The Onion nailed it today, as usual:

“How embarrassing. I hope the media doesn’t make too big a deal out of this story of big money, unbridled power, and hot sex.”

The media have been unusually irresponsible here, though. The stories for two days said that Spitzer “is involved with“, “has been linked to“, or “is tied to” a “prostitution ring”, which carry connotations much larger than if they’d simply said he “was a customer of” what appears to be standard prostitution.

Second, I’ve only seen it mentioned a couple places, but this angle really warrants a follow-up:

But here is where it gets odd. The wire tap goes live toward the beginning of January. They listen in to numerous conversations between clients and the escort service owners/operators all through January and early February.

Judging from the affidavit, they obviously have more than enough to bust all four employees and numerous johns. But they don’t.

They sit on the wire until February 11, when Eliot Spitzer contacts the service. Importantly, the investigators would have known that Spitzer was a repeat user. So, if they bring charges in early February, they get the brothel owners, but they don’t get the big prize - the moralizing Governor of New York state.

Were they waiting for him? I don’t know. But look at the timing: Spitzer has his liason with the prostitute on February 12, and suddenly, the Feds wrap up their investigation. They file charges just three weeks later. They had their evidence.

Nobody else was involved with this, huh? Just the governor? And he’s the only high-profile client of an obscenely expensive call-girl service? The rest were all garden-variety nobodies? OK.

Third, it’s sad to see the media fall all over the woman named in the initial paperwork. I’m not saying she’s not part of the story, but when you’ve got someone using the services of prostitutes for months or years, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t exclusively with one woman. Her part of the story is the prurient part, so the lurid bits are getting too much attention. Apparently she changed her MySpace page over the past three days. Really? Wouldn’t you?

The final thing that the media are dropping the ball on is the discussion about prostitution itself. I’ve heard arguments on both sides - that this is really a personal matter (and Spitzer is himself a victim) and that this is a great time to start talking about how prostitution needs to be made more illegal, since obviously what we’re doing is no deterrent. On one hand, it’s totally worth pointing out that the potential blackmail threat against the governor of New York is indescribably potent. It doesn’t need to be illegal to be terribly embarrassing, and history is full of not-terrible men who did terrible things for terrible people to keep embarrassing news from breaking. At the same time, most of the arguments given for the criminalization of prostitution center around a lot of harms that only happen because prostitution is illegal. (Prostitution wouldn’t be linked to the illegal drug trade if it were legal. Women could get protection from an abusive work environment if they could, for example, call the police without fear of getting arrested themselves. It’s much more likely to stay dangerous as long as it stays underground.) I’m not saying that the legalization argument is a great one, but it should be fairly represented if it’s represented at all, and as I pointed out at the beginning of the paragraph, it’s not really material.

You know what would be great?  A breaking news RSS feed.  Like, only the real important stuff, when that happens.

I read a lot of news, but mostly because I think something important might have happened, and since it didn’t, I read the story about the waterskiing squirrel.  I think an "important" event happens maybe once a week in this country, but if three big stories are happening the same day, that’s cool.  Ping me three times.  If nothing happens for a month, that’s fine, too. 

While I’ve heard the phrase "24-hour news cycle" to refer to the relatively new practice of going too far in-depth on matters that most people find trivial (because cable’s got all that time to fill, and they are absolutely forbidden to stop talking), doesn’t it really date back to the practice of putting a newspaper out every day, and having to fill that just as full? 

So why is news still tied to a "today’s big story" paradigm, even when, on lots of days, there is no big story?

The best compromise I’ve found so far is CNN’s breaking news email, which I’m subscribed to from one of my Bloglines addresses.  Still, though, shouldn’t there be a news feed that doesn’t push 10 stories an hour?  Is that weird to want?

Keep watching this NPR page, as they claim they’ll have Cindy Sheehan’s Talk of the Nation performance loaded up in the next three hours.  It was, well, laughable.

I’ve been able to steer clear of the Sheehan mess so far, but I know how Neal Conan handles his guests, and despite being falling-over-polite, he can’t save his guest (the only one he was supposed to have the whole hour?) as she cuts the interview off early and leaves the show in the first segment.  I guess I knew she was a nut, but in this interview she’s a real nutter’s nut: refusing questions (because she’s "already talked about that everywhere else"), glossing over the fact that her son made a decision as an adult (he didn’t join the military, they recruited him), frantically arguing minor points and then totally serene as Neal extracts her talking points from her (almost bored as she rattles off "what was the noble cause my son had to die for…" blah blah blah).

Do check it out.  I’m still firmly entrenched on the anti-war side, but Sheehan’s fifteen minutes are about up.

Best idea ever.  The land that Justice Souter lives on WOULD make an excellent hotel.

Eddie Albert, star of ‘Green Acres,’ dead at 99.  That’s 6 of 10, with about a month left on the clock.  However, since the pope left the popularity board, Eddie Albert’s been the most common pick.  So pretty much everyone got that one.

So if you’re like me, you’re wondering what the pope’s selection of the name "Benedict XVI" means.  But if you visit Wikipedia, someone’s already jumped in and added a final sentence that clears that all up:

Thus, when Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope in
2005, his choice of the title Benedict XVI was intended to convey
a promise of humanitarian diplomacy and a firm stance against modernism.

That makes me wonder how long it is until wiki-as-a-medium is ready for actual headline news.  (Not that Wikipedia isn’t already keeping up rather well.)

Yahoo! Sports - NFL - Moss headed to the Raiders.  Probably for the best.  In short, Vikings get Napoleon Harris, and Oakland’s first round pick (7th overall), and Oakland gets a world of trouble. :)

The Slanderous Minneapolis folks probably said it better than I can, but Paris Hilton’s hacked cell phone had a 651 number on it (attached to the name "Party Guy"), and I don’t think it was Cratchit.