I offer three interesting links:
 
1)  Paul Krugman here seems to have deliberately positioned the fan beneath a torrent of shit.
 
2)  Frank Rich, in his latest column, is the first person I know of to make the obvious but important point about the significance of Will Ferrell's film Anchorman; he also presents an interesting history of the idea of news broadcaster as likeable "personality" or demented clown.  And he gives a neat answer to the proverbial question:  why (apart from despair and self-hatred) to media figures exult in serving as shit-conduits?  Because they are in the business of giving people what they want, and they blithely assume--though perhaps not incorrectly--that the American people are hungry for shit.
 
3)  In today's edition of the Washington Post daily news publication, Senators Joseph I. Lieberman and Jon "Kill" Kyl announce that they are resurrecting the Cold-War era "Committee on the Present Danger" to ensure that Americans remain aware of the threat of terrorism.  Just as many Americans were in denial about communism, so many of us are, according to these two United States Senators, in denial about terrorism.  There is a political "undertow" that, they claim, threatens to undo our advances in the war (in the TWAT?).  What is this "undertow"?  Unease about Iraq, of course.  We who dislike the Iraq war don't believe that terrorists pose a threat.  Of course.  Actually don't read the column; here is another, more accurate summary:  Lieberman shits on himself; then, in a fit of inarticulate infantile rage and desperation, he smears himself in his own shit; then, unable to sustain his disgust with himself, he suffers a psychotic break and has a hallucination of his own impeccable cleanliness; then he presents himself to the public, covered in shit, and asks for our admiration.  
 

 
The smug grin of the always-upright Lieberman (right) radiates poison in the direction of a real, not shit-covered Jew, Senator Carl Levin.