'specially when we used to eat sardines for dinner

I heard near the end of his life Andy Warhol was really impressed by Jean-Michel Basquiat, because Jean-Michel could still think up ideas for things to paint. Wow. But tonight I'm up until 3:00 a.m. and I'm less than inspired. I thought I might talk about how I'd like to be like Hendrick Hertzberg of the New Yorker, but when you're less than inspired it's not that easy. Some political commentary, nicely thought out and well expressed. Well, I don't have it in me tonight.

But I would like to share some thoughts about the media getting played and, though, I think it probably doesn't have to do with the sorry state of newspapers, it might be a factor. One of things that really irks me is all the ink the media gives to people like Hugo Chavez, Sarah Palin and of course the Octamom. I kind of like Hugo Chavez, I've covered him a bunch of times and the man has a certain charm. And, at least, while Bush was president I think he even had a point sometimes. The man is a dictator, but his points about the elites in Venezuela are legitimate as are the ideas of Bolivia's Evo Morales. I think Morales has more of point and is less of dictator, though, I may be wrong. At the same time, I think Morales is less reality-based than Chavez, but that's not the point I'm trying to make here. The point is that while I kind of like Hugo Chavez, I really hate having to cover Hugo Chavez. Because he talks for eight hours and then drops something like "Fidel Castro will live for another 100 years," and everybody goes ape shit and we have to alert it and it's big deal all because it's Hugo Chavez saying something about Fidel Castro _ another leader the U.S. has blown all out of proportion _ but it's not true. Fidel Castro will not live for another 100 years, nobody does and we shouldn't be giving him the ink for saying it. I was once at press conference where Hugo Chavez declared that MCI/Sprint was tapping his phone and everyone went ballistic, we even had to get comment from MCI/Sprit which predictably denied it. Then a couple of weeks ago he said the Russians could use Cuba or Venezuela to base long-range bombers and that was a big story and of course nothing came of it. So stop giving the guy a bully pulpit, okay? Same goes for Sarah Palin, the woman had a story on the wire about how she was offended by Obama's special Olympics comment. Get real. Because she has a special needs kid, because she's the hottest thing the Republican party has to offer she gets to weigh in on Obama's missstatment? And I'm not even going to comment on Octamom, the woman speaks for herself. And then there was Princess Diana, the so-called People's Princess, killed by the paparazzi. Thing was I don't think she deserved any media coverage either, I mean what was she again? A princess? Pul-eeze. But here's the thing, Pricess Diana coverage apparently sold newspapers, people wanted to hear about her. About her doing what exactly, I don't know but the paparazzi were there only because there was a market for Diana news and in that sense the people were the ones who put the paparazzi in place. But what about the media, doesn't the media have a responsibility to say: "Enough, we're going to cover only things important." No, of course not but it would be a better world if it did and we did and everyone was a little bit more responsible. Okay, so it's not that easy to be Hendrick Hertzberg.

The thing I'm playing around with here is getting thoughts down, and then trying to fix them up. The thing about the blogging form is that when I go back later and fine tune and fix things up, I doubt anyone even notices. Of course, I doubt anybody even notices this blog much anyway. In a way, that's kind of nice because it gives us an opportunity to try to figure out what we're doing and maybe one day somebody will actually read it and wow, that would be a terrible responsibility.