In all the elation over the mainstream media's slow-motion crumbling I've realized that the forgery story closely parallels a weeklong parody of forgery that Berke Breathed ran in his comic strip Bloom County about twenty years ago — one that ended with main character Milo Bloom trying to pass off phony Margaret Mead diaries that included the entry "man, those Samoans are a surly bunch."

Breathed's back on the newspaper but no longer funny, instead opaque and lockstep with the established, humorless left. Maverick no more, Breathed is not likely to draw us a lampoon that lets Dan Rather and his Ministry of Privately Vetted Documents really have it. So, like factual analysis, laughter will be new media's.