IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING . . .

As you watched "Real Time" last Friday on HBO who the puffy GOPologist of the week was - this woman who kept trying to offer up excuses for the war, the U.S. Attorney firing fiasco, and other assorted talking points, LOST was curious as well. So lookie what a "Google" for "Lisa Schiffren" came up with (emphasis is LOST's - and oh so timely too):

BY LISA SCHIFFREN
Friday, May 9, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT

I had the most astonishing thought last Thursday. After a long day of hauling the kids to playdates and ballet, I turned on the news. And there was the president, landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of a fighter jet in that amazing uniform, looking--how to put it?--really hot. Also presidential, of course. Not to mention credible as commander in chief. But mostly "hot," as in virile, sexy and powerful.

You don't see a lot of that in my neighborhood, the Upper West Side of Manhattan. (I'm told there's more of it in the "red" states.) I was mesmerized. I flipped around watching W. land on many channels. I watched the whole speech, which was fine. But a business suit just doesn't do it the way a flight suit does. In the course of this I peeked over at my husband, the banker. He was in his third month of reading a book about the Six Day War and didn't seem to notice.

Nonetheless, I know that I am not the only one who entertained these untoward thoughts. The American media were fully aware of how stunning the president looked last week. And they chose to defuse it by referring endlessly to the "photo-oppiness" of the event. The man uses overwhelming military force to vanquish a truly evil foe, facing down balking former "allies," and he is not taken seriously as a foreign-policy president. He out top-guns the Hollywood version, and all the media can talk about is the impending campaign commercial.

With a few exceptions: Brian Williams shook his head in awe at the clip and said, if I may paraphrase, "that, ladies and gentlemen, is a president at the pinnacle of success, having just won a war." The New York Post ran the hot shot on its front page. And Newsweek called it a photo-op but gave the president what can only be called a centerfold.

We all say things we wish we could take back, but this one? Thank you Google, this kind of drivel should keep someone from ever publicly speaking out on any topic ever again.