From the NYT:

Since when did microlending, global poverty, constitutional law and civil wars in Africa become topics for frank discussion on fake-news comedy shows?

Publishers say that particularly for the last six months, “The Daily Show” and its spinoff, “The Colbert Report,” which has on similarly wonky authors, like the former White House official David Kuo, have become the most reliable venues for promoting weighty books whose authors would otherwise end up on “The Early Show” on CBS looking like they showed up at the wrong party.

(Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad) Yunus’s appearance gave a jump-start to his national press tour and sent his rank on the online bookseller Amazon soaring, said Susan Weinberg, who is the publisher of PublicAffairs. “It was our pièce de résistance,” Ms. Weinberg said. “It had a huge impact on the book.”

Tony Fox, a spokesman for Comedy Central, said that though “The Daily Show” has been on the air since 1996, the number of authors featured has increased significantly in the last five years.

Authors are treated to a fairly straight conversation with Mr. Stewart, but Stephen Colbert, who remains in character as a Bill O’Reilly-type commentator, can be a more challenging interviewer who forces the author to play along with his schtick. “It’s a different experience,” Ms. Weinberg said wryly.

From the NYT:

Johnna Cottam was showing a group of her girlfriends how to do a move called the Fireman.

As music by Shakira played, she strode up to grab the portable pole in the living room of her well-appointed lakefront home here, wrapped her right leg around it, swung wide with her left, and spun. When she reached the bottom, Ms. Cottam, in a pink “Got Pole?” tank top and black workout pants, tossed her hair back, mudflap-girl style.

“Kick it right out of the ballpark, just kick it,” she encouraged her five friends and neighbors. Making way for the women to try the move, Ms. Cottam backed into a rocking chair draped with pink and purple feather boas that partly covered her twin sons’ two teddy bears.

Pole dancing, once exclusively the province of exotic dancers, has flared up as a much-hyped Hollywood exercise craze, and has seeped into the collective unconscious through shows like “The Sopranos” and “Desperate Housewives.” A variant called motorized pole dancing, which occurs in stretch limos, has raised eyebrows as far away as Britain, where some female university students pole-danced as a fund-raiser for testicular cancer. And mini-poles have even been spotted as dance props at over-the-top bat mitzvah parties in suburban precincts.

I was riding the Scarborough Rapid Transit line on Wednesday when two young women started talking about bachelorette parties.

One says she knew of one girl who had a midget stripper entertain at her "sweet 16" party, "and he even gave her a lap dance."

Says the other: "That's kind of funny."

Well, I certainly thought so! :)

Now, those who follow celebrity gossip much, much more closely than I do inform me that some professional party girls have themselves hired such entertainment for their own all-girl soirees.

Who knew?

Who cares?

With Dubya leaving the stage, and two Republican presidential front-runners who are relatively moderate on religious issues, the U.S. Christian right has some picking to do.