ah.. an oasis in the desert! Thanks Gerard!

We need something like the V-chip for television content. As soon as any celebrity trial comes on the screen will automatically play pleasant music and show some innocuous content until the blather is done. I've started doing this automatically in the car. Palestinian elections? Boop! Robert Blake? Boop! Ira-- Boop! Boop! Boop!

I guess I'm not old enough to know what you're referring to, since I don't have a clue what you're talking about.

All the honor and credibillity the media garnered from the coverage of the Tsunami disaster will be flushed from the buffers of history within 24 hours after this "certain trial" begins.

That's because a) there's really nothing else to be milked out of the tragedy and b) the UN is taking over from the initial ad hoc Anglo alliance (India included). Wave the left hand and people forget what the right hand is doing.

Remember Kosovo: the images of 'attractive' refugees in the snow and in the camps, the horror stories of ethnic cleansing, the action to bring the Serbs to heel and the turn-over to the UN. The place is still full of ethnic warfare, criminality and corruption. But one seldom hears about it in the media. The UN is there. Close the curtain.

The UN will not perform even half of what the initial alliance did in the tsunami relief; the corruption, inefficiency, and ponderous bureaucracy of it all will go unreported.

I disagree that the blogosphere will be likewise infected. It didn't follow Fox and Larry King with the all-Lacy and Scott all the time programming. We had an election to run.

Even so, it's the media circus' story, not the blogs'. The dog doesn't wag the blogosphere tail necessarily.

You will see. The blogsphere will be utterly unable to resist this one.