In truth, we didn't expect heaps

of comedy from Totenberg's

responses, but her apparent

belief in our toxicity was just

impassioned enough to be

entertaining. When our

correspondent offered to fax our

questions for her approval, she

replied, "If you want to waste

your paper, be my guest." How

about an email then? "I will

delete anything you send me."

Maybe if she would just look at

our questions she might find

them diverting enough to use in

some other venue, with no

payment or acknowledgment to

us? "I'm already working three

jobs; I have no time to take on

anything more." [Editor's note:

These "three jobs" include the

NPR gig and stints as a

correspondent for ABC's

Nightline and as a regular

panelist on Inside Washington

— hardly an unsupportable

workload.]

Despite the brusque high-hat, we

still think this would have made

a great interview, so if you

work for a publication with a

more Washington-friendly title,

feel free to steal our concept.

And since we're nothing if not

sporting, we recommend that you

listen regularly to Totenberg's

Supreme Court readings, which

remain one of the few bright

spots in the dense wasteland

that is public radio.

Committing a hoax on the Web has

always seemed an exercise in

redundancy, the modern

equivalent of Dr. Johnson's

"blacking the chimney." When the

exposure of the ourfirsttime.com

"hoax" had online journalists

breaking out in even-more-

enthusiastic-than-usual

self-congratulations, we never

really figured out where the

hoax lay: Was it that the young

lovers were not really virgins?

Were the site's sponsors not

really planning to surrender the

virtual pink to paying

customers? It didn't really

matter in the end, since the

method had by that time been

established: A Net porn

entrepreneur comes up with a

seemingly outrageous offer, the

daily papers give the idea

breathless coverage, hints of

tomfoolery surface, and online

reporters trumpet the whole

affair as evidence that Old

Media just doesn't get it. But

while ovarian auctioneer Ron

Harris hasn't returned any of

our messages, we'd think twice

before dismissing Ronsangels.com's

business plan of bidding on

model's eggs. If 52 models (from

outside Harris' own stable of digitized

cuties) have already approached

the soft-core chieftain with

offers to put their own ova up

for bidding, there is clearly a

market for this sort of thing,

and the auction may yet come off

without a hitch. Most important

of all, the case has revealed

that there are innumerable

"fertility activists" ready to

scream on cue at the first sign

of a little free-market

chutzpah. (And would the outcry

have been so deafening if Ron

had been offering, say, frosty

mugs of Pete Rose's motile

seed?) If nothing else, there's

a cautionary tale here: Avoid

breeding with media whores.

Even without the debate over

catwalk baby factories, the

various news media have in the

past week been off on enough

pilotless flights of fancy to

make media watchdogs of us all.

Salon bravely took the point on

the latest round of George W.

Bush coke tales (and we can say

without sarcasm that this truly

is a job somebody has to do),

and for its troubles, the

undervalued zine earned only the

vituperation of self-appointed Perry

Whites, whose credo — then,

now, and always — remains,

"Don't listen to what these

Internet cretins say." (That the

Bush story came from the

well-known cyber pornographers

at St. Martins Press did nothing

to soften the flinty bosoms of

Salon haters nationwide.)

Elsewhere, an apparently

well-intentioned but

none-too-well-informed reporter

for the New York Post has

categorized Suck as being "among

the best-written and most

original sites on the Web," an

accusation we vigorously

deny. Most fascinating of all

was the most recent

exposé of how the

widely dissed Net Aid fell

abundantly short of its stated —

and widely reported — goal of

getting 1 billion "hits" during

its set of subprime concerts.

(Just what those billion hits

constituted — pageviews,

unique users, images loaded, or

just the collective platinum

power of such washed-up

headliners as Jimmy Page, Sheryl

Crow, and Bryans Ferry and Adams

— was a question that, as

always, went unaddressed.) On

this topic, though, we can speak

with some authority: Anytime

anybody anywhere says anything

about how much traffic his or

her Web site is getting, it's

all a goddamned lie.