Not that it's bad. In fact, I think it's interesting that you singled out a comic striking out on his own like this. I think we need more comedy, more comedians, and more TYPES of comedians. But normally you rave about shows, not individual performers.

All I ask is that you only indulge this particular vice occasionally. There's already practically a nation fangirls on the Internet that go "squeeee!" for somebody or another; you don't need to join them. I remember the "squeee!" for Ashton Kutcher (although I just think girls wanted to know what lipstick he wears). It got really boring, really fast.

There really aren't that many people that are worth going "squeee!" over. And certainly not for long.

The journalist names that come to mind to me are Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevareid, David Brinkley, and in print Richard Schickel, Gary Wills and Theodore H. White.

By the way, it's a common misconception that science fiction/speculative fiction/fantasy - whatever you want to call it - doesn't need reality. It's the most essential element. How else can a reader relate to it? That reality might be skewed, true. There's a whole subgenre of military-based SF which substitutes aliens or separatists for the Commies and different-colored-skin-humans their right-wing authors would REALLY like to kill. But even that is based in a kind of reality; Jerry Pournelle based his mass-slaughter fiction on his Korean War experiences.

(Sadly, Pournelle is battling a tumor in his brain. Rumor has it that it's the shape of Rush Limbaugh.)

Anyway, some people will argue that I'm wrong about the end of writers being paid. Especially the writers of the SFWA, the organization of SF and fantasy writers. They never understood the Internet and how it has ended copyright law forever, let alone the process of dead tree publishing. And anyone who takes writing classes, thinking they will earn anywhere close to Steven King money, didn't realize that King got that money by selling the souls of teenage girls to Satan, not by writing. (See the movies made of his "books." You'll see he didn't earn money by writing.)

You may not be able to find it, more's the pity. Book stores would rather stock the latest crappy romance novel (and ALL romance novels are crappy) than a well-written book from a few years ago.

And for the people astonished that I would defend Havrilesky, I defend her when she's right and attack her when she's wrong. It's the high school haters who usually keep attacking people until they die, right or wrong. Check back among my earlier stuff and you'll see I gave a REASON for attacking.

Finally, to tht yutz who talked about people quitting their call center jobs and getting a paid job as a columnist, what decade are you living in? NOBODY is paid anything for writing any more. Since newspapers are dying, and since anything written is available free on the Internet (including Lord of Light, if you know where to look, Cabdriver) writers are not paid enough for their work to sustain their lives.

Which is probably a welcome change. Rather than listen to someone pretentious like Garrison Keillor pontificate about his fictional Lake Woebegone, he'll apologize in print for using a backup column because his job as a Wal-Mart stocker left him overtired and suffering from the flu, and he can't get medical treatment because Americans have been denied universal medical coverage - again. Working actual paying jobs, THEN writing, will keep writing far more grounded in reality. It'll bring better writing; it'll be done out of love, rather than out of a need for food and shelter.

You want to show off that expensive, useless Ph.D in English Lit that your parents paid for with their hard-earned middle-class sweat, do it among the rest of the unemployed elitists.

For the record, TV (for better AND for worse) is the literature of the common man. Your dead European authors are the literature of the pretentious and elitist. Dostoyevsky speaks more to the Dick Cheneys of the world than to Jack Smurd and his financially struggling family. Having worked for a dreaded year in public TV in the 70's, when it had all the money and all of the smugness, I assure you that the worst episode of Three's Company means more than the best episode of Masterpiece Theatre.

Havrilesky is doing a great service by reviewing television. She is probably America's last nationally syndicated TV critic. Not that she makes a living at it; the time when writing of any kind can earn a living wage has been dead for the last decade. But just because writing is a hobby, rather than a career, doesn't mean it should be done badly. And Havrilesky has greatly improved in the last year or so. Who knows, Phamelar: she might even blow some light into your rickety old college library brain.