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Upon further review, I've determined that Wal-Dryls are, in fact, a product distributed not by Wal-Mart but by Walgreen's. Wal-Mart's Benadryl knockoff is called "Equate," as are all of their pharmaceutical generics. I humbly apologize for the confusion.

Now, go back to whatever it is you were doing. It's Sunday. Go do Sunday things.

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Here's how this campaign has affected me: there are missing weapons in Iraq (although apparently they were missing BEFORE the coalition troops ever showed up), Clinton's campaigning for Kerry by telling everyone how much better things were when HE was in charge, Rehnquist is sick and judicial appointments are suddenly a last-minute hot button topic, Kerry's claiming to have been in two places at once in '86 when Buckner booted the grounder and he's claiming to have met with people who say he never did meet with them, and I'm more interested in the Ashlee Simpson acid reflux controversy.

Monday's a long day for me- I have several columns to write, deadlines galore, bills to pay, and an inexplicable pile of dead ants on the windowsill coexisting with an impressive trail of perfectly living ants. EVerything in the campaign's been beaten to death, and I'm about as capable of dealing with it as Manny Ramirez is with easy fly balls to left. (Memo to ManRam: you catch the ball with the part of the glove on your palm side, not the back of your hand. Try to remember that next time) I thought the weekend would help- nope.

Here's what's lodged in my mind at the moment:

1. Lindsay Lohan is in the hospital, but that's not the part that bothers me. What bothers me is that she's in a remake/update of "The Love Bug" called "Herbie: Fully Reloaded." It doesn't matter that it's written by Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon of "Reno 911"- they wrote "Taxi" (the Queen Latifah-Jimmy Fallon bomb, not the TV show), so they're fallible. I can't stress this too much: they're bringing back Herbie the Love Bug. Where's Congress? What's the Supreme Court doing about this?

2. Speaking of Jimmy Fallon, I would not object to his existence despite having no discernible talent and a weaselly, weak manner, except that a) they're remaking "Fever Pitch" as an American love story revolving around the Red Sox, b) Drew Barrymore's in it, and c) Jimmy Fallon's not only in it, he's STARRING in it. Let's get this straight: "Fever Pitch" started out as one of the all-time-greatest non-fiction sports books ever, Nick Hornby's book-length treatise on why he is (and, by extension, all guys are) sports fans (in his case, a worse-than-rabid Arsenal fan). It became a pretty entertaining low budget fictional movie with Colin Firth, a love story to be sure but because it was done on a small scale and because Colin Firth can act, it was perfectly tolerable. Now the Farrelly Brothers (oh, NO) have gotten hold of it and Jimmy Fallon (OH, NO) is the star, and it's about being a Red Sox fan and wooing Drew Barrymore. Jimmy Fallon cannot possibly be believable as a sports fan or someone who would be chasing after Drew Barrymore. I will reserve final judgement because the "American Pie" guys did Hornby's "About a Boy" and it turned out quite good, but I am not optimistic. (And don't get me started about Jude Law as "Alfie." Alfie is and always will be Michael Caine. No arguments.)

3. Robert Merrill died. Robert Merrill. I am not an opera fan, but everyone knew Robert Merrill because he always sang the anthem at Yankee games and he was on "The Odd Couple." Therefore, I am sad.

4. I like cheese.

Can I go now?

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It occurred to me just now that I hadn't fully read today's papers before they were chucked into the recycle bin. It also occurred to me that this no longer matters a whole lot.

It doesn't matter because the news media has finally, irretrievably sold out what integrity they had left in one last attempt to affect the presidential election. Oh, it's not like this hasn't happened before, but that was before the proliferation of blogs and websites that have the temerity to insist that the papers and the networks tell the truth. You know the details- Rathergate, yesterday's missing-explosives story- but even those aren't as offensive as one single fact: two of the largest news organizations in America, the "paper of record" and the erstwhile "Tiffany Network," planned to deliberately hold a story they thought would be damaging to the President and, until one "partner" decided to break the pact, intended to hold it until two days before the election so that the story could not effectively be challenged in time for the vote. Never mind that the story turned out to have a few problems that rendered it less effective than hoped- CBS and the New York Times are on the record as having intended to hold the story until October 31. You do the math.

Here it is in that other bastion of fairness, the L.A. Times:

Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of "60 Minutes," said in a statement that "our plan was to run the story on [Oct.] 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold, so the decision was made for the Times to run it."

"That's what happened, and it was only fair to credit them," said Lawrie Mifflin, executive director of television and radio for the New York Times.

Both organizations declined to comment further.

Let's repeat this:

"...our plan was to run the story on [Oct.] 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold, so the decision was made for the Times to run it."

Again:

"...our plan was to run the story on [Oct.] 31..."

Why? Why run the story on that day? Why hold it until then? Why wouldn't it "hold"? Here's the explanation CBS offers:

The tip was received Wednesday, and reporters from both organizations were in place Thursday, but by Friday, when the story came together, only a single TV interview had been taped, said one person familiar with the chronology. Over the weekend, the newspaper got wind that other journalists were on the story, and decided it had to break the story Monday, this source said.

CBS, however, had another major story set to air on "60 Minutes" Sunday: new reporting on the racially motivated slaying of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. It also could not tape enough Iraq interviews in time for the Sunday broadcast.

Not enough time to tape interviews? How many did they need? The Times apparently didn't need more than it had. They couldn't work on Saturday with such a huge story ready to break? And holding it to make room for breaking news in a story 49 YEARS OLD? Do they think the public's stupid?

Don't answer that. It's unnecessary.

The rest of the news media, apparently, isn't all that concerned about this. Sure, circulation's not what it used to be- not if they tell the truth, which, judging by the Newsday, Chicago Sun-Times, and Dallas Morning News scandals, may be an institutional problem- but, hey, if the flyover rabble wants the news, where else are they gonna go? Now, there are options, not all owned by Tribune or Knight-Ridder or the New York Times or any of the other modern press barons. No worries, they think, we can just dismiss those as unprofessional non-journalists with partisan axes to grind (except for Kos or Atrios or Wonkette- so cool, and one of us)- let's all just gather at Romanesko's letters page and discuss what really matters, like how many more papers endorsed our man Kerry this week or whether j-school's worth the trouble. Or maybe a letter or two attacking any critic who dares suggest that Jon Stewart- one of us, except when he's not- might just have climbed aboard with The Fonz and jumped that shark. Meanwhile, their house may not be burning down, but there's smoke coming out of the basement. What the New York Times and CBS do reflects on the entire industry, and the entire industry collectively yawns and moves on. (Or points at Fox and says "see? They're biased!" as if that gets everyone else off the hook)

So I didn't read the A sections today. The L.A. Times and the Daily Breeze are now gathering moisture in the bin back behind the garage, pages melding together in the rain. I did read "Get Fuzzy" and "Pearls Before Swine," scanned the sports section, but I missed the front page, the metro sections, the business and lifestyle sections, the editorial pages. And with each passing day of this campaign, failing to read the paper seems more and more like the reasonable thing to do.

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Too much going on, too many punches in the stomach. And every time I tell myself 2004 can't get any worse, something else happens. I have to stop telling myself things.

But then there was the opening of an article in the L.A. Times this morning (yes, I read it- after yesterday, I felt obligated to make the effort), a piece about a French forum on America:

This suburb of Paris recently hosted a remarkable discussion about whether the world still believes in the American dream.

The panel consisted of nine U.S. authors representing a spectrum of ages, literary styles and cultural backgrounds. The audience that filled the auditorium was French. The debate was part of Festival America, a three-day extravaganza devoted to North American literature.

Many panelists asserted that the image of America has darkened because of the war in Iraq. They trashed the Bush administration's policies abroad and at home. They said Americans struggle harder than ever for the basics: a house, job security, healthcare.

Then Native American author Sherman Alexie spoke up, declaring himself proof that the dream lives. Alexie, whose latest story collection is "Ten Little Indians," grew up in the bleak confines of the Spokane Indian reservation in Washington state. Today his books are published in 18 languages.

"I see white American writers on these stages disparaging the country, when everything they have is because of that country," Alexie said. "The dream has not died. I am a millionaire because of my imagination. I don't know if you could find another society that has ever existed where somebody like me could become what he has become."

A member of America's cultural elite professing to be grateful for the opportunities given to him by this country... this doesn't often happen. While we're beating the hell out of each other over this election, take a few minutes to reflect on that. I, too, am able to make a living (not a millionaire's living, but I do OK) because of my imagination (and my ability to be a professional smartass). And I couldn't have done that in most of the world, or at other times in history. I'm privileged to be around right here, right now, able and free to do what I do.

On a day of tough news, a thought like that does a soul good.

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Saw this in the Honolulu Advertiser:

For World Series fans in Hawai'i whose only option was listening to Game 4 on the radio, the switch might have come as a surprise.

During the bottom of the sixth inning yesterday, with Boston already leading 3-0, KKEA began broadcasting the University of Hawai'i women's volleyball game against San Jose State.

It was a contractural thing, but it's just as well- it's different in Hawaii. Major league sports really don't matter much. Women's volleyball- the Wahines- is way bigger. College football ls way bigger. I've been in Hawaii during the World Series- watched some of it in an airport lounge, actually- and it might as well be pre-season curling. Okay, that's an exaggeration- they DO watch some pro sports there- but you get the idea. When you're in Hawaii, you adjust your interests, you adjust to what you pay attention. You do as they do.

I'd like that right now for politics, for the election, for world events- a Hawaii-equivalent to go to where everything's untouched by what's in our newspapers, where the names Kerry and Bush and "Swift Boat Vets" and al Qaqaa don't mean a thing. Someplace where you wake up and the sun's shining, the water's warm, the drinks are cold, and it's like that every single day. No worries about al Qaeda or Kim Jong Il or Ashlee Simpson. Just the sounds of the roaring surf, maybe some reggae off in the distance at some outdoor dive bar where everybody knows your name and nobody will tell it to the authorities.

My happy place.

Okay, so that isn't going to happen. I have to work, have to pay attention, have to keep a roof over our heads... but then again, we COULD just, you know, go. We have no kids. Our families are clear across the country already. All we'd need is a shack by the beach, a little boat, a fishing pole. So we wouldn't get HDTV or broadband Internet or satellite radio. We can live without all that. We can... live... witho...

No, actually, I can't. I'd go crazy. I'd need to get to "civilization." (That's one reason I love the Keys- you need to go to Miami, you can drive there in three hours. But that's not quite the Happy Place) I need that TV, that radio, the papers, the Internet. They keep me occupied, my mind working. That's what makes me... what's the word? Not exactly "happy"... it's more like I have to do it because, um, I have to do it.

But I can always use a long vacation. This year, it wasn't to be- no time, no money. Maybe next year. Wait 'till next year, just like the Red Sox fans used to say. Hey, they made their goal, and it took only, what, 86 years to do it? I'll book our flights now for 2090. I bet we get a decent fare.

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What's striking about the reaction to the bin Laden tape is how there's a general "oooooh, the Elder has spoken" reaction in the media to it. They're reacting as if The Great One has graced us with his presence to inform us that it was all Bush and the Joooooooos' fault, that, why, none of this would have happened had Bush, you know, done something about it in advance instead of that whole kids-school-goat thing.

Now we know what he's been up to. He rented "Fahrenheit 9/11."

What nobody in the reports on this seems to want to say is that bin Laden's saying that the way to get back in his good graces is to abandon support for Israel and, you know, leave the Jews to him, just like the Europeans have. After all, he says, he saw Israel invade Lebanon and saw towers fall there and thought "we should do the same to them." (Of course, he didn't attack Israel- he KNEW they'd vaporize his sorry ass in seconds if he tried that) And nobody's calling this outrageous. All I see and hear are people wondering how this will affect Bush's chances.

I don't know if America is another Spain or another Australia. I hope for the latter. But if a madman tells you he hates you and trashes the President, why would anyone want to listen to him? Oh, but that's just my prejudice against the Insano-Terroristian community again. Must be more open to worldwide perspectives. After all, murderous megalomaniacs are people, too.

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Must calm down. Must calm down. Must...

Aaaahhh...

Peacock!:

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I have a lot to say but it's Saturday night. I've been trying really hard to relax today. trying to forget the election and my reaction to the movie "Ray" (I'll get to that maybe tomorrow) and anything aggravating, and then a friend called to chat and we ended up in an election/terrorism joust- he's lefty, I'm, er, not- and then I remembered what the hell I was trying to do when I initially plopped in front of the TV with a magazine and I had to explain that, no, this isn't personal and it's not because I don't have an answer or I agree or disagree but I JUST CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE. Not today. And he understood and changed the subject and we were all good (and I heard him refer to it on the radio later, so at least it gave him some material).

And it wasn't personal. It's just that I need this weekend to BE a weekend. And right now, John Zacherle- Zach! The Cool Ghoul!- is on Sirius Satellite Radio's Sirius Disorder channel sounding exactly as I remember him from WPLJ back in the day (and, really, from TV before that), playing Halloween-themed music or just stuff that fits- Joe Jackson's "Cancer"! The Specials' "Ghost Town"! Steel Pulse's "Blazing Fire"!- and it really beats Bush 'n' Kerry, or Osama or anything or anybody else. So I'll go make it a weekend, then maybe tomorrow I'll tell you what annoyed me about "Ray" (not Jamie Foxx, who was worth the price of admission and then some, but the movie as a whole). But not yet- it's only 8:00 and I might still get a few hours of carefree relaxation yet.

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