Whitman boys.

ON THE SAME NOTE HERE’S JON STEWART ON “THE REBUBLICAN ATTACK MACHINE.”

I DON’T LIKE TO JUST COPY STUFF FROM OTHER BLOGGERS, so just a recap, with the main link you need here, courtesy of McLuskey at Over/Spun:

On Monday, 3/29, Letterman shows hilarious footage of GWB giving a speech at a fundraiser in Orlando. There’s a kid, maybe thirteen, behind GWB and immediately to his right, who is obviously bored stiff — yawning, checking his watch, stretching. Letterman airs it under the caption “George W. Bush, Invigorating America’s Youth.” Funny stuff.

On Tuesday, 3/30, two different CNN anchors state that the White House told them (1) that the kid wasn’t there, but was “edited in,” then (2) that the kid was there at the speech, but not in the place Letterman’s video represented.

Letterman’s reaction? “That’s an out and out absolute 100% lie. That kid was exactly where we said he was.”

Smearing Dick Clarke is one thing, but Letterman?!?

HERE’S A SCARY STORY about corporate hostility to legitimate critique of its product. The author, a French biologist working in Boston, published an explication of the flaws in an antivirus program sold by a French company. Now he has been indicted in France.

COFFEE CAME OUT MY NOSE. That’s what Brooks says when he sees a site that makes him laugh explosively.

WHAM! THE MUSICAL. At least George Michael acknowledges the cheese factor. If he lets this happen, it will be because Andrew Ridgeley needs the cash. After all, Michael recently announced that he will no longer make music for profit, instead making it available for free on his web site, or perhaps in exchange for donations to his favorite charities.

WHAT CHANNELS DO I WANT? This is one of those questions the answer to which provokes some self-examination. After all, the TV one watches (or that one wants the option, perhaps never exercised, of watching) reflects one’s interests and personality. My list of channels brands me as a geek, like my recent habit of playing the Discworld MUD*:

C-Span 1 and 2; ESPN and ESPN2; HBO; Discovery; Animal Planet; the History Channel; AMC; CNN; NASA TV; A&E; Court TV; NFL Sunday Ticket; VH1; Comedy Central; the Cartoon Network; TBS; Fox Sports.

The question is prompted by Sen. McCain’s pressure to provide a la carte cable channels, rather than big packages of channels which inevitably include disproportinate numbers of shopping channels, religious channels, and Telemundo. Frank Ahrens of the Washington Post has the story, in which it is revealed that once again the Canadians are way ahead of us, and Sen. McCain doesn’t like broccoli.

* If you don’t understand this reference, don’t worry, it just means you aren’t at my geek level.