Millerism- Andy Kaufman Isn't Dead

One of the funniest lines inspired by the recent news came from Dennis Miller on the O'Reilly Factor. In response to Libyan leader Quaddafi's lengthy UN speech this past week Miller observed that he is now sure that the late song-and-dance man Andy Kaufman isn't dead after all, he has moved on from portraying Tony Clifton to impersonating Col. Quaddafi. That Kaufman was also Clifton remains unconfirmed, but we all it is true, that he could now be Quaddafy; I wouldn't put it beyond him.



Bonus find from assembling this post is the discovery of the treatise linked next:
Common Knowledge
Communal news in a fragmented world

....what people really missed, Berelson discovered, was not specific news itself so much as the idea and the act of news—the daily ritual of reading the paper, the interaction it facilitated with others, the simple “serenity,” in Theodore Glasser’s term, of facing the day feeling informed. Readers, Berelson concluded, shared a “ritualistic and near-compulsive” connection to their daily newspapers. The void left in their absence wasn’t merely journalistic; it was also social. And personal. And, in some ways, spiritual.


Berelson’s analysis documented what we denizens of the burgeoning ecosystem often shorthanded as “the new media landscape” understand instinctively: that news is much more than information. That it is more, even, than a cultural commodity. Berelson highlighted news’s status as a source both of intimacy and anxiety: news is not only a reflection of the world we live in. It is also a reflection of ourselves.

What follows will require more than one reading to absorb, a summary is beyond my grasp at this moment, it is extremely thought provoking.