John K. Harman at Editor and Publisher thinks he’s got the answer for newspapers suffering the same decline of readership: put Oprah on the cover of everything. Every day.

Set aside your top left column of your front page and devote it all to America’s Everywoman.

Report on the content of her latest television program.

Report on the latest issue of her latest magazine.

Report on the new contents on her web site.

Report on her latest book selection.

Report on her physical fitness and nutrition initiatives.

Report on her latest cause.

Report on her travels.

Don’t forget to report on Oprah’s personal life and the latest gossip about her.

Why?

Why should editors throw out the rule book about what belongs on the front page and devote precious space to someone best known as a celebrity entertainer? The reason is because Oprah has a better handle on the pulse of the people than you do. …

because she is strong with four groups that [editors] have trouble reaching: women, minorities, young adults and youth.

By Jove, I think he’s got it: Oprah is the Queen of Infotainment.

Which, by the way, I mentioned in my very first blog post, “As the Page Turns.”

and Fidel Castro doesn’t have cancer—in fact he’s on the road to recovery:

A leading Spanish surgeon who flew to Havana last week to examine Cuban leader Fidel Castro says he does not have cancer or need further surgery. …

Dr Garcia is an expert on intestinal ailments, particularly cancer.

Of Mr Castro, he said: “His physical activity is excellent, his intellectual activity intact, I’d say fantastic, he’s recovering from his previous operation.

“He asks every day to return to work, but doctors advise him not to, to take it easy.”

It has been 31 years since SNL’s Chevy Chase had occasion to ridicule NBC for it’s on-again off-again Franco death watch. I’ve seen no Fidel-is-still-alive satires. How come? Is Castro that much of a sacred cow?

I know I’m late to this party, but I loved Casino Royale. Daniel Craig and the filmmakers grok Ian Fleming’s protagonist, who is “ironical, brutal and cold,” as the NYT’s Manohla Dargis reminds us:

Every generation gets the Bond it deserves if not necessarily desires, and with his creased face and uneasy smile, Mr. Craig fits these grim times well. … “Casino Royale” opens with a black-and-white sequence that finds the spy making his first government-sanctioned kills. The inky blood soon gives way to full-blown color, but not until Bond has killed one man with his hands after a violent struggle and fatally shot a second.

“Made you feel it, did he?” someone asks Bond of his first victim. Bond doesn’t answer. From the way the director, Martin Campbell, stages the action though, it’s clear that he wants to make sure we do feel it.

After twenty-five years of the debonair, ironical side of Bond, the cold and brutal side is back.

Mr. Craig’s Bond looks as if he has renewed his license to kill.

Dargis remarks on this, but she is dismissive of the movie’s “shenanigans”—it’s 007, a mere entertainment for the masses, after all. She takes for granted—or perhaps doesn’t want to take into account—something that Daniel Craig’s Bond does not, and it’s what accounts for his nuanced portrait: that he is licensed to kill really bad guys (not cartoon villains) for a morally superior cause (queen and country). Craig’s Bond couldn’t care less if his martinis are shaken or stirred, but he’s not confused about which side he’s on. And neither is the audience.

How utterly refreshing.

Curiously, while Dargis acknowledges a “core seriousness” to the film, she ascribes this merely to the filmmakers’ desire to make pots of money by setting up a financially successful franchise. She nods to the care that went into the project—the usual extravagant pyrotechnics just won’t do the trick, she implies, because audiences are too sophisticated after having seen one too many Bond movies—but she fails to take it that crucial step further and acknowledge the real source of audience gratification.

Daniel Craig’s Bond is the brute whose presence we would rather not think about but whose existence somewhere on the periphery of our consciousness comforts us. He embodies the dictum attributed (falsely but plausibly) to George Orwell:

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Ms. Dargis seems to find this notion—and its personification in a James Bond for the 21st century—distasteful. Me? I’m grateful to those rough men.

She may not be your cuppa,

focusing as she does on family, faith, respect for the elderly, and the gentle suggestion that as human beings we should all look for the things we have in common rather than the things that tear us apart:

“The pressures of modern life sometimes seem to be weakening the links which have traditionally kept us together as families and communities. As children grow up and develop their own sense of confidence and independence in the ever-changing technological environment, there is always the danger of a real divide opening up between young and old, based on unfamiliarity, ignorance or misunderstanding. It is worth bearing in mind that all of our faith communities encourage the bridging of that divide.”

That’s why Britain’s Channel 4 offers an alternative each year to the queen’s annual Christmas message, which is broadcast on BBC and ITV. Yesterday, it was presented by this woman,

a British convert to Islam, who pleaded for understanding for herself and those like her.

I want to be part of this society - this is where I choose to live. I hope that the society is more accepting of my personal choice. It’s not about separation. … [A]s a society we need to be more tolerant of people’s personal choices.

Funny, but I thought it’s exactly because we in the West are tolerant of people’s personal choices that “news organizations” like Britain’s Channel 4 showcase the in-your-face antics of “spokespersons” like Ms. Feels So Liberated While Hiding Behind a Mask, pictured above.

Actually, we love your “personal choices.” We—via the media, the globalized news-entertainment complex, and the blogosphere—feed off them. They’re political porn: cheap entertainment. The weirder you are, the higher the infotainment quotient. Just ask Fox News.