Our betters

So engaged in mindless channel surfing on Saturday evening we happened upon taped coverage of an event on "Leadership" jointly hosted by US News and World Report (sic) magazine and some corporate sponsors (the latter apparently fussy about who got into the event, but that's another story). Anyway, one of the Leaders (sic) on a panel moderated by David Gergen (advisor to every US president since George Washington) was the bald, repulsive Roger Ailes, Fox News supremo and most definitely not the blogger.

In proof that the fish is stupid from the head, Roger was trying to argue that the power of positive thinking can beat avian flu, except that he showed his man of people credentials by pronouncing it as Evian flu, which is presumably what goes around amongst aristocrats like Roger when they "summer" on the shores of Lake Geneva -- of course, not stopping them coming back on the Fox News TV screen and acting like they're about to reach for a brewski from the fridge to show how regular they are.

But to be fair, it's not just the reactionaries who are showing how disappointing the standards are at the top these days. Maureen Dowd has an extended piece in the New York Times Magazine today, on, as Private Eye would say, wimmin, which opens as follows:

When I entered college in 1969, women were bursting out of theirs 50's chrysalis, shedding girdles, padded bras and conventions.

Leave on the last 's' for sloppy editing.