The controversial former baseball all-star set the tone with a bizarre series of tweets in which he announced the charge, named his accuser and said the woman "told the police that I druged her and then raped her.hmmmmm.lets find out what really happened." [sic] He subsequently deleted the tweets, but he did leave up the cryptic message, "Sometimes your mind says yes and your body doesn't. Hate that." 

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For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities.

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As part of 92Y’s partnership with Salon, Pareene discussed which stories are the real scandals he would have his hypothetical news station cover.

Pareene’s first scandal is the Obama administration's “war on leaks and whistleblowers,” which he sees as an unprecedented example of targeting by a presidential administration toward journalists. To see four other scandals that PNN (Pareene News Network, of course!) would focus on, watch this clip above.

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Speaking live to a survivor of the deadly tornado in Moore, Okla., Blitzer declared the woman "blessed," her husband "blessed," and her son "blessed." He then asked, "You've gotta thank the Lord, right? Do you thank the Lord for that split-second decision?"

But as she held her 18-month-old son, Rebecca Vitsmun politely replied, "I'm actually an atheist." A flummoxed Blitzer quickly lobbed back, "You are. All right. But you made the right call," and Vitsmun graciously offered him a lifeline. "We are here," she said, "and I don't blame anyone for thanking the Lord." Nicely done, Rebecca Vitsmun.

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Watching the Woodward of today pimp his personal brand on cable TV — call it innuendo with gravitas — is something like seeing a former Hall of Famer dispense motivational tips at a business seminar in Topeka.

And yet no event is more emblematic of our historical moment than Woodward’s appearance last week on Morning Joe, an MSNBC program devoted to the promotion of overpriced coffee, with a side dish of political hype.

Asked about the various “scandals” confronting the Obama administration, Woodward dutifully hit his mark. “I know there have been these comparisons to Watergate,” he told host Joe Scarborough. “I would say not yet, Joe … You’ve got to investigate all of these things.”

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Clearly Obama is a horrible boss, and the White House is a toxic work environment, probably, where people are afraid to report bad news to their superiors. Just like Nixon, times ten thousand.

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Case in point: Its hilarious “D.C. turns on Obama” piece last week, which marked the crest of Scandalmania and also helped explain polls that show Americans trust President Obama’s version of events when it comes to the Benghazi and IRS controversies. I expected polls to show people believe the president on these issues, but I’ll admit I was surprised to see his approval rating actually ticked up a bit despite the constant drumbeat of scandal. But it did -- and that should force the media to look in the mirror, though it probably won’t.

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To review, Karl erroneously reported that he'd personally seen emails that showed national security adviser Ben Rhodes seeming to intervene on behalf of the State Department in a turf battle with the CIA -- but the actual emails (uncovered by CNN's Jake Tapper) revealed Rhodes did not mention the State Department at all. It was later shown that Karl had not actually obtained or reviewed the emails, but he and the network stood by his reporting and story, anyway. Karl did not show up on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday to address the issue but instead released a terse statement to CNN doubling down on his contention that the story was solid.

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Let's recap the scandals, in case you have been too busy having message board debates about Star Trek or deciphering new Kanye lyrics to pay attention:

1. Benghazi. Republicans insist the White House did something evil and incomprehensible involving talking points following the September 11, 2012 attack on the American consulate in the Lybian city. Recently, the White House released an email chain showing the process of drafting and revising the talking points.
2. The IRS. The IRS reportedly targeted conservative nonprofits for extra scrutiny of their tax-exempt status.
3. The Associated Press. The Justice Department sought access to, and received, a massive trove of phone data of AP journalists, as part of its investigation into a leak.

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The dog whistle quote came via NBC's “Meet the Press” Sunday from Peggy Noonan, who can no longer be taken seriously as a writer or pundit. When host David Gregory pressed her on the lack of evidence for her claims that the IRS scandal was worse than Watergate, Noonan insisted that the president “was giving a dog whistle to people who could launch this thing." The former Reagan-Bush speechwriter vividly summed up, in her thousand points of crazy style, where the IRS “scandal” went over the last few days: Obama didn’t need to order the tax agency to harass Tea Party groups (and his critics don’t need proof that he did so): his criticizing the group during the 2012 campaign, as well as blasting the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, represented an implicit order to do so.

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So naturally it must be just like "Girls"! Except it isn't. At all.

Hannah Horvath, the hero of "Girls," is younger than Frances and far more confident in her art. Although Hannah's family won't help her pay the bills, she seems to, as of late, magically have enough money to pay the bills every month. Frances, with a few more years of disillusionment under her belt, faces down far more serious challenges than does Hannah -- which isn't a criticism of "Girls."

But none of those differences have stopped the easy comparisons. Turns out there really is a more pernicious and lazy cultural reference than comparing anything in the 1960s to Don Draper's life, or equating anything quirky and indie with "Portlandia." Please, let's come to an understanding: Culture writers of America, we will believe you know about "Girls" even if you don't compare everything about young people in cities to Lena Dunham.

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That might be less of a problem if the characterization of the emails was accurate. It was not.

Here's a timeline of ABC's role in the matter:

Friday, May 10 - Morning: Karl's explosive report that ABC had obtained 12 different versions of the administration's talking points on the Benghazi attack quickly made the controversy the top news item of the day as every other news organization rushed to aggregate and digest his report (including Salon).

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Kinsey's column sort of cheerfully mocks, in the Kinsleyan fashion, the dark warnings of "anti-austerians" like Krugman. He cheerfully quotes a series of statistics showing how miserable the recent economic crisis has been for Americans, and people around the world, and says, yes, recessions lead to death and austerity worsens recessions but it's worth it because "Austerians believe, sincerely, that their path is the quicker one to prosperity in the longer run." And Kinsley seems to accept that belief as true.

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The Benghazi “scandal” lost velocity thanks to CNN’s Jake Tapper reporting that an email key to the notion that the White House doctored talking points to protect the State Department didn’t at all read the way ABC’s Jonathan Karl reported it. Karl quoted White House national security communications adviser Ben Rhodes’ email specifically saying the talking points should “reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department,” but the actual email obtained by Tapper didn’t mention the State Department at all. Karl ended the day with the shocking admission that while he’d reported on air that he’d “obtained” the emails in question, and wrote online that he’d “reviewed” them, in fact he’d only heard about them from the notes of a source – presumed to be a House GOP staffer.

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Three scandals, one week? It’s almost too good to be true. What if it is?

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The latest infraction, and frankly one of the worst, came this morning over at the Daily Beast, where Megan McArdle made good on her column’s title of “Asymmetrical Information.”

In a story called “Kermit Gosnell Found Guilty of Murdering Three Babies: The Philadelphia abortionist is guilty of three counts of first degree murder. Why didn't we stop him sooner?” McArdle attempts to answer the already answered question with a combination of errors and speculation.

First, the blatant errors.

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But CNN’s Jake Tapper reveals that Rhodes’ email didn’t mention the State Department, and doesn’t even seem to implicitly reference it. The email as published by Karl differs significantly from the original obtained by Tapper.

According to ABC’s Jonathan Karl, Rhodes weighed in after State Department’s Victoria Nuland, who expressed concerns about the way the talking points might hurt “my building's leadership.” ABC quotes Rhodes saying:

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That's one of the big - if deliberately ignored - takeaways from the reaction to news that the Internal Revenue Service allegedly targeting conservative organizations for extra scrutiny in their larger review of political groups' tax exempt status. In the last few days, the allegations have generated a wave of national headlines, a congressional investigation, federal legislation and ever-louder calls for impeachment.

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“Remember when she said, ‘well who cares how this happened,’ in a rather emotional way?” McCain asked guest host Martha Raddatz. “A lot of people care.” It’s too bad Raddatz didn’t tell the senator that no, she didn’t remember that – because Clinton never said it.

Remarkably, I’ve seen no one follow up on McCain’s misstatement today either. (I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.) Instead, reporters are breathlessly parsing each new GOP charge on Benghazi (while also decrying the very real abuse of the IRS overscrutinizing the tax-exempt status of conservative groups.) The National Journal’s Ron Fournier tweeted “Welcome to the 90s,” with no apparent irony or self-awareness about the role of the media in ginning up that decade of phony scandals that paralyzed our last popular second-term Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

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When she's not interviewing famous people, Walters is partying and vacationing with and occasionally dating them. Former relationships (dutifully recounted in her boldfaced-name-heavy memoir) include Sen. Edward Brooke, former Bear Stearns head Alan Greenberg, and Alan Greenspan, who I guess has a type. She's buddies with war criminal and society fixture Henry Kissinger. She's old friends with make-believe TV tycoon Donald Trump. She testified at the Brooke Astor trial, because Astor was, of course, a close friend.

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