• by John Gaffney , May 2, 2003

Other People's Riffs Of The Week:

Yo Jimmy. Call HR. We Found Us A Newswriter Here:The Times Of London gave the slightly overblown Norman Mailer a chance to weigh in on Iraq: "With their dominance in sport, at work and at home eroded, Bush thought white American men needed to know they were still good at something. That's where Iraq came in... Exeunt: lightning and thunder, shock and awe. Dust, ash, fog, fire, smoke, sand, blood, and a good deal of waste now moves to the wings. The stage, however, remains occupied. The question posed at curtain-rise has not been answered. Why did we go to war? If no real weapons of mass destruction are found, the question will keen in pitch."

Ouch!: Even the staid New York Times couldn't help trash Tina Brown's first cable outing. "In its first outing, the CNBC program, "Topic [A]," was watched by an audience of only 74,000 people at 9 p.m. on Wednesday night, bigger than the sort of Manhattan cocktail party Ms. Brown's program has been likened to; it was more akin to a Giants Stadium tailgate party."

Talk About Tort Reform: According to The Washington Post, Brill Media Co. is seeking $300 million in damages in a lawsuit against its former creditors, alleging they wrongly forced it into bankruptcy protection last year. The Evansville, Ind.-based radio station and newspaper publishing company is seeking $75 million from TCW, a Los Angeles investment company, and other investors who bought Brill Media's bonds. Those investors eventually filed an involuntary bankruptcy lawsuit against Brill when it defaulted on interest payments.

My Favorite TV Review Of The Week: From Village Voice critic Joy Press, who reviewed Manor House and Eco-Challenge: Fiji: "Amid all the humiliation and idiocy, the bug-eating and catfighting, reality TV's noble potential has mostly been squandered. Leave it to PBS to salvage the genre's reputation, with what it calls "hands-on history"-programs that whisk participants back in time to experience everyday life, like a televisual Colonial Williamsburg."