare moment when I indulge a few fresh pages, creep ever closer toward the end. I'm terrified of getting there.)

Hennyway, Open Letters isn't quite that good, but it is really good, and I did enjoy nibbling away at it like that, though I obviously forgot to do it for quite some time, because I just went to find it and it's gone! Click on it and see--some new goofball commercial site.

Well, it was a great site, and I was all set to drop it into my links column on the left, but the best I can do now is link to this very interesting Transom piece about it and some related stuff (including This American Life) by founder Paul Tough. (this is what he looks like. from one angle.)

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

The appellate court in another province (Ontario) legalized gay marriage yesterday, and this time did it effectively immediately, so gay people actually got married yesterday. Wow.

In a unanimous ruling, it also declared the province's definition of marriage illegal and demanded an immediate change from "one man and one woman" to "two persons."

It's about freaking time.

Why are we so far behind?

Even Hillary Clinton parrots that disgusting line about it being strictly between a man and a woman. (Didn't mean to get into Hillary-bashing this week. That stance of hers just smacks so much of cowardice, because I don't believe for a minute she feels it.)

{ahhhhh. my dreamboats (to the left). the first two lucky lovebirds.}

(Wow, what a gay day this has turned out to be. I never would have suspected it this morning. Felt oddly butch rolling out of bed, matter of fact. Not that butch and gay are mutually-exclusive, necessarily, just in practice, usually.  My gay husband is not going to look like either of those guys, by the way. When I find him. Which will be soon, right? (I'm just now on the rebound after a long, tragically glorious love affair, so I'm allowed to whine as needed, or to look off wistfully into the fading sunlight, let go of my focus and melt into one of those absent k-hole dazes as I picture Stud Charming kneeling down to propose to me at the same moment I do to him. I get at least a month to act this way, check the rulebook.)

(Come to post of it, Stud Charming could do a lot worse than that boy a couple inches down there. Except what's the deal with that hair?)