When we contacted former New

Republic Associate Editor

Stephen Glass at his parents'

Chicago-area home, he was

unrepentant at having pulled off

the greatest Piltdown hoax in

publishing history. "Marty

Peretz is ready to name a condom

after me," the young maverick

bragged. "One minute [The New

Republic is] making sure

Georgetown gets enough sleep

with a boring essay on NATO

expansion and Gregg

Easterbrook's story about how

global warming is good for you.

The next they're major news

again. They've got buzz, and I'm

it." Glass declined to specify a

dollar figure for his severance

package, but assured us it was

"substantial." "You think

Christo wraps the Reichstag for

free?" Glass said. "Putting on a

show costs money, and they were

willing to pay for my

services.... Of course they knew

what I was doing. Do you really

think they'd run a cover story

without doing the least little

bit of fact checking? This

wasn't some Janet Cooke deal,

where you had to go into the

hood to verify the story. Just

sitting at your desk you could

have figured out I made it up.

Look, they made a big gesture of

taking the hot potato story down

from their Web site. But look at

the ones they left up. Do you

think any of those are true?"

Indeed, scanning the remaining

Glass stories at TNR online -

White House interns waxing

Monican, blue-haired Washington

Republicans lusting for White

House-suer Larry Klayman, and

the existence of a GOP

conspiracy group that even TNR

editor Charles Lane admitted

smells fishy - Glass' version of

events becomes easier to

believe. But this sort of

hall-of-mirrors journalism is

nearly impossible to check out.

Neither Lane nor TNR owner

Peretz (no doubt concocting

silly hoaxes of his own) were

available for comment. So why

did Glass tell all of this to

us? "Who believes what they read

in Suck?" he laughed. "It's not

like you're The New Republic."

Studies have shown that children

can be severely traumatized by

the thought of Robert and

Elizabeth Dole having sex, so

the former presidential hopeful

didn't do the nation any favors

by detailing his experiences as

a Viagra hopeful. During the

campaign, Dole's effort to

soften his image included an

address to prostate cancer

survivors in which he made the

Hemingwayesque observation:

"Those things don't all come

back as fast as advertised."

Back then, he understood

Franklin Roosevelt's credo that

pity is the worst thing a

candidate can elicit from the

electorate. Now, White House

2000 prospect Libby, with her

mouth-watering description of

the wonder drug's effects on her

own Ron Jeremy, seems to have

grasped the public's interest in

the amount of blood flowing into

the First Penis. But there's no

point getting it up if nobody's

interested. The delayed opening

of political romp Bulworth has

been a cold shower for Warren

Beatty, an actor long celebrated

for his own ability to deploy

the ol' Patriot. And India's

most recent triumph with

spectacular, mushrooming

projectiles has only alienated

the rest of the world. From

Capitol Hill to Beverly Hills to

the Himalayas, life is hard.

As Jerry Springer contemplates

how best to abide by the new

rules of decorum imposed by prim

vulgarian Barry Diller, perhaps

he should consider using the

Brazilian talk show, Ratinho

Livre, as a model. While the

show has its share of

Springer-style violence - its

42-year-old former MP host

favors a black truncheon over a

microphone - what really draws

viewers is its practice of

featuring the poor, the

hopeless, and the desperately

ill, all of whom journey to the

studio to appeal for help from

the show's audience of 50

million. Recent guests have

included a woman whose husband

cut off her ears and eviscerated

her eyes; Eleandro the Elephant

Boy; and a variety of

tumor-ridden lost causes. While

Springer seems the likeliest

American candidate to

incorporate such ratings

grabbers into his media mix, NBC

bigwig Warren Littlefield may

end up being the show's first

guest: left, after tonight, with

a programming hole so gaping not

even ER will be able to patch

it, the Peacock's prospects seem

even dimmer than those of

Eleandro the Elephant Boy.