THIS MODERN WORLD

I disapprove of using awkward pictures to make fun of people you disagree with politically.

However, I will make an exception this one time.

From another angle:

In any case, the point here really isn’t that John McCain is a ridiculous person. It’s that he’s a person, and hence ridiculous.

Sadly, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz was injured in an accident last week at his second job laying railroad track. A malfunctioning explosive charge blew a four foot long tamping iron through his skull, destroying most of the front left section of his brain.

Remarkably, however, just like in the case of Phineas Gage in 1848, Kurtz survived. After filing down the two protruding ends of the steel spike, doctors today allowed Kurtz to return to his show on CNN, while emphasizing that he should keep his hair combed over the giant gaping hole in his skull.

Immediately after his injury Kurtz had, like Gage, seemed remarkably unaffected. But he’s now started making the kinds of statements people do only when they have giant spikes embedded in their brains:

KURTZ: I’m certainly not saying that what people say at these rallies, particularly if it’s ugly stuff, shouldn’t be covered. It’s part of the story. But it seems that the press has kind of adopted this theme that McCain and Palin are stoking the anger…

I was in Indiana with Obama this week. And there was some nut job in the crowd who started screaming about Obama was going to bring about the new world order, and he was ejected from the scene and people booed. Hardly anybody reported that because, who cared? But it seems to me that in the case of McCain and Palin, we have decided that they are somehow responsible for this. And I just question whether that’s fair.

Unfortunately, Kurtz’s guest Candy Crowley had not been told of his accident, and reacted like this:

CROWLEY: Right, Howie—those two things are exactly the same. I mean, just as Palin and McCain keep talking about how Obama palls around with terrorists, Obama won’t shut up about how he’s a Secret Grand Dragon of the New World Order. Jesus Christ Almighty, do you have a giant steel spike embedded in your brain or something?

This led to several embarrassing moments for everyone concerned.

Paul Krugman wins the “Nobel” Prize for Economics.

Gosh, I wonder what Sweden’s central bank is trying to tell us?

Seriously. Even in dark times such as these, he can always bring a smile to my face. Take the opening paragraphs of this morning’s column, for instance:

My friend Rob Watson, the head of EcoTech International, has a saying about Mother Nature that goes like this: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is.” And because of that, says Rob, you cannot spin Mother Nature. You cannot bribe Mother Nature. You cannot sweet talk her, and you cannot ignore her. She’s going to do with the climate whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate. And Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats a thousand.

There is a parallel with markets. At their core, markets are propelled by fear and greed. They’re just the balance at any given moment of those two impulses. Over the long run, you cannot spin the market. You cannot sweet talk it into going up or beg it not to go down. It’s going to do whatever it’s going to do — whichever way greed and fear tug it. And the market always bats last and it always bats a thousand.

Yes, of course! The immutable laws of physics and the irrational emotions of human beings are exactly the same — and equally impervious to “spin” and “sweet talk”!

It takes a special kind of genius to come up with similes like that. Thomas Friedman may well be to the art of column writing what Edward Wood Jr. was to the art of moviemaking.

Laura Rozen’s new Mother Jones piece on McCain’s main foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann is a great thing to read today, because it makes you grateful to the current financial implosion for keeping these lunatics out of office:

Brooke says he met Scheunemann in 1996 when he and Chalabi were hitting Capitol Hill to try to drum up increased US government support for the Iraqi opposition. Brooke’s pitch then was that putting pressure on Saddam Hussein was not just the right policy; it was also a vehicle for attacking Bill Clinton, then running for reelection. “I thought it was a good time to educate the Republican Congress…and give them the ammunition they needed to beat the president up.” In Scheunemann and other hardliners on the Hill, Brooke says he found kindred spirits—a clique of Republicans deeply disillusioned with how George H.W. Bush had let both the Cold War and the first Iraq War end without meting out sufficient punishment to America’s adversaries. “These people had a great sense of psychic loss that we had not finished the first Iraq War in the most comprehensive way. They hated George Bush the first.”

The rest is even worse.