It's a *popcorn* morning: Mistah KURTZ being grilled, and SCOUNDREL Darryl ISSA!1

[UTUSN]

When ISSA is the poster boy for the righteousness of a cause (guess what, Benghazi), there's something rotten somewhere and it ain't in the ostensible righteousness of the cause.

And Mistah KURTZ is just passion-LESS-ly mouthing his full culpability, grilled by two dudes CNN recruited for the job.

[PCIntern]

1. I guess his Reliable Sources weren't as reliable as he thought...nt

[UTUSN]

3. No "sources" involved. His piece was his reaction to his reading of the Sports Illustrated text

Oh, wow, one of his guests half through the rest of the show said she is "going off script to say I am totally in awe of what you did at the top of the show... (on and on) We journalists try (and try) but the most important thing is INTEGRITY (which you showed)..." So THERE!1 It's Lisa BLOOM from the Today show.

And Mistah says he "read too fast" in his bad reading comprehension.

[UTUSN]

2. Both of them, predicably

ISSA was positively puffed up at (he thinks) having a superior perch to hurl thunderbolts of judgment against others, instead of his being the target for a change. Bob SCHIEFFER was (seemed) totally on his side, canny dissembler that SCHIEFFER is.

Mistah KURTZ rattled off his multiple apologies without his motormouth sputtering. If it *had* sputtered a bit, it might have been a tad of sincerity. He said this exercise of flagellation was "not just a ritual" to him, that he is profoundly/totally/absolutely/positively SORRY, really. Then at the end, it was time to move on to the rest of the show, and he almost, almost got a little teary before hopping right along, UNironically, resuming his judging the rest of the media.

Actually, his two Inquisitors recited a litany of Mistah's past screw-ups and asked, "You say you're going to learn from this episode, but if you didn't learn from (all those others), why should we believe you now?" (paraphrasing)

He rattled right along to that without missing a beat.