https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1juoeQqBo8

Speaking of mindless brutes, Mr. Plumber has taken to wearing this “Don’t Spread My Wealth, Spread My Work Ethic” t-shirt lately. Could someone please tell us how Samuel J. has been paying the rent the past eighteen months?

We’re hearing buzz that Barack Obama will be pre-empting Dwayne Johnson’s SNL cameo this week, when he gives a press conference this morning after hearing the latest bad news about the Gulf spill. The script calls for Barry to be shocked — Shocked! — that drilling for oil a mile deep isn’t nearly as safe as those nice ugly people shilling in those BP commercials would lead you to think.

Sarah Palin, meanwhile, will keep exhorting those poor fishermen to fight for compensation from companies whose policies she steadfastly supports. And other than a few well-oiled Flippers, the rest of us will continue to be denied heartwrenching marine-disaster coverage because, well, we’ve been using the Gulf as America’s Toilet for years, and the fish are long since dead.

“In the changing media landscape… Little Orphan Annie has run into adversity not even she could overcome. The sun will come out tomorrow, but the tomorrow after June 13 will be the first in generations to dawn without ‘Annie’ appearing in a daily newspaper.” [Chicago Tribune]

Above: The 2005 Formula One Marlboro Ferrari. Cool! Only the European Union has banned tobacco sponsorship of “cross-border cultural and sporting events.” Darn.

Below: Marlboro’s solution. What’s that? A barcode? Huh?

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“In both speeches, Palin cited President Ronald Reagan as a driving influence in her life and political career, drawing great attention to the fact Reagan was born and educated in Illinois — the state in which we believe Palin will officially launch her 2012 presidential bid on February 6th, 2011… Reagan’s 100th birthday.” [Conservatives4Palin, via Political Wire]

The summer before we entered journalism school, the dean called us freshmen in for a pep talk.

Get out, he said. Now. The future is grim. Your chance of being and remaining gainfully employed in a low-paying profession is even grimmer.

This was 1977.

CNN didn’t exist yet, never mind the Internet. The bogeymen were newspaper chains like Gannett, and they hadn’t even launched USA Today.

We, of course, ignored the dean’s advice, graduated four years later, worked at a small community newspaper for eighteen months, and decided we’d rather run away and join the circus. And here we are.

And whenever we read thumbsuckers on The Fate of Newspapers in The Internet Age, we think of the dean. Nobody in the industry should act surprised. This has been coming for a generation.

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“Eliot Spitzer, a member of Kagan’s social circle at Princeton University, wanted to make the same point as Walzer. ‘I did not go out with her, but other guys did,’ he said in an email Tuesday night.” [Politico, via Political Wire]