Posted 8:05 AM by Gene

THE ACME OF CONCEIT: A potty mouth (rather, a former potty mouth under the aegis of "Can't Anyone Here Play This Game?" Stengel) joins the charmed circle of another potty mouth, but alas, her hero says something a bit -- too gutter-ish, and she forces herself (with a tear in her eye) to relinquish her bonds with the circle, eternally revering the memories of "honest" talk. Ms. Ana Marie has either identified herself as born yesterday or a PEOPLE WARNER organization woman to end them all. That she believes her fellow potty mouths somehow "informed", speaking with the scathing "frankness" that comes from being with fellow potty mouths, is a measure of how self-delusion rises with a writer's salary, and how everything comes down to our own infinite self-regard; she could never see her circle as a gaggle of preening phonies -- but if her former circle is full of preening phonies, what does that make her?

PEOPLE WARNER can't have her replace Mr. Stengel soon enough. We'd heartily endorse it as that would surely put the rag out of business.

P. S.

In the unlikely event that McCain, Oliphant, and others don't know who they're dealing with, let's review some of Imus' remarks (if you prefer, riffs) from the past. This stuff isn't hard to find. Many thanks to the Web sites Media Matters for America, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, and TomPaine.com (where Nobile tracked Imus' show) for the quotes that appear below.

How does everything become knee-jerk lockstep sieg-heil tantrum-throwing demagogic POLITICAL?