"No Ice Today"

      You used to turn that part of the X-divided ice-company card upward if, by some amazing good luck or careful management, the block(s) of ice in your icebox were doing fine and you weren't going to need any.

      Americans need a "No BS Today" section of their media-delivery card; we need to turn it upward in the front window and nail it down.

      Now, I'm not talking about not getting any partisan content.  If your idea of a good time with the evening news or the afternoon opinions is a steady diet of "Look what those horrible-awful politicians from The Other Party Are Doing," and "Look what those foolish or wicked voters in That State That Leans The Wrong Way are up to," and so on, why, you ought to be able to get it -- but it should be real stuff; nothing made up, nothing weakly sourced, nothing finely calibrated from distorted facts and pure fiction to make the worrisome vein in your forehead begin to throb.  Your buddy who Photoshops fake "Fact Checks" and his counterpart who dreams up fake "facts" would both have to content themselves with posting their grubby masterpieces only on their own refrigerator doors, not the public Internet.

      Of course, we won't get that and if we did, most people all across the political spectrum would howl in outrage that it was all lies, lies -- filthy, terrible lies.

      But I can dream, can't I?