Hyperconnected pontificator Thomas Friedman's column this weekend was one long extended metaphor purporting to explain the threatening nature of the Islamic State. Like The Da Vinci Code, his theory has a hidden, stupid secret.

In your era-ending Wednesday media column: Jim Romenesko is semi-retiring, cartooning for The New Yorker is hard, the NYO broadsheet is here, a weather lady is scared of earthquakes, and newspapers have grown.

Blind item! Which trainwreck rock star got into a sexy situation with a gossip columnist and a sex writer? Oh, I can't bear to keep it secret: Courtney Love, gossip don Lloyd Grove, and gigolo-hiring Post writer Mandy Stadtmiller.

Politico, the Beltway's go-to sociopath news outlet, has weighed all of Barack Obama's "options" for 9/11 this year and finds "few" good ones. There are apparently some grave political risks for Obama on 9/11 if he doesn't mourn properly.

A couple of new polls show that a growing number of Americans think Barack Obama is Muslim. Why? So far, the Washington Examiner's conservative writer Byron York has the worst explanation: because Obama sometimes mentions his "Muslim roots," confusing everyone!

Today, the New York Times' Clark Hoyt used his Public Editor column to address the recent shitshow and rumors surrounding the Times' forthcoming story on New York governor David Patterson. And Bill Keller interestingly called us out in it.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs can't stop laughing!

Elizabeth Edwards has been demanding that her interviewers not utter the name of that woman—Rielle Hunter—as a condition for granting interviews. And CNN, Oprah, and NBC News have all caved.

Mort Zuckerman thinks letting newspapers run bingo games will save journalism. Let's see if his own newspaper is competent enough to run promotional games!

The St. Louis newspaper runs a picture of a black man kissing his white girlfriend; rednecks write racist comments; we mock those comments. Now, the almost-as-bad backlash: the "I'm the least racist!" comment contest:

Air America Radio, the liberal talk radio network that has come to dominate the radio dial and our country's political media at large (you can't go anywhere these days without hearing about the latest Rachel Maddow show) is back in the news. This time, for fraud! The network's fugitive former director, Evan Montvel-Cohen, was arrested in Guam yesterday on money-laundering charges unrelated to Air America. But boy, they should really consider rehiring him for his fundraising skills alone:

Stanley Fish—public intellectual, Times blogger, and man of secret ethics—has been doing a lot of thinking about rental car ads, and their relation to cheating on your wife and/ or gay lover. "The genius of the commercials is that they foreground the sexuality that informs the relationship between the car owner and the object of his/her affection," Fish wrote. That's what I'm saying! Because many rental car ads play on the theme of leaving your old car for a new one, Fish believes they are deserving of deep deconstruction. About his favorite Avis ad, he concludes "Lust is lust and betrayal is betrayal, whether the relationship is gay or straight." Others might just like the part with the car, and the guy, and the joke. The ad, and his deep, sexy analysis of its genre, below.

The story of Kristin Davis, who the Post fingered yesterday as not only a high-priced madam, but also another hooker visited by Eliot Spitzer, is actually getting more interesting. Why? Because every new story that comes out makes it less clear if Davis actually has any connection to Spitzer. The Post says she does! The Daily News says she doesn't! And the Times doesn't really say anything! Verrrrrrrrrrryyy interesting. Somebody has screwed up on this story, big time. After the jump, we speculate—plus, we have some insight into the Daily News' big "Madam's Black Book" cover story today.