I couldn’t help but notice that President Obama chided the American media—the journalism end of it anyway—twice in Thursday’s speech on how a democracy deals with terrorists. As a guy—our first Crackberry president—who clearly understands both pop technology and pop culture, he could be forgiven if the intent of those references was interpreted as him saying, "Is it really too much to expect you guys to do your job?"

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There was a graduation in LambertLand this past weekend. Son #2, AKA Weasel #2, picked up his diploma after enduring a pablum-marinaded commencement speech apparently written for a group of fourth graders but mistakenly delivered to several hundred 22-year-old adults just finishing four years of training in critical thinking. But I digress. The inflow of relatives—can you say four runs to MSP International in one day?—plus all the fine (backyard) dining cut into my bloviating time. So much so that that bastard, what's his name Rich at The New York Times, anticipated my latest deep thought.

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There are times—fifteen to twenty of them a day—when I'm convinced the great fight of our time is not between radical Islam and the free and democratic West (or as I usually see it, their nut-bag religious zealots against our nut-bag religious zealots). Nor is it between socialism and capitalism or Pepsi and Coke. The real front lines are over where the combined forces of stupidity and laziness are aligned against consumers of science, empirical knowledge, and practicing skeptics.

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If I were working for the Star Tribune, how would I rank the downer topics of the day on a grim to grimmer scale?

The Obama administration sees no likelihood of a federal bailout of newspapers? Mmmmm. Pretty low. Maybe if and when the government makes a profit off all that AIG dough but not now. No one is even wishful thinking on that one.

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My apologies or being offline for most of the past week. Roughly a month ago, our thirty-three-year-old niece, vacationing with her husband in Hawaii, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. She died shortly after Easter, and this past weekend was the memorial service for her in her hometown of Reno, Nevada. The service would have been held a week earlier, but being Reno, there was the problem of a Slots Championship soaking up every hotel room in town.

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Apparently cartoonist Steve Sack is the only one in the Strib's Op-Ed department capable of weighing, condensing, and expressing the mood of the public in the matter of Norm Coleman v. Logic and Common Sense. Coleman made The Grand Tour of editorial boards last week, hoping, I guess, that his charm would do what no amount of legal talent has so far accomplished. (Or maybe I should say "lack of legal talent," based on the way I hear local law birds bashing Team Coleman's hapless court presentations to date).

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I have pet peeves and obsessions. I'm not trying to hide them. One—maybe you've noticed—is the way professional journalists, in effect, distort an event or issue by insisting on "balance," as though everything ideological always has at least two intellectually and morally equivalent sides.

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Perhaps you've heard of the hapless Denver TV executive who, in a spasm of misbegotten hipness, re-branded his station "The Deuce" without bothering to consult The Urban Dictionary . . . or, I'm guessing, listen to anyone who had. Presented with the street-reality definition of "the deuce," the GM—yet another balding white guy running a teenage girl-targeted CW affiliate—insisted he couldn't care less. He was, like, down with it, dude.

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Several issues are ricocheting around in my alleged brain this morning.

A: I don't envy Pat Doyle. The Star Tribune's recount guy has produced for today's paper what walks and talks a lot like the same story he and other Strib reporters have been writing for weeks. This isn't a knock on Doyle, who plugs in all the usual suspects—Larry Jacobs, etc.—saying pretty much what they always do. Will Coleman go beyond the State Supremes? Will Pawlenty sign a certificate? Do the U.S. Supremes have any interest in this case?

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Henry Luce, the legendary publisher of TIME-Life, might be spinning in his grave at the cover story in this week’s issue of his news magazine. “The End of Excess: Is this Crisis Good for America?”, written by former Spy magazine editor Kurt Andersen, reads like the sort of loony lefty bulls*t (as Luce likely would have called it), that the TIME of old would have assigned to its most retrograde columnist for a thorough trashing.

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