Attention all attention-seekers. Stop climbing the New York Times’ new office building. Climb this instead.

I’ve been meaning to rant about this for some time now, but you know, it’s summer and I’ve been lazy.

Well, enough with all the procrastination. And besides, more than enough bloggers (not to mention Paris Hilton) have been rightfully pointing out what an idiot John McCain is, not to mention the idiots who surround him. There's no percentage in my wasting breath on more of the same.

McCain, McShmane.
How about those building climbers?

So instead of slamming the too-easy-to-slam McCain, here’s a gratuitous sneer for all those dudes who may put a newspaper out of business by diverting the company’s capital from publishing newspapers to protecting their physical flanks from dingbats who like to climb buildings.

It hasn’t happened once. It hasn’t happened twice. It’s happened three times: Idiots with a penchant for idiocy have noticed that the Times’ new headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan seem just perfect for climbing.

Perhaps that’s because the architects surrounded the building with bars that trigger thoughts of jungle gym in juvenile minds. (Picture)

The pursuit of splat-iness

At any rate, the climbers keep climbing, endangering pedestrians and passers by, not to mention news gatherers going in and out of the building. And the Times keeps having to modify the building to discourage climbing and the big splat that one of those climbers will make one of these days.

Let’s take these climbing attempts for what they are. The perpetrators are not only guilty of suicidal idiocy. They’re not only recklessly endangering people on the crowded streets below.

Their actions also constitute an attack on the solvency (and therefore the freedom) of the press.

Yo, climb this

Look, Dumbo, if you want to climb a challenging building, go climb the Washington monument. It looks a lot harder. You’ll stand out better against one of its plain granite facets. And if the police don’t shoot you off it, you’re more likely just to fall in front of a throng of tourists, all of them holding cameras.

This will assure you of a posthumous You Tube moment, plus your constitutionally guaranteed 15 minutes of fame.

Get out of New York and go for it, fella.

No comments needed, but I'll give you a few anyway

This poster was borrowed -- well, okay, stolen -- from Billionaires for Bush (link in the links column at right.) I highly recommend that you check out their website.

There would be no further commentary necessary concerning Paris Hilton, if not for the interview she gave Larry King recently.

It was the kind of interview that made you want to dance around and chant, "Liar, liar, yer pants on fire!" I'm not a big Paris Hilton follower, but something about the interview rang as false as a three dollar bill. Perhaps it was Larry King's steadfast failure to ask followup questions.

For example, Paris said she goes into her office every day and does hard work. King might have followed up by asking what she does while she's working hard. Does she make phone calls? Does she doodle? Does she have to lug heavy packages? Sweep out the office? Is she at her desk at 8 AM until the wee hours of the night? Does some boss drop into her office on an hourly basis and holler, "Paris, are you going to finish that damn assignment today or am I going to have to give it to the new kid in the mail room?"

What exactly constitute hard work in the separate universe of a rich woman who drives drunk and violates court orders with a shrug?

She should have been asked, but nah! Not Softball Larry, the interviewer with a national audience who's notorious for turning every interview into free celebrity advertising. So when she said she doesn't do drugs, it wasn't surprising he didn't raise an eyebrow, much less a penetrating question about her claim.

Fortunately, somebody at The Smoking Gun raise not only an eyebrow, but some telling documentary films that show Paris was lying through her teeth. Check it out here:
http:
//www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0628071parishilton1.html

What was I saying about an excess wealth tax earlier this week?