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Last night's episode of Topic A With Tina Brown featured our lady's best impression of a schoolgirl who'd just discovered ecstasy; we're suspect the Tizzinator was putting her best face forward in light of the intranetwork competition from dLife. Luckily, last night's episode wasn't a total abortion — although Tina does seem to be doing her best to introduce "hoot" into the modern intellectual's lexicon. After the jump, Henry the Intern's weekly report.

Tina was inexplicably chipper and smiley on last night's "Topic A" — perhaps because she finally entered a Michael Jackson-free zone.

First up, a roundtable on "the new era of CEO accountability," as described by NBC correspondent Anne Thompson. Former Simon and Schuster CEO Richard Snyder thinks "you're losing a certain kind of vitality" when "you have to play the game of corporate governance." He would like to see the end of quarterly earnings reports and a "revolution" in who qualifies as a board member. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen sighed: "The imperial boss is here to stay."

Next, Tina had a grand time chatting with John Lithgow, currently starring in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels." She called it the "buoyant new broadway hit" and "a total hoot." Lithgow said, "They just kept raising the bar and raising the bar... Fortunately, I get by with a lot of trickery." But he's in good company: "The number of major film actors who have come back to Broadway is just astonishing."

In Roundtable Number Two, Tina asked, "Was Rumsfeld right?" James Fallows, of The Atlantic, and Andrew Apostolou, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, agreed the Defense Secretary's legacy is mixed. Fallows thinks the post-invasion days when Iraqis realized that "Saddam is gone but no one is in charge" was a "hinge" moment in history that has influenced the country ever since. On the plus side, the military is quickly "learning on the ground" counterinsurgency tactics (that's not a new sentiment, though). Apostolou said Rumsfeld understood the need for reform: "The Pentagon has been dragged screaming and kicking into the new era."

For Roundtable Number Three, Chris Connelly, Alexandra Pelosi, professional pundit Craig Crawford, and Republican fundraiser Georgette Mosbacher talked up Condi versus Hillary in '08. Connelly can already "see a lot of girl-on-girl action in the headlines." Mosbacher said that while "women control the wealth in America, that's a fact," they "still view politics as being a man's game." Crawford said poll respondents are open to female candidates — just political correctness? — and he's hearing less hesitation on the issue of electability.

Pelosi was in Italy when Secretary of State Rice was visiting and said it's all media hype: "She was eating by herself," yet "she comes back to America as the great Black hope." Crawford added, "the discussion of what women wear" is not going away. Cue Tina to quote her column verbatim: Madeleine Albright's brooches "were the size of small countries."

On the subject of the administration's love of fake news reports, the guests had no sympathy. Said Pelosi, "I love the fact that we're talking about propaganda and you go straight to me." Connelly and Mosbacher think the public is savvy enough to know what they're watching.

Hot picks
Connelly: Panda Porn
Pelosi: the "Anti-TV Patch" to "stop caring about TV."
Mosbacher: RealClearPolitics.com Tina: "I became totally addicted to it during the election."
Crawford: "Crow Killer" by Bunker, Bunker and Thorp
Tina: "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" — "Such a hoot." (That's the second "hoot" in an hour.)

Closing quote by Thomas Jefferson: "The advertisement is the most truthful part of the newspaper."