The Palestinians seem keen on burying themselves deep in the muck while constantly proclaiming themselves holier-than-we.

First there was the disgraceful kidnapping and forced coversion to Islam of the Fox News journalists and the shameful inaction by Hamas to alleviate the situation—which prompted outcries from unusual places (deep in Palestine) and threatened the Palestinians with the marginalization of their cause (which journalists can’t cover if they’re under threat).

And now an unnamed faction in the West Bank cuts off Tony Blair at the knees:

Several Palestinian public institutions, political factions and figures on Monday declared British Prime Minister Tony Blair persona non grata in Ramallah, saying his planned visit to the city was a “provocation against the feelings of the Palestinian people.”

In a statement distributed in Ramallah, they said that Blair, who is expected to visit the region later this week, was “completely unwelcome in our country because he was coming to wash the hands that are dripping Lebanese blood with Palestinian water.”

Notice the allusion to the purity of the Palestinian cause.

I will be curious to see how Blair addresses this flaming hot potato. Will he wear a hair shirt? Stay tuned.

Literally.

China is getting fat.

Today about 15 percent of adults, or 200 million Chinese, are reportedly overweight.

Of these, 90 million—about 7 percent—are obese (though China uses a slightly lower threshold for both designations than the UN’s World Health Organization does).

Diet and sedentary life style are the culprits.

Cairo Freeze

Proving my point way better than I ever could, Steve Friedman, vice president of morning broadcasts, CBS News, went on Reliable Sources and told Howard Kurtz how it is: unlike Kurtz the media critic, who thinks television news is “the news,” the makers of the “morning broadcasts” (note how they neatly deflect the question of whether the morning broadcasts are news or entertainment) don’t even pretend that they’re reporting news. They are telling people the stories they want to hear. [emphasis mine]

Steve Friedman, now that we know [that the John Mark Karr admission of guilt in the JonBenet Ramsey case] was a hoax and a sham, I’m sure you’ll agree that the media coverage was totally out of control.

STEVE FRIEDMAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF MORNING BROADCASTS, CBS NEWS: No I won’t agree with that.

It used to be, in the old days, Howie, when we started out, there was the beginning, middle, and end to the news cycle. Now, there’s just a beginning. So, you have to start and keep going until the story plays out.

You have the 24 cables — you have the 24 hour cables — you have the Internet. And all of our reports and many other people’s reports, even the much-maligned cable networks, took a — took a scant eye at this fellow from the beginning. Dan Abrams — Dan Abrams even said, “I don’t know about this.”

KURTZ: Yes he did. But, let’s look at the volume of the coverage. I mean, based on nothing more than the word of a wacko, this was the lead story many days on the morning shows, a couple nights on the evening newscasts, hours and hours on cable. How could that be justified?

FRIEDMAN: Well, you justify — well, first of all — we over- cover everything. I mean, you know, when a story breaks we’re always on it, we’re always on it. That’s the nature of the beast right now.

But, here was a ten year old case. And, Americans, and everybody else likes closure. It’s everyone’s nightmare: a girl taken out of her bed and killed. So, you know, there’s a lot of interest in this case.

As, I always tell you when I come on Howie, television’s the greatest democracy in the world. People vote with their clickers. And they watch this stuff. And, we present what we know when we know it.

KURTZ: Mark Jurkowitz, what accounts for television allowing itself to be hijacked by this story?

MARK JURKOWITZ, ASSOCIATED DIRECTOR, PROJECT FOR EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM: Because I think there was the possibility that being one of these ongoing sagas that television loves so much. I mean, frankly, it’s a staple of cable news, although the networks gave this tremendous coverage, as well.

KURTZ: Yes, they did.

JURKOWITZ: Tremendous coverage. It was the biggest story of the week that it really broke on. So, both the serious and non-serious media treated this very, very seriously.

Yes, there was some skepticism over this story. How could there not be? The average man on the street had serious qualms about it. On the other hand, there was a very intense — I mean, everybody in America now knows which three drinks he had on the plane flight back from Thailand.

KURTZ: It was pretty intense.

Steve Friedman, I want to play for you some comments by CBS correspondent Erin Moriarty in the first days when this story broke on your own “Early Show”.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIN MORIARTY, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: And we have to say at this point — I think we have to stop speculating. Everyone is asking me for my gut on this. So is this John Karr the killer or not? And, I’m saying forget the gut. Gut is what caused this investigation to go awry in the first place. Let’s wait until there’s enough evidence to decide guilt or innocence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Sounds like good advice to me but…

FRIEDMAN: Well, it’s good advice. And it was on our show very early on.

But you’ve got to understand that the public every morning — as far as early television — woke up and said, “I wonder if there are any developments in the JonBenet case.” And, our job is to present people what they’re talking about. And so when they leave they know what’s happening.

I will tell you this. You can make a case that we over-cover the Mid-East War. I mean, it was wall to wall, the same story over and over again. There was too much speculation...

KURTZ: Are you seriously comparing the global impact of the war between Israel and Hezbollah and a false lead in a 10-year-old murder case?

FRIEDMAN: No, but the same aspect of the story is, you’ve got to cover it as it happens, as it unfolds. I mean you saw on cable every movement of every little troop of the Mid-East War. Not — and they weren’t even able to tell you where they were. There is excess in television. There’s no question about it.

There was more to this interview, in which Kurtz kept getting more and more offended by Friedman’s point of view, but for some reason the transcript on CNN.com ends here. Too bad.

I’ll be writing more about this, but not tonight.

Everybody else is watching the debut of Katie Couric on CBS—yawn. I’m more interested in how things are going to work out for Rosie O’Donnell on The View. She starts without an overwhelming vote of confidence:

In a recent Gallup poll inquiring about people’s perceptions of celebrities, Rosie had a 35 percent favorable rating, behind Geraldo Rivera and ahead of only Star Jones herself. “There are people who think that I’m strident and bossy and much too New York and left-wing liberal,” she says. “You get what you paid for, and there’s no way that I’m going to change.”

The ABC brass had to be convinced, too, after Barbara Walters suggested O’Donnell for Meredith Vieira’s empty chair.

[Walters] saw something most of us haven’t seen in ages. “There was the warm, thoughtful, intelligent, charming, funny Rosie I’ve always known,” says Walters. But when she wanted to hire Rosie for “The View,” she had to work to sell the idea to the network. “There were discussions with the ABC brass in which we talked about the new Rosie—not the woman who might have been aggressive or belligerent, but the woman I had seen that night,” says Walters.

Then there was an early incident, where O’Donnell was unhappy with a promo and wrote it on her blog, which didn’t please Walters one bit:

“I didn’t like the blog,” says Walters, who wants O’Donnell to stop posting, at least about the show. “I’m counting on Rosie’s intelligence and sensitivity and humor. This is, after all, an entertainment show. It is based on people who like each other and are having a good time, not on people who are arguing and unhappy.” A few minutes after Walters spoke to NEWSWEEK, she called back. She had just received an enormous bouquet of flowers. The card read: “Barbara, I only want the promos and the show to be great. And I love you. Love, Ro.”

Right now, it’s hearts and flowers. Not for long, I’l wager…

Film Depicting Bush Assassination To Debut At Toronto Film Fest

So says Louis Menand in his New Yorker Dylan retrospective about the years 1965-66:

At the same time that Dylan was putting out his first three electric albums … [“Bringing It All Back Home” (March, 1965), “Highway 61 Revisited” (August), and the double album “Blonde on Blonde” (May, 1966)], the Beatles released “Help” (August, 1965), “Rubber Soul” (December, 1965), and “Revolver” (August, 1966). It was a good time to be alive.

Yes, but we didn’t appreciate it, because we thought it was normal to live among an embarrassment of riches.

Whereas today, it’s normal to live among the richly embarrassing.

What a great piece from Menand (one of my favorite contemporary writers). Read the whole thing, and then read it again.

It is almost impossible to write a short Dylan piece and get at the essence of the mystery, but Menand does it—he separates the man from the myth and focuses on the music…which is what the man has always wanted us to do anyway. And oh does it make the music shine!

What other conclusion is to be drawn from this?

A number of European states are refusing to allow El Al cargo planes carrying Israel Defense Forces equipment from stopover landings in their airports.

The refusal came from states considered friendly with Israel, including Britain, Germany and Italy, according to Captain Etai Regev, the chairman of El Al’s pilots’ union. 

I am reminded of the Norwegian flaming anti-Semite Jostein Gaarder’s complaint about Israel’s “disgusting weapons” as well as his warning that Israel has forfeited its rights:

It was historically and morally necessary for the Jews to get their own home. However, the State of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flaunted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions and can no longer expect protection from the same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The Tribulation will soon be over. The State of Israel has seen its Soweto.

There is a sickness in Europe, and it is hurting the Israelis. Moreover, it is not helping the Palestinians—if this indeed is its aim.