I think the Mainstream Media, whatever that is, has been doing a very good job reporting on the New York 9th District Congressman Anthony Weiner and his naughties. I’m kinda sick of hearing about it, but that’s my fault, because I consume lots of super-obvious Lowest Common Denominator News and Infotainments, where I have heard a kabillion-jillion things about Anthony Weiner from my teevee in the morning when I put the stupid TODAY show on and then in the bathroom, where I perform my morning ablutions in the manner of Pontius Pilate (one of History’s notable Public Servants), and I hear more about Anthony Weiner on the news programs on my radio. One of the programs I listen to while I am cleaning my teeth is a middle-of-the-road Traffic-and-Weather-Together kinda show and the other one is an hilarious Right-Wing syndicated thing that runs on a local Sports Radio channel, and they throw down on that show, man, when they talk about stuff like Mr. Weiner’s been doing, they call it “Perverted,” which I find it to be Highly Entertaining, when people get Judgmental about stuff, so I am hooked on that radio program, for reals, and I believe I am similar to zillions of people then, out here in the streets of Lowest Common Denominator, where I get my Info Feed, and where the info almost immediately gets processed by the American Jokes Industry and Entertainment Tonight and stuff. READ MORE

I always considered David Letterman a sort of father figure. With two baby boomer parents, I basically have two moms: first, my dad who blogs and reads Sufi poetry and cooks with ghee and wears bright colors, and second, my mom, who is saint for signing up for this. And so, growing up I depended on late night talk shows for the little genderizing that actually happened to me. Letterman, his shoulder as cold as the notoriously freezing Ed Sullivan Theater, represented for me a sort of fucked-up machismo. Where you come to work hammered and laugh at your own jokes and swallow your ailments and anxieties and hurt so that the only part of them we see is the times you're mean to that Hello Deli guy. You don't blog. You don't wear pink. READ MORE

You know what happens when you try to blackmail David Letterman with the old news that he's slept with some women on his staff? He writes you a fake $2-million check and then you get arrested. That is because he is awesome. Here is an amusing video of Anderson Cooper looking very serious about this news. Oh my God, someone slept with someone at work? That has never ever happened in New York City before!

President Obama appeared on David Letterman's show last night in New York, marking the 327th television program Obama has stopped by during his first eight months in office. The interview is widely judged to have gone well, particularly since Obama did not make fun of retarded people at any point. After the show, Obama celebrated by prank-calling New York Governor David Paterson, repeatedly yelling "Loser!" down the line and then hanging up.

Pretty much the coolest thing humankind has ever built (sorry, pyramids), the recently refurbished Hubble Telescope, has sent back more awe-inspiring pictures from space this week. This one here is what it looks like when galaxies collide. READ MORE

There is this write-around David Letterman story as the cover of New York magazine this week, and it's worth reading so as to see a much-absent prose stylist at work: Peter W. Kaplan, once the scrappy television beat reporter for the New York Times. Let us turn the clock back to 1985! READ MORE

New York sent a fella with a camera up to the protest at David Letterman's show yesterday afternoon, and the results are depressingly predictable. It's pretty much the fish-in-a-barrel situation you'd expect: the protesters are as ignorant and narrow-minded as anyone who'd willingly believe that Letterman's Sarah Palin joke was actually an endorsement of rape could be. Particularly enjoyable: the guy who is upset that Dave "made A-Rod into a pervert too" and the dudes at the end who pretend to mug down behind the woman who is yelling that Letterman will "rape [children] with his mouth."

David Letterman moved to draw a line under his "feud" with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin last night-or was it just a way to extend the press coverage for another week?-offering a second apology for his recent joke about one of the Palin daughters catching pregnant. Well, I choose NOT to be cynical about this, because, really, enough already. So let's say it was a gracious apology for an unfortunate, lazy bit. Palin has accepted the apology, but, being Sarah Palin, she of course has to once again deliberately misinterpret the remark and festoon it with a tribute to our troops. Also, scarequotes! READ MORE

I've been thinking a bit about the David Letterman/Sarah Palin kerfuffle that's kept both of them in the news this week, and I had sort of come to the conclusion that, you know what, Letterman was wrong. READ MORE