If you're going to choose a customer to be unavoidably detained from five times in one week, wouldn't be wise to check him out? Is he someone willing to rally the faithless into demanding better -- NOT to resolve his own situation, which will eventually get sorted out (it's only been a month, after all), but to inspire and motivate the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Because that could really be a nuisance, as many can attest.

The attempt to fight rumor with fact will not conquer blind zealotry. On the other hand, it does demonstrate that McDonald's is capable of not merely paying lip service to transparency, but embracing it.

As a professional observer of the passing scene, I thought I might visit a site awash in the paid impressions that technically qualify under Google's definition, but nonetheless leave no impression. My journey began on Yahoo's home page -- an ideal mixture of editorially curated clickbait and Venus-flytrap native.

This is about a very, very special commercial from a very, very special person. Jane Seymour. The actress is also a painter -- and a jewelry pitchwoman, spinning inspiring tales of pretend human generosity. As Seymour says to open the spot for Kay Jewelers: "Behind every heart there is a story" -- three stories, told in five-second montages featuring attractive actors acting out triumph over adversity. Oh, Jane, such transcendent goodness and tight editing! Tell us...what is it all about?

Until last week, it was just a series of rumblings. The allegations were of horrible episodes, but they simply didn't penetrate the mantle of achievement, riches and accumulated goodwill of the groundbreaking icon. To dwell on the dirt would require you to see a hero as a monster. Now we have to answer hard questions about events, and about ourselves. What will we tolerate when we are in the thrall of genius, and what will we be willing to look away from?

This is a thinly veiled autobiographical tale of universal malevolence and the struggle against it by a monomaniacal hero -- yours truly. There will be heartbreak, danger, toil and the world's largest family of exchange-traded funds, a wholly owned subsidiary of BlackRock, offering not just a diversified investment instrument but low fees and significant tax advantages over equities.

Reached the bottom of some Internet page the other day, and just when I thought I'd come to the end of useful content, there was a trove of irresistibility. Ding dong! You merengue?

I don't know which to fear more: the possibility that the index is wrong, and the wobbling ad industry goes to its knees, or that the index is right, and brand shareholder money is squandered by the billions with no hope of an adequate return. If a rising economy does pad marketing budgets, the found money should be invested in channels that cultivate direct and ongoing connections with consumers -- not to the forest primeval.

Dear Wall Street -- Last Friday the absolutely obvious occurred -- and you acted like you'd had a nighttime visit from the walking dead. Coca-Cola Co. announced a year-over-year decline in sales and profits in the third quarter and -- ahhhhhh!!! -FREAK-OUT!

Let's just say the future of TV is pretty well established by now. The news that HBO is untethering itself from exclusive cable distribution and CBS will offer a paid-streaming service for its broadcast offerings more or less cinches a future that some of us have been blathering about for a decade. That over-the-top future, which has since already largely materialized, is devoid of broadcast networks and cable juggernauts, but very rich in streaming content from Hollywood fare to Jenna Marbles to Jeffrey Hayzlett's C-Suite TV bizcasts to Morgan Spurlock's offerings on the Smartish channel to Funny or Die.com to …