My colleagues at Yahoo News and the Associated Press bring you this blockbuster in time for the holiday weekend: Americans would rather have Barack Obama than John McCain at their summer cookout.
Yes, an online sample of 1,759 adults crowned Obama the weenie-roast king, 52% to 45%. With all the drivel fouling the campaign trail of late, I'm surprised the preferred barbecue guest wasn't "Neither."
They don't have do-overs in the campaign season. But if they did, this is a week that would merit one.
There was no real news -- just barely news and almost news. The mainstream media avoided some of it. But the rest found a place, partly because the Internet always has room, partly because the candidates are always ready to fill it.
On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee gleefully headlined a report on staff changes at the top of the McCain campaign "Turmoil Part Deux." Mainstream news outlets love these who's-up-who's-down stories. And they voraciously chewed over the ascent of a new campaign manager and the demise of the "regional campaign manager structure."
Recall, if you will, the last time the press got all breathless about a McCain staff shake-up. The candidate went on to win enough delegates for the Republican nomination.
A day earlier, the Republican National Committee offered an even more insubstantial bit of chaff. Displaying conflicting headlines from the Associated Press and Politico.com, the Grand Old Party implied that Obama was double-talking on faith-based programs.
In fact, the accompanying stories, which the Republican operatives did not bother to display, showed no disagreement. Obama had not double-talked. He merely flummoxed those who want to pillory him as a godless liberal when he embraced government support for church-based social programs.
But the news-you-didn't-really-need-to-know prize this week goes to Wesley K. Clark's "attack" on McCain's service in Vietnam.
The retired four-star Army general was on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday, when host Bob Schieffer questioned him about his contention that McCain was "untested and untried."
Clark first offered that McCain was a hero for enduring 5 1/2 years in Vietnamese prisons. But when pressed by Schieffer, Clark said: "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."
