CBS REDEFINES "SHOESTRING"

In their world, $35 for the ingredients to one home-cooked family meal is dining on a shoestring. Maybe at Katie Couric's place in Millbrook it is. Heck, in November while I was in layoff limbo we just about pulled off an entire Thanksgiving for less than $35. (I think the two bottles of cheap wine put us over the top.)

Digest this - if you can:

As The Early Show Saturday Edition's "Chef on a Shoestring," Freitag sought to take a traditional, three-course spaghetti dinner and give it a little twist any family would love - on our new, lower, recession-busting budget of $35. And, we introduced another challenge to our "Shoestring" chefs. We're calling it "How Low Can You Go?" The chef who prepares the least-costly meal will be back at the end of the year to create our big, blowout holiday feast!

Menu:
Beet Salad with Crushed Pistachios & Soft Goat Cheese
Lamb Ragu with Rigatoni and Fresh Ricotta
Greek Yogurt with Blood Oranges, Honey & Mint

And seriously, beets? Wife and I would love that, really...but you don't just spring beets on a five-year-old and a three-year-old and expect them to house it down like they're Vikings just home from six months at sea. Advance work must be done to prepare young palates.

But the story has sparked an interest in me, in finding other examples of major-media tone-deafness to family issues. Do jump in and help sprinkle CBS et al. with lots of schadenfreudey goodness!

O, THE GLAMOROUS LIFE OF A CAMPAIGN REPORTER

There are times when I don't feel so bad about having spent many an evening sitting glazed-over at a local zoning board of appeals meeting, waiting to get that soundbite from the board chairman on why the arch signs at the proposed McDonald's can be 24 feet high but not 28 feet high. I feel pretty good about the dues-paying days of my broadcasting career when I see pictures like these grizzled veterans, from the Hillary Clinton press office in Austin, Texas:

You must forgive me, I'm not used to seeing men's rooms in a political context without wondering if there's a senator behind stall door number three, trolling for a bit of strange.

Hat tip: Gawker.