In Other News, I See Their Point. We Sure Don't Want People We Invaded And Occupied For A Decade To Start Thinking Ill Of Us.

[John Gizzi's "side" of the story; Bill Plante's. If you spot the tiniest suggestion that either man ever senses, for a moment, that "boundless" is perhaps the wrong selection for his Ego size, please let me know where. Plante doesn't even get Gibbs' gag about his suit; that, or I didn't.]

HERE, in no particular order, Shit That Pisses Me Off About Ringtonegate, other than The Very Existence of Cell Phones:

• The suggestion, made by working members of the White House Press Gaggle, that this was unfortunately going to wind up as the lead story everywhere, thus obscuring the substantive discussion they'd been having about the torture pics. As though 1) they're interested in substance; 2) they're determined to get to the bottom of this torture business, once and for all; 3) they're somehow not a part of, or partly responsible for, the news-o-tainment biz; and 4) that there's a man jack among 'em who wouldn't walk over his own grandmother, in boots made out of Chuck Colson's grandmother, to get a similar story. Except Bill Plante, who actually dated Chuck Colson's grandmother when he was a young, eager, cub reporter covering the race to complete the trans-continental railroad, and she a traveling saloon "singer".

• That these middle-aged (except Bill Plante) motherfuckers can't be bothered to behave any better than tweenies at the Mall. I think you can be certain that 98% of the cell phones in that room were there for the exact same reason the Postmaster General of the United States has a security detail.

• That Gizzi--already a public offender--gets not one but two calls from his editor (he says), about a deadline (he says). For Human Events Online? What's the deadline? Was there going be a huge chunk of unexplained white space on the internets? Were Human Events readers going to be forced to re-read "The Liberal Fatwa Against Miss California" or the insightful analyses of Chuck Norris, Michelle Malkin, or Ben Shapiro? How many Conservative Undergrounders dialed up Human Events at 2:30 PM Eastern, jonesin' for the sweet stab of a Gizzi mainline, only to be met with "Brit Hume Honored By Phillips Foundation"? What? I read that yesterday! Where's my fucking stuff? Were they paying the pressmen overtime to wait on his copy? For that matter, this was the story Gizzi wound up writing about, including the de rigueur moans about the "intense" session it had unfortunately overshadowed.

• Bill Plante. He's seventy years old, he's been at CBS since Edward R. Murrow sampled his first Lucky, and he's covered inside Washington for over thirty years, including as White House Correspondent for every administration since Reagan's except Bush I, when he was at State. So the real question here is Bill Plante has sources? What for? So we get a more fully nuanced forty-second recap of the Press Corps CW whenever Katie tosses to him? Here is one of the few English sentences one is secure in believing have never been uttered before: "Wow, what a scoop for Bill Plante!" Followed by "I wonder who his sources are?"

• That, being judge, jury, and defense attorney, they get to explain to us that This Is Small Potatoes, despite the fact that most anyone who's ever attempted monogamy knows it's the small arrogances that talk the loudest.

• By the way, ten bucks says Plante's source had word of a cancellation at City Zen or Michel Richard Citronelle, which meant "Plante, Party of Six" was now down for 8:45.