Weekend Desk editor Natasha Julius remains on assignment in India. Stephanie B. Goldberg once again fills in with her Five Dumbest Ideas of the Week.
1. This election year has been notable for pols and pundits bleating a few hack phrases until most of us were ready to jump out a window. To rank their popularity, we turned to the Google Cliche-O-Meter. The winner by far: “Obama” and “change” with 79,100,000 results, followed by “McCain” and “experience” at 349,000,000. The runner-ups:
* “Wall Street” and “Main Street” – 6,820,000
* “Palin” and “breath of fresh air” – 432,000
Two that showed early promise but peaked too early:
* “knocked it out of the park” – 41,000
* “throw him under the bus” – 14,500
I’d say I’ll miss them, but that would be a lie.
2. The revelations about Joe the faux Plumber just keep coming. Now it can be revealed that Joe is no mere working stiff but the scion of a famous family. In fact, his mother and father have written the book on clean toilet bowls.
3. Who knew that Martha Stewart was a cougar? Or that Luke Russert was so versatile?
4. So Angelina Jolie wants to adopt more children. Here are my nominees:
A) The SwiftKids for Truth
B) Cousin Oliver
C) Little Lourdes, Rocco and David
(Can we please have a big, messy, humiliating divorce like McCartney-Mills?)
5. Well, it seems the Tribune is going hyperlocal with a vengeance. This week its parent company announced it is terminating its use of Associated Press wires in two years. The good news is that the Trib has cornered the market on high school bowling scores.
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Posted on October 18, 2008