The New York Sun, the little neocon paper we glance at so you don't have to, has a provocative question: what if Absolut, instead of making ads about Mexico taking over America, made an ad about TIBET? It's as if Matt Sanchez has surreptitiously landed a job on the Sun's editorial board, a scenario which is quite possible. The paper's reasoning, as it were, goes something like this: Tibet is tiny. But the IDEA of Tibet, under the "ice of Communism," is "a vast land extending deep into what is claimed by the Chinese communist party." Also, Tibet has been in the news lately with the Olympic torch protests, and so has Absolut. Makes perfect sense!

The Times' "Editorial Notebook" section is the box on its Op-Ed page that invariably contains a pointless, grating rumination about life on the farm in Connecticut or something equally inapplicable to NYC life, written by someone who should be unemployed but is, instead, rich and a member of the Times editorial board. Today the section offers the opinions of a Harvard man. Kudos to the Times for luring an Ivy Leaguer into the dirty, ink-stained corridors of journalism! So what important topic is Philip M. Boffey, '58, so eager to explain to the nation? Harvard, of course!

The New York Daily News went totally, utterly insane today with their "editorial" on the upcoming trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged 9/11 conspirators. Headlined "Death is too good," the fourth paragraph reads, in its entirety, "Burn in hell!" Then it just sorta keeps going in that fashion for a while.

So Gail Collins, the first double-x chromosomed human to head up the NYTs editorial page, will be stepping down at the end of the year. She's gonna do the typical "book leave" thing and then return to the "nice lady" column slot previously inhabited by Anna Quindlen. (We're all for the idea of having two female op-ed columnists in the Times, if only to reduce the general feeling of dickishness induced by John Tierney.) Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., described her tenure thusly:

An editorial in today's Sun points out, quite fairly, that through yesterday the Times had run some 10,000 words on the Page Six scandal, with at least 13 different reporters credited, as compared to only 4,000 for the recent Israeli election and the same amount for the fall's German election. Why is the Gray Lady so obsessed with this scandal? Perhaps because it's a fun, juicy story? Perhaps because it's fundamentally shaking one of New York's prominent institutions? Perhaps because it's a gripping media-ethics morality tale — and, over the last three years, the Times has become obsessed with media ethics? Well, maybe, grants the Sun. But, argues the little broadsheet that sometimes could, there's also this: