Al Qaeda’s number 2 is complaining about the MSM [e.a.]:

Al-Zawahiri accused the global media of manipulating Osama bin Laden’s most recent recording, by omitting its most important parts and by misinterpreting bin Laden’s statements. Al-Zawahiri said that bin Laden’s criticism was not directed against the ISI alone, but against all jihad fighters in Iraq, and that the jihad had shattered the monopoly held by the government and media that pretended to be independent, such as the BBC, and that the jihad was today directing “the most important media battle against the Crusader-Zionist enemy” and exposing the world to facts to which it had not previously been exposed. He added that the jihad had triumphed in this ideological battle just as it had triumphed in the battle over the Internet websites.

Imagine that—the “global media” can’t even get Osama bin Laden’s message out. What’s the world coming to?

Well, Zawahiri will have to get in line behind everybody else who’s been maligned and misrepresented by the mendacious media.

Through comix, published in today’s New York Times:

Don’t you feel better now that you know how it all went down?

As much as I hate polls, I love commonsense observations—like this one from Al Sharpton [e.a.]:

Until recently, Sharpton’s relationship with Obama has been more aloof. Sharpton has also been underwhelmed by Obama’s campaign. “He never came off as a fighter,” he says, a strategy that he thinks has hurt Obama with a key demographic: black women. “Black women like a fighter. Even if you’re fighting a fight that is not my fight, I will believe that you might fight my fight. And to come off as ‘I’m all right with everybody’ doesn’t give people who want a fight a comfort level. I want somebody who’s at least a little upset with somebody, because I’m mad as hell. If you’re not mad, how do I get passionate about you?”

Sharpton thinks Obama should take more cues from his wife, Michelle. He still thinks about the time he bumped into her at a recent Chicago fund-raiser. He claims the conversation went like this.

“How you doing, Mrs. Obama?”

She’s tall, and looked down at him. “I’d do a lot better if we had your endorsement.”

Sharpton tried to play dumb. “What do you mean?”

“We need your endorsement. I’m just telling you straight out: We need your endorsement. What are you going to do?”

Sharpton didn’t know what to say. “I’m like, ‘Uh, well, duh.’ I mean, she was like a sister back in Brownsville, where I grew up!”

It’s not the observation that Sharpton makes that I find particularly interesting (though I do find it interesting—and I think it’s true for white women as much as for black women: in times of trouble, of course we want someone who is going to fight for us). I find it interesting that, while debates rage on about race and IQ and whether you can even mention them in the same breath, Sharpton feels free to throw around general, unquantifiable observations about black women, knowing he’ll never be challenged to back them up with statistics and secure in the knowledge, as this same piece in New York magazine indicates, that for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, he da man.

“Here, check this out,” he says, resting the cigar with a thud. He fishes in his pants pocket, produces a cell phone, pushes a few buttons, and passes it over for a listen.

The voice sounds familiar. “Hey, Al, this is Hillary Clinton, and…” Is it really her? Yep. …

He wants the phone back. “Here,” he says, making sure to save the message. “Now, check this out.”

Another voice. “Al, this is Barack Obama…” Obama! Seriously? The senator also wants advice about the debate at Howard.

As the Hollywood writers’ “strike” continues, various heavyweights have started to make power plays–um, I mean, separate deals. Like Letterman:

CBS’s late-night star, David Letterman, is pursuing an interim agreement with the Writers Guild that would allow him to return with his writers on Jan. 2. Mr. Letterman is in a position to make such a deal because his production company, Worldwide Pants, owns both his show and the one that follows on CBS, which features Craig Ferguson.

The fly in the ointment?

One representative of a late-night show said that some members of the guild leadership might have concerns about making a separate arrangement with Mr. Letterman, and that an agreement was far from a sure thing.

Ya think? Nah. I think that everyone will be making separate arrangements soon enough. The same NYT article notes that Conan and Leno are going back on the air in some way, shape, or form come the New Year. No word yet on Stewart and Colbert, but I’m sure they’ll feel the pressure soon enough from their network, too.

The way they will rationalize this breakdown of strikers’ discipline is also suggested in the Times piece. In contrast to Ellen DeGeneres and Carson Daly, who are already back on the air and to whom “the writers [which ones? --ed.]] “reacted with anger”:

the NBC hosts, along with Mr. Letterman, Mr. Kimmel and the Comedy Central hosts, have won praise from the writers for staying off the air so long and for paying their staffs.

So the game is over. Those who played by the rules and paid the proper respect won the moral high ground—the only ground that seems to count inside the Hollywood bubble. The only problem with this formulation is that this time, the game was played (and it’s not over yet) in full view of a nation that is already furious with Hollywood, bored by its products, and contemptuous of its residents, except as fodder for deliciously corrosive and often ruinous gossip.

If the point of this strike was for Hollywood writers to garner respect for themselves, it is to laugh. Instead, they have exposed themselves as beyond clueless about the technological revolution that is swallowing up not just their future but their present.

Via Mickey Kaus, I’m encouraged to find out that some folks have been trying to get through to Hollywood:

The video is funnier than most TV comedies. It reportedly got 400,000 hits–more than many cable shows. It was put up on the Web by unpaid performers seemingly just for the hell of it (and maybe the exposure). Doesn’t that sort of make Marc Andreesen and Rob Long’s point about the tenuous positon of both Hollywood and the Writers Guild? … It’s as if the Linotype operators went on strike and decided to publish their story in four color offset!…10:36 P.M.

Steve Boriss is a little more pointed in his analysis, and sees Hollywood (properly) as only part of a much larger picture:

By placing all forms of entertainment, including news, on the same medium, the Internet has launched a Darwinian struggle where the news, entertainment, and video game industries are now direct, head-to-head competitors for the distraction of audiences from their daily concerns. Crueler still, they must also now compete against mere amateurs, talent around the globe, blogs, porn, and also their former selves — their own archives of older articles, older movies, older programs, and older games never before available. That’s why audiences are plunging and pink slips are flying across all media – newspapers, TV, and Hollywood. The emerging, unified Internet entertainment, a.k.a. “InterTainment,” industry is now just one big happy family – but only if you happen to be a member of the audience

So why “worms” in the title of the post? Because, as Stephen Jay Gould reminded us in 1997, natural selection favors worms:

Darwin himself told us in his last book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, that we should never underestimate the collective power of worms on the move. Our general culture also recognizes two primary metaphors, one inorganic and one organic, for the reversal of received opinion. Well may traditionalists fear the turning of these two objects: tables and worms. The inversion of the humble worm, especially when disturbed, may bring down empires. Shakespeare told us that “the smallest worm will turn being trodden on.” And Cervantes wrote in his author’s preface to Don Quixote that “even a worm when trod upon, will turn again.”

A new media world will rise. Hollywood will not be left behind in the dust. Trust me.