Look, Google News, all I want to do is troll the headlines for some quick hits, and all I get is fucking National Spelling Bee links all over the fucking place.

Stop it. Stop it now. Or I’ll, um, riant your thermolysis.

Yes, it would be easy to joke about the contest being nothing more than an advertisement for Scrabble dictionaries. Or how the real spelling issue isn’t eidetic miscible brininess, but there, their and they’re.

But here’s what gets my sufflaminate in a galimatias: those poor abused children have to spell these words out loud, making the exercise completely irrelevant. I’m a champion fifth-grade speller, but my ability is entirely visual. I know how words look. On the page. Where we read them.

All you’re doing is teaching kids meaningless skills that will only prepare them for pointless, frustrating lives. Better to just drop the ruse now and hand them a spatula.

Scripps National Spelling Bee

Damn, dude. Good run.

‘Carol Burnett’ star Harvey Korman dies at 81 [AP]

Another notch for Michelle Malkin:

Dunkin’ Donuts has pulled an online advertisement featuring Rachael Ray after complaints that a fringed black-and-white scarf that the celebrity chef wore in the ad offers symbolic support for Muslim extremism and terrorism.

The coffee and baked goods chain said the ad that began appearing online May 7 was pulled over the past weekend because “the possibility of misperception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee.”

In the spot, Ray holds an iced coffee while standing in front of trees with pink blossoms.

Critics, including conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, complained that the scarf wrapped around her looked like a kaffiyeh, the traditional Arab headdress.

And that’s what happens when you cross Starbucks. Do not make fun of their coffee names.

Dunkin’ Donuts pulls Rachael Ray ad after complaints [AP]

Now that Psychogeezer’s ass has been given a clean (if freckled) bill of health, and Hillbot’s maintenance records have been inspected by factory technicians, America’s attention turns to the dark-lunged past of the Magic Negro.

Send the children from the room and sit down: Unicorn has been revealed to smoke cigarettes.

And not just a few just to be social with the outcasts on the sidewalk — as many as 70,000 over 25 years, although the campaign refuses to release a detailed accounting. “Long term risks for pancreatic, esophageal, bladder, and kidney cancers,” not to mention stroke, are raising fears of a crippled president, unable to lead his nation at war. (No, that one.)

Reports that Hillbot operatives have been leaving cartons of Kools around Unicorn HQ remain unconfirmed.

Will smoking past affect Obama’s health? [Politico]

Let’s skip the throat-clearing and cut to the chase:

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don’t understand it.”

Time was when she bothered to code her messages. Glad to see she’s found her voice.

Clinton cites Kennedy assassination in primaries [AP]

Update: “I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever,” the former first lady said.

No, no, of course not. Mission Accomplished!

Clinton apologies for Kennedy remark [AP]

(Note to copy desk: Please insert something about candidate’s medical report, just enough to make room for Yet Another Adult Swim Graphic, and lead readers to the link headline below. If you can fit in “Buttocks unremarkable except for some very light tan freckling,” more’s the better. Kthxbai, noj.)

John McCain and his ‘unremarkable’ buttocks [LA Times]

Breaking news from the Oz cultural beat: the hallowed pub crawl is under threat from nanny-state politicians. Late-night patrons would be refused re-entry after leaving, and establishments would be required to close their doors as early as 2 a.m.

“This would prevent all-night pub crawls and drunken louts wandering the streets from watering hole to watering hole,” reports the Opera House rag.

Even more stunning: “The ministers also agreed to a ban of fruit-flavoured and confectionary-flavoured cigarettes by December 2009.”

With Australia’s reputation already under attack from New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo, Americans are now forced to consider whether consumption of Foster’s supports an oppressive regime, and whether to switch to Steinlager instead.

Locks go on late night pub crawls [Sydney Morning Herald]