In your enraging Wednesday media column: the world's worst writer strikes again, Penthouse wants to buy Playboy, Forbes' future is in unpaid blog slave labor, and Piers Morgan is all set to take Larry King's job.

  • WaPo columnist Richard Cohen, the world's worst writer, is positively overjoyed that rapist Roman Polanski can stay safely in his Swiss Chalet rather than being extradited here to stand trial for raping a 13 year-old female victim—or, as Richard Cohen refers to her, a "victim." Scarequotes are sic!

  • There is no doubt that Polanski did what he did, which is have sex with a 13-year-old after plying her with booze. There is no doubt also that after all these years there is something stale about the case, not to mention a "victim," Samantha Geimer, who has long ago forgiven her assailant and dearly wishes the whole thing would go away. So do I.

  • See, Polanski thought the judge was going to "throw the book at him." So, he "ran from the prospect of a judge who was going to make his reputation at Polanski's expense and send him to jail for a very long time. I would have done the same." Famous newspaper columnist Richard Cohen knows that legally and morally, Americans are bound to skip bail and flee the country if they think the judge doesn't like them, after raping 13 year-old "victims" who probably totally wanted it. (This is in keeping with Richard's previous demand that Polanski be freed as soon as Richard himself is given "a chance to bust him one in the mouth.") Good work today, Richard.
  • Hugh Hefner officially has competition in his bid to take Playboy private: Friendfinder, the parent company of Penthouse, says it will make an official bid tomorrow. They could potentially own the slightly-more-hardcore and slightly-less-hardcore middlebrow porn market. That's power.
  • Lewis D'Vorkin, the True/ Slant founder who recently became "chief product officer" at Forbes, is really hot on his plan to sucker freelancers into working for Forbes for free: "Moving forward, when I look at an operation like Forbes, I look at a mixture of a full-time staff base and hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of freelance contributors. It's that blend," he tells Zeke Turner. You know what else is a blend? Maxwell House. And it's nasty.
  • As suspected, Piers Morgan is almost certainly going to be the new Larry King. Because what America needs are more judgmental British guys on our teevee screens.