The photo below is of pages 14 and 15 of today’s New York Times.

The ad on the left is for a Ted Koppel-hosted program on Discovery. The ad on the right is for the ABC mockudrama about the lead-up to 9/11. (And the background is our coffee table, in case you’re wondering).

Did the ads come from the same agency, I wonder? Is the whole flag/fear theme just so darned popular that it coincidentally landed on two very pricey facing pages of the Sunday Times? Did the Times‘s layout people notice?

Oh, well, back to reading . . .

From a USA Today “opinion” piece by Marvin Kalb about Katie Couric’s first week at CBS News:

“Her interviews with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and talk show host Rush Limbaugh catered to the far left and far right, but they produced no news.”

Produced no news, he says? How about the shocking revelation that New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman pleases far leftists?

Friedman supports the Iraq war, still. At last count, that puts him to the right of about 60% of the country.

Since the invasion, he has harshly criticized the Bush Adminstration, not for going to war, but for not being fully committed to completing the mission. That’s a criticism, but certainly not a leftist criticism.

Friedman’s stances on other issues? He thinks that Russia and China are irresponsible for not supporting Bush’s attempt to impose economic sanctions on Iran. His views on Israel are so comfortably “right” that he wouldn’t be unwelcome in Israel’s governing party, Kadima. And Friedman dismisses left-of-centerists (John Edwards, Lou Dobbs, etc.) who criticize free trade agreements.

The only even vaguely lefty viewpoint Friedman has expressed in print lately is his belief that the U.S. should increase gasoline taxes to make the non-fossil energy industry more economically viable. Friedman thinks that the U.S. is unhealthily addicted to foreign oil. Guess what? So does President Bush!

Friedman’s a smart, immensely talented writer and I agree with him more often than I don’t.

But little about him is pleasing to the “left” or “far left.”

“The fighting is extraordinarily intense. The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis,” Brig. Ed Butler, the commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, told British ITV news.

The quotation is from this story about Afghanistan.

41 minutes and 42 seconds.

That’s how long I stayed on hold with the office of Fulton County Tax Commissioner Arthur Ferdinand’s office before hanging up the phone.

In that time, I probably could have seceded and built my own tax office.

I was calling to correct their mistake. They incorrectly believe that I do not have auto insurance and they’re threatening to suspend my car’s registration unless I prove to them otherwise.

(Hint to county and state: it’s same insurer and policy number I’ve had FOR THE PAST NINE YEARS!).

Now I have to drive Downtown and correct their mistake in person.

Who: Me

What: A Judge

Where: The Queen of the Strut pageant at Mary’s in East Atlanta — part of the East Atlanta Village Strut

When: Sat, Sept 9, 2006

Why: Because Carmen asked me to and she has a way of making requests seem not-entirely optional. And because she’s my friend and I’m flattered that she’d ask.

The event will raise money for Animal Action Rescue, a local group that shelters and finds permanent homes for needy dogs and cats. Although if you ask me, charity only encourages pets to become homeless.

Please be there. Spread the word. Tell a friend. Tell a word. Spread the friend. Whatever. Just show up and have fun and throw a dollar or two in the direction of kind people doing good work.

I received the following e-mail this morning from a reader of Columbia, South Carolina’s Free Times, which runs my Don’t Panic column. The font, color, italics and stray apostrophes are in the original:

Pieces written by a pile of Dog Shit like this make me and a lot of American’s sick. I gather from his name that he if it is a he, is not American, in fact from his writing he probably is a rug wearing Muslim. On September 11, we were not at war with anyone, just 3,000 people trying to make a living for there family and loved ones when 20 of your Rug Headed Brother’s killed the innocent who had done them no wrong. Some Cleric told them they would go to Heaven and have 70 Virgins to wait on them, well, I hope they all had AID’S. When I stand at that piece of Black Granite in Washington and talk to my friend’s, I keep telling them that they did not die in vain but some times when I tell them they died so Ass Holes like you can write trash like this, I feel like they are laughing, It even sounds like you praise Zarqawi. Keep in mind, we didn’t lose in Viet Nam, we left but it was a mistake we will not make again! Just an old Soldier who get’s hot when some one dishonor’s the American Way because there is none any Better. RSonOfDixie

As you read, listen and watch Hurricane Katrina anniversary coverage, you will hear several people imply or flat-out say that New Orleans was destroyed by a hurricane.

It was not.

The destruction of New Orleans was a man-made disaster. The city was deluged because the flood-protection system in the city built and maintained by the U.S. Army was poorly-designed, poorly-constructed and under-inspected. The flood walls and levees were not overtopped.

In June, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers admitted that the flood damage was their fault.

Yet, some people still refer to the destruction of NOLA as a natural disaster — some out of ignorance (it’s hard to know better when the TV and radio still refer to it as a natural disaster), some to protect their political allies from scrutiny (translation — if the Army screws up, it’s ultimately the Commander-In-Chief’s responsibility.)

Osama Bin Laden apparently has a thing for Whitney Houston.

From today’s NYPost. I enlarged the best bits.

Kola Boof, 37, the Sudanese poet and novelist who claims to have once been bin Laden’s sex slave, writes in her autobiography, “Diary of a Lost Girl,” which is excerpted in the September Harper’s: “He told me Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.”

Boof – who wrote for the soap opera “The Days of Our Lives” until she was axed last month – continues, “He said that he had a paramount desire for [Houston] and although he claimed music was evil, he spoke of someday spending vast amounts of money to go to America and try to arrange a meeting.”

Boof says bin Laden couldn’t stop talking about his favorite singer and had lofty plans for her. “He said he wanted to give [her] a mansion that he owned in a suburb of Khartoum. He explained to me that to possess Whitney, he would be willing to break his color rule and make her one of his wives.”

But bin Laden’s murderous side also emerged in his fantasies about the pop superstar. “[He would say] how beautiful she is,” Boof claims, “what a nice smile she has, how truly Islamic she is but is just brainwashed by American culture and by her husband – Bobby Brown, whom Osama talked about having killed, as if it were normal to have womens’ husbands killed.

“In his briefcase, I would come across photographs of the Star [magazine], as well as copies of Playboy. It would soon come to the point where I was sick of hearing Whitney Houston’s name,” Boof writes.

“I just want to remind everyone that it’s what’s inside that really matters.”

-Jessica Alba, upon receiving her “Choice Hottie” award at tonight’s Teen Choice awards.

Runner-up stupid comment (so far):

“This crowd just needs a little booze.”

Pre-show host Jillian Barbieri.

Um, Jill, it’s Teen Choice. TEEN.