Mo Rocca of the Daily Show was hired by CNN to work the convention floor at the Democratic Convention in Boston. For those of you following at home, Mo Rocca isn't a journalist. He isn't even a talking head. He's a nasty parody of a television journalist - a literal mockery of the real thing. Now, I'm no fan of CNN, myself, but I found myself cringing as I watched Rocca gambol about the empty floor, behaving for all the world like a spoiled lap dog, and the esteemed former senators and actual talking heads did their best to keep the disgust off their collective faces while Rocca did the journalistic equivalent of pissing on all the good furniture and humping Larry King's shin.

Meanwhile, of course, NPR did its best to prepare the battlefield for the Kerry convention. Lord knows, le Dauphin needs one hell of a lot of preparation; just as a brigade of shaky, green infantry might need five times as much artillery preparation in advance of an assault on a position which a veteran unit might take "on the bounce", Kerry requires all the support the media can muster. Let the taxpayer take the hill - or in this case, the interested media.