• by John Gaffney , January 24, 2003

OPRs For The Week:

Easy Now, Mate. These Are Chemical Weapons: Max Hastings, who covered 11 wars as a reporter for The Daily Telegraph of London, says he never lost sleep over sending reporters into danger. “If they had been killed, I would have felt very sad but I wouldn’t feel guilty. They would have been doing what they wanted to do. It’s exhilarating to know that the eyes of the world are on you and that every word you write is going to be real.....The brave and the bold will get great stories but some might well get their heads blown off,” he says.

What’s He Gonna Do When He Sees Shania Twain's Outfit? When asked for a TiVo pre-game program who his ultimate halftime performer would be for the Super Bowl, former San Francisco 49er QB Steve Young said, "The Boss." Young said he and his family usually take time out for chips and dip during the halftime of the big game. But if Springsteen were ever to appear at halftime, Young says he'd "drop the Salsa."

That’s Right, Kids. Don’t Try This At Home: The National Park Service is fuming over a commercial in which a park ranger pours a glass of Metamucil into Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park to help the geyser stay regular. "It suggests that it's OK to pour some substance into a thermal feature," Park Service spokesman Al Nash said. "We've spent decades trying to educate visitors about the fact that it's harmful to the feature and that it's dangerous for anyone to take an action like that."

This Week’s Eloquent Rant Against Reality TV: From Eric Gibson features editor of The Wall Street Journal's Leisure & Arts page: “The explosion of "reality TV" shows has made humiliation a kind of national pastime, so it may be all the harder now to know where to draw the line. What with "American Idol" and "The Bachelorette," not to mention Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters, you don't have to surf too far these days before you find someone willingly subjecting himself to some form of self-abasement in front of millions of strangers.....And when it comes to real celebrities, there's a cottage industry on the Internet dedicated to takedowns, purveying all manner of gossipy detail to add to the usual tabloid fair. TheSmokingGun.com has a whole archive of celebrity mug shots (think Hugh Grant and Pee Wee Herman) and, yes, Maurice Gibb's autopsy report, which includes all sorts of information the world at large doesn't need, such as the state of his private parts. This abundance is there, presumably, for the same reason the Diana Ross video is now unspooling through the ether: because it's "public record." As a society we seem to have concluded that because many people are willing to be subjected to public humiliation, everyone should be, basic public decencies be damned.”