Remember how after 9/11 there was all this talk about how important paying attention to the news was now. And how much people were suddenly into the news, searching for answers. And there was all these stories about people watching CNN, picking up the newspapers and sitting through Dan Rather's authentic frontier jibberish all in an attempt to find out why what happened happened? And people started speculating about how tv stations would bulk up their news programs and start covering the really important stories, like Third World Poverty or the effects of globalization on the world. Well, the big news now is that ABC wants to dump "Nightline" and replace it with Letterman. It's not because "Nightline" gets worse ratings, in fact, there kind of even, it's just that "Nightline's" ratings skew old. And advertisers hate old people. Supposedly, they're losing a bunch of money on "Nightline" and Disney, who owns ABC, isn't very happy.

Now, I love Dave. Love him. But, you know, he's kind of fine where he is. And "Nightline's" been one of the best news programs over the past twenty years. By far. And Ted Koppel is probably one of the only few journalists with any integrity left.

And remember how after 9/11, everyone was saying that as a nation, we were gaining a whole new perspective on things. How everyone was looking at the hollow, superficial, mall-addicted, Krispy Kreme clogged lives that we were living and realizing "what was important." Well, flipping through the channels today, I saw a documentary on, yes, MTV about plastic surgery. There was one lady who weighed about 350 pounds and got a tummy tuck. Whatever. Guess that's kind of normal now.

But then they showed three other people who were getting surgery. There were two women, both of whom were, I think 22. Both of them had obviously already gotten boob jobs and they were on their way to get some more work done. One of them, the blonde, decided that at the tender age of 22, her butt and thighs were too big so she got them liposuctioned. The other one was obviously Jewish and was getting a nose job because the poor girl had been slapped with a yarmulke and cursed with the Jewish nose (which I love, by the way). That, obviously, had to go. As she stood there in the mirror at the doctor's office, her nose still bandaged up, she looked hopeful yet full of trepidation. She told the camera about the bright new future her nose would give her. Seems her nose was keeping her from fullfilling her dreams, which she then proclaimed were to pose for Playboy and get a boyfriend.

Then there was the guy. He was a huge gym rat and pretty muscular. Sadly, no matter how hard he tried, he was cursed with skinny calves. This being a slight imperfection, he went to a doctor and got implants on his calves (just like breast implants, only, well for calves). The surgery was successful and just like that, the poor guy was suddenly made whole with the realization that now he had big calves. As he flexed for the cameras on the beach, he shouted out that now he had everything he could possibly want. Later on, he added that he had "the butt, the abs, the chest and now I have the calves." Ladies, he warned, should watch out because now he was perfect. He even admitted that he thought it would be possible that men could now find him attractive.

Watching all this and reading about poor Ted Koppel, I couldn't but help get the feeling that maybe, just maybe, we need another terrorist attack.