In case you'd like a demonstration of what qualifies as behaving like a douche, look no further than the New York Times' Page 1 story Saturday about the shifting conventions of language usage on television.

There are so many things wrong with this article it's difficult to know where to begin, but I think the placement pretty much trumps them all -- as if there's anything remotely new about language standards gradually shifting over time. The story also references "the family hour," acknowledges that the family hour hasn't existed since the mid-1970s, and then talks about the family hour some more.

It was 20 years ago, in fact, that CBS caused a stir by letting a child say "You suck" to her brother in a new sitcom, "Uncle Buck," adapted from the movie. The republic has survived, even if "Uncle Buck" didn't. But it's a pretty good case study in how these controversies have flared over the years, as standards and conventions change and evolve.

The main problem is that the Times still plays a strong agenda-setting role, so its dumb story will doubtless lead to dumb follow-ups elsewhere and even dumber cable TV news pieces about the language our kids are hearing -- even though most kids are watching Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network or the Disney Channel and not seeing any of this crap in the first place. My head hurts just thinking about it.

I could go on and on, but the piece finally explains why it's such a waste of time by closing with a Massachusetts College professor noting, "Vulgar slang has a way of waxing and waning, where we become desensitized to a word’s earlier meanings,” he said. “I would bet most kids today couldn’t tell you what a douche bag is.”

No, but make them read this story and they'll figure it out pretty quick.

There was a strange omission in my Sunday-morning reading, found within a New York Times Business section feature, "The Boss," focusing on Lifetime CEO Andrea Wong.

The piece -- an "as told to" first-person account -- oddly skips over Wong's tenure as Disney CEO Robert Iger's executive assistant. Instead, Wong goes directly from being a researcher at ABC News to the following: "A couple of years later I got lucky at ABC: I became vice president, alternative programming, specials and latenight."

The passage struck me because it's so well-known (if perhaps not to the Times) that Wong served as Iger's assistant and that he subsequently promoted her into programming, as executives often do with promising assistants. Here, for example, is a recap of that interlude from a Los Angeles Times profile of Wong that ran last year:

She was hooked and decided she wanted to be a news producer. After graduation, Wong took a job as a researcher for ABC's "Primetime Live." When Robert Iger -- then the president of ABC, now the president and chief executive of Disney -- was looking for an assistant with an MBA to groom, she got the call.

"I was so fortunate, because I really got to learn how a television network works," said Wong, who worked for Iger for four years.

Not really a big deal, I suppose, except that a piece with the headline "A Long Road to Television" conspicuously omits what was likely the most significant turn that Wong took along the way, as well as one of the most familiar methods of breaking into the entertainment industry's executive ranks -- namely, paying your dues as an assistant before being promoted.

Keith Olbermann skewered Glenn Beck and the "Fox & Friends" gang on Monday. Bill O'Reilly insisted again that NBC News is corrupt, accused MSNBC of "left-wing lunacy" and gloated (despite saying that he wasn't) about Fox News Channel's booming ratings.

Gee, if this is a truce, it's hard to imagine what war would look like.

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz assembled a good deconstruction of the supposed Fox News-MSNBC truce that wasn't, and also visited the issue on his CNN program "Reliable Sources" (clip below). Meanwhile, the New York Times' Brian Stelter seemed more determined to defend his original over-statement of the story than actually advance it in his follow-up piece.

Kurtz's key passage states that the high-level talks between News Corp. and General Electric about their respective networks was "never intended to be a cease-fire." Rather, he writes, "The best that the men who run two of the nation's media giants were hoping to achieve was a ratcheting down of the rhetoric between their warring commentators. But Keith Olbermann refused to play along this week, Bill O'Reilly returned fire, and the New York Times got wounded in the crossfire."

Kurtz also paraphrases Fox News CEO Roger Ailes as saying that he can control his nutcases but that GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt couldn't wrangle his. This dovetails with my latest column, which makes the point that diva talent isn't easy to control.

Frankly, I still think the simple goal of toning down the barbs and restoring a semblance of civility is a laudable one. The big problem is where it originated.

If the guys actually running these networks imposed editorial control over their news stars, that would be fine. In print, after all, that's what editors are supposed to do.

In other words, it wouldn't be unreasonable if MSNBC President Phil Griffin prevailed upon Olbermann to be less personal or merely less relentless in skewering O'Reilly -- and let's face it, he often veers outside his lane just to run him over -- in the same way CNN Prez Jonathan Klein theoretically ought to talk to Lou Dobbs about backing off on his "birther" movement obsession, and Ailes should curb the rhetorical excesses of his "nutcases."

What's troubling is for that mandate to filter down from Immelt, who was clearly reacting to O'Reilly's unsubstantiated slams against the company. Update in response to comment below:  These include charges that Immelt is a "despicable human being" directly responsible for the death of American soldiers because GE conducted business with Iran and allegations that NBC has given the Obama administration favorable coverage in exchange for favors from the government. At one point, O'Reilly said it's "not a stretch to assume" that NBC might be assisting Obama hoping for a payoff. Sorry, but that's innuendo, not evidence.

As for Ailes, if all the reporting is accurate he has been fairly unabashed about the quid pro quo twist that says, "Leash your dogs and I'll restrain mine."

The odd part is the hand-wringing assumption that criticism of Fox News would somehow be silenced if MSNBC dialed down its nightly jabs. Historically, though, networks haven't targeted each other (think of it as "Honor among thieves"), leaving it to print critics -- or more recently, satirical outlets such as "The Daily Show" -- to analyze, expose and shame TV channels.

This whole "feud" started, remember, when Olbermann began mischievously punching up at O'Reilly, who took the bait more fabulously than he ever could have imagined -- to the point where the FNC host now sees "smear merchants" around every corner.

But now -- with so much vitriol already in the ether -- the tit for tat has grown petty. There are bigger fish to fry, and these networks should get to the business of frying them. As for the Times' Stelter, he should probably wait until he actually sees a white flag waving before reporting on the next "truce."

Given the challenges we all face, print journalists should take no pleasure in the misfortunes of colleagues at this point. But any way you slice it, this has been a bad week for the TV coverage at the New York Times.

First, public editor Clark Hoyt wrote a column about TV critic Alessandra Stanley's correction-filled tribute to Walter Cronkite under the headline "How Did This Happen?" In the course of that piece, Hoyt made the rather remarkable disclosure that Stanley "was the cause of so many corrections in 2005 that she was assigned a single copy editor responsible for checking her facts." In the wake of the Cronkite memorial, he added, she will "again get special editing attention."

Knowing a little something about the state of journalism, it's hard to see many newspapers supporting a one-to-one editor-to-critic ratio under current staffing levels.

Then on Monday, Keith Olbermann returned to MSNBC's "Countdown" and pretty much eviscerated Times reporter Brian Stelter's Page 1 piece titled "Voices From Above Silence a Cable TV Feud."  In it, Stelter reported that brass at parents General Electric and News Corp. had essentially brokered a truce between the feuding networks.

Olbermann had stated in the Times article that he was party to no such deal, and proceeded to prove it and then some Monday by labeling Stelter, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch as his "Worst Persons in the World."

Even allowing for the fact that Olbermann was having some fun by thumbing his nose at the Times and GE -- and that the real goal of the truce isn't so much to muzzle the hosts as simply tone down the rhetoric flying back and forth between the networks -- it's hard to conclude that the story wasn't significantly overplayed, despite evidence (topped by Olbermann's statement) that might have raised caution flags. Notably, the Los Angeles Times' Joe Flint (full disclosure: a former colleague) took a much more measured and skeptical approach in reporting on the efforts at corporate peacemaking.

Let's just say sometimes the hunger for a great story can get a few steps ahead of the story itself.

On the plus side, I don't see the need for a correction. After all, Stelter did say the corporate intervention regarding the feud was designed to "bring it to at least a temporary end." The paper just wasn't specific as to precisely how temporary that was going to be.

Both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times are reporting about a supposed truce between Fox News Channel and MSNBC brokered by top News Corp. and General Electric executives.

Although I've long advocated that the two sides exercise some restraint in their increasingly heated war of rhetoric -- which has come to resemble the HBO movie "Weapons of Mass Distraction" -- let's just say I'll completely believe it when I see it. Hell, even corporate behemoths might discover that when it comes to star personalities, creating monsters is easier than controlling them.

At the source of the fracas are MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and FNC's Bill O'Reilly. Having been made the butt of Olbermann's barbs for the last several years, the thin-skinned O'Reilly has become increasingly venomous in leveling counter-attacks at NBC News and GE, clearly hoping to retaliate against those who employ his tormentor. (The odd part is that while Olbermann mentions O'Reilly almost nightly -- regularly naming him "The worst person in the world" -- O'Reilly will never stoop, in his view, to utter Olbermann's name.)

Olbermann has been off the last couple of weeks, but via email he told the New York Times' Brian Stelter that he was "party to no deal." Without Olbermann agreeing to dial back his invective toward O'Reilly, it's hard to imagine a unilateral cessation by Fox.

At least marginally toning down the vitriol would be a step in the right direction. It's gotten to the point where the opposing sides have come close to accusing the other of murder -- O'Reilly maintaining that GE is contributing to the death of Americans by doing business with Iran, Olbermann by alleging that O'Reilly's frequent reports about George Tiller, a doctor who performed abortions, helped lead to his killing. Urging them to play a little nicer hardly seems out of line.

Thanks in part to Lou Dobbs and his pigheaded insistence on flogging the "birther" movement questioning President Obama's origins, both networks seem to agree on at least one thing -- sharing a common contempt for CNN, albeit not for the same reasons.

Given the overheated, conflict-driven climate in the talk/opinion space from which these networks have handsomely profited, it's difficult to squeeze the genie back into the bottle. About the best the bosses can hope for, perhaps, is trading in one bogeyman for another.

Update: Salon's Glenn Greenwald zeroes in on the most disturbing aspect of the story: That GE would seek to muzzle Olbermann (and potentially other MSNBC hosts) in order to protect its corporate interests. By that measure, O'Reilly's retaliatory assault on GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt and NBC News -- one often characterized by distortions and unsubstantiated allegations -- will have paid off. Indeed, O'Reilly has transparently gone after GE specifically to bring about this sort of concession.

The real question, yet to be determined, is how the supposed "truce" will work in practice -- and whether Olbermann can abide by the restrictions. If it's strictly a matter of toning down or dialing back his commentary -- as opposed to eliminating criticism of FNC -- that falls under the heading of the network exercising editorial discretion over its talent. MSNBC brass has a right to ask that O'Reilly bashing no longer need be a nightly occurrence. The motives might be venal, but it's not unheard of, which is why CNN is receiving such well-deserved criticism for behaving as if it has no control over what comes tumbling out of Dobbs' mouth, just as Fox merits criticism for Glenn Beck's more unhinged statements.

On the flip side, it's hard to envision Olbermann (who is scheduled to return from his vacation next week) accepting an order to completely expunge references to O'Reilly or Fox News from his coverage simply to take the heat off of GE. If that's really what's happening here, this is a much more serious issue.

Fox News Channel's Stuart Varney came up with a hilarious excuse for Sarah Palin's surprise decision to resign as governor of Alaska before her term's completed.

It's David Letterman's fault!

Throughout Fox's breaking coverage Friday, fill-in anchor Varney kept repeating the question of whether Palin was hounded out of politics by the "vicious" and "scurrilous" attacks against her, citing Letterman's joke about her daughter (and the subsequent controversy that Palin and her supporters stoked) as a prime example.

Sorry, it doesn't wash.

Even if you accept that Letterman's poorly constructed joke was beyond the pale -- and for the record, I feel all that righteous indignation was highly calculated and overblown -- it's hard to defend buckling to such comments as the rationale behind Palin's action. After all, if she truly aspires to higher office, the criticisms will be a lot more pointed than the kind that get delivered by latenight comedians.

Of course, the notion that Palin is nobly stepping aside to A) advance her political career or B) for the greater good of Alaska doesn't endure close scrutiny, either, so Varney was in essence grasping at straws. As Fox News' Carl Cameron put it -- summing up the hanging curve that Palin has served up to detractors -- the political ads against her in any future race will simply say, "Sarah Palin wants to be president, but she quit her last job."

Meanwhile, the unhappiest man in America is probably John Ziegler, the conservative talkshow host turned documentary filmmaker who has sought to transform defending Palin -- or rather, lambasting the mainstream media's handling of her -- into a cottage industry. If Palin is truly out of politics -- as some, in the frenzy of instant analysis, suggested she might be -- it's another sign that the Wasilla native was out of her depth all along.

Strictly as TV theater, Palin's rambling speech -- with her bizarre basketball analogy about when to "pass the ball for victory" -- rightfully should mark the end of her time on the national political stage. As the New York Times' increasingly indispensable Gail Collins noted, not only was the delivery bizarre, but the timing served to "interrupt the plans of TV newscasters to spend the entire weekend pointing out that Michael Jackson is still dead."

The Jackson experience, however, might also explain why Palin is destined to be with us for awhile. Because as with the so-called King of Pop, the Palin circus is just too outlandish, too irresistible a story, to go away anytime soon.

New York Times columnist David Carr was too polite, apparently, to formally slap someone working for his own paper, but his latest column not-so-subtly debunked Times contributor Dave Itzkoff's take on Jimmy Kimmel's performance at ABC's May 19 upfront presentation.

As I stated in an earlier post, Itzkoff seemed inordinately shocked that Kimmel could keep his job after ridiculing ABC's failure rate with new series during a brief standup turn at the event. Of course, the latenight host reserved his most pointed gags for NBC, saying the network was destroying itself by moving Jay Leno to primetime, but never mind.

Like me, Carr has been to the rodeo a few times before, so he pointed out that "some reports" about Kimmel were wrong -- without indicating that said reports were disseminated under the aegis of his own paper.

"Contrary to some reports, he killed," Carr wrote of Kimmel. "The room, stuffed to the gills with people who have been force-fed upfront claptrap for years, shook up and down with convulsive laughter. In years past, networks have been subjected to friendly fire from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Drew Carey and Conan O’Brien as a knowing nod to all the hyperbole, so everyone there was in on the joke."

Not a big deal, really, except A) I think the Times probably should have spelled out the fact that Carr was presumably taking exception to the paper's own coverage; and B) this is another small sign of what can happen when reporters are assigned to a beat who lack perspective or history. Suddenly, Kimmel's barbs at ABC are a story because the familiar blather associated with the upfronts is all minty fresh to them.

So kudos to Carr for setting the record straight. Sort of.

Much as I hate to completely agree with Deadlinehollywooddaily's Nikki Finke, she's absolutely right about Dave Itzkoff's New York Times piece, which sounded utterly shocked by the "withering, blistering monologue" that Jimmy Kimmel delivered at ABC's upfront presentation on Tuesday.

Itzkoff must be a complete neophyte to upfront blather, since comics have been getting up and poking fun at their own networks for years at these events. And while Kimmel joked about ABC's shows, I'd contend (as I did in an earlier post) that Kimmel's most pointed barb was aimed at NBC, who the latenight host accused of destroying its own network by virtue of its determination to prevent Jay Leno from leaping over to ABC.

Funny and very smart stuff, perfectly suited to an insider-savvy audience. As for Itzkoff pondering whether Kimmel is lucky to have a job, my guess is that he not only has one but will be doing it a half-hour earlier sooner or later, if ABC pulls the trigger on moving him to go directly opposite Conan O'Brien.

This is, in other words, a completely bogus non-story, receiving attention only because people like to assume that the New York Times knows what it's talking about. In this case, the paper didn't.

Let's hope they're doing a better job on how they cover Washington.

Wow. I get that op-ed writers and hoary old newspapers like to make themselves more relevant by tying into pop culture, but the New York Times' Week in Review section features not one, not two, but three separate pieces today drawing cosmic significance from the new "Star Trek" movie.

Maureen Dowd's attempt to link President Obama to Mister Spock was at least entertaining, though I'd put her on columnist probation just for sneaking in the term "Rahmulen" (get it? As in Emanuel).

The other salvos came from Columbia professor David Hajdu, who weighed in on "Trek" history; and Dave Itzkoff, a regular contributor to Arts & Leisure, whose own piece sought to tie cultural trends today to those that existed when the original series launched in the 1960s.

All that was missing was a couple of paragraphs in Frank Rich's column somehow blaming George W. Bush for torturing the fan base and killing off the TV franchise with that imprudent excursion into "Enterprise." (Notably, both Rich and Dowd explored the difficult economic climate facing journalism, which is certainly on most print wretches' minds right now.)

Newspapers are obviously grasping to widen their appeal, but piggybacking on summer movies doesn't sound like a sustainable longterm strategy.

In the meantime, brace yourselves for next week's Week in Review section, which will focus on what "Angels & Demons" tells us about U.S. attitudes toward religion and whether we can truly achieve salvation through watching "Terminator" movies.

Perhaps it's because I write about pop culture and throw in lots of gratuitous references to politics, but I can't help but marvel at the way that New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich veer out of their lanes to incorporate references to pop culture.

Rich generally does a pretty good job of weaving these thoughts into his general thesis, as he did in Sunday's column, which included this brief explanation about differences in how the public views the Big Three auto makers and Wall Street: "Perhaps we’re tempted to give Detroit a pass because it still summons nostalgic memories of 'American Graffiti,' 'Little Deuce Coupe' and certain things we used to do in the back seat of a Chevy. Wall Street and bankers are the un-aphrodisiac: 'Bonfire of the Vanities,' Old Man Potter of 'It’s a Wonderful Life' and, of course, Gordon Gekko of Oliver Stone’s 'Wall Street.'"

For her part, Dowd's TV and movie asides increasingly seem to come out of left field, as if she feels strangely compelled to remind us that she consumes a lot of both. So in the midst of a column about Barack Obama's trip to Europe and the deft way in which he managed world leaders, we get this doozy: "Gabriel Byrne’s brooding psychoanalyst on 'In Treatment' might envy Barack Obama’s calming psychoanalysis in Europe." (Then again, the attention showered on "In Treatment's" season premiere relative to its audience size -- with sizable spreads in both the L.A. and New York Times in addition to lengthy reviews -- suggests that coastal journalists spend more time on the couch than the average reader does, in addition to spending a disproportionate amount of time with HBO.)

Actually, I think both columnists aren't just showing off but probably reflect a pretty accurate perception of the way that their readers -- even the affluent and educated ones that subscribe to the Times -- filter their view of the world. Sure, you can cite some book or essay, but odds are they're more familiar with "The Real Housewives of New York."

In other words, even with the Times audience, people might have heard of the book, but there's a better chance that they saw the movie.

Yes, I know, everyone who reads TV criticism thinks this occasionally. Still -- and chalk this up perhaps to Daylight Savings Time -- her latest piece for the New York Times' Week in Review section, "The Vanishing Sidekick," made me wonder if one glass of red wine Saturday had somehow left me with Sunday-morning hallucinations.

In discussing Jimmy Fallon's decision to do without a sidekick and Conan O'Brien's announcement that he would bring back Andy Richter, Stanley's theorizing loosely connected Ed McMahon, Cardinal Richelieu, Tonto, the sitcom character Rhoda, Batman and Robin, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, and Chester from "Gunsmoke." Then she placed part of the blame for the disappearance of sidekicks on Dick Cheney, which is where outfits like the Times get slapped around for veering out of their lanes to exhibit liberal bias.

Stanley's tongue was obviously pressed in her cheek for much of the piece, but even so, there were some casual asides that bring to mind the periodic charge that the New York Times' primary TV critic can be sloppy -- like saying that Jon Stewart shuns sidekicks, when he features multiple "correspondents" on his Comedy Central show, many of whom have gone on to bigger and better things.

And there, actually, is the central point behind her premise, which Stanley for the most part missed: Latenight hosts have mostly gone without sidekicks since Johnny Carson because few of them have been secure enough to risk sharing the spotlight with someone else. It's also why they forgo guest hosts. Carson knew the job was his. Everyone that has followed him has acted like they're just renting the chair, no matter how successful they are. On that score, at least, give someone like Keith Olbermann credit, inasmuch as he championed Rachel Maddow as a fill-in host and then pushed for her to get her own program. (For more on Maddow, see my Variety colleague Ted Johnson's profile.)

Dick Cheney did a lot of questionable stuff, but I'd cut him some slack on the fact that after the bruising succession battle for Carson's crown, Letterman, Leno and most other comics have spent their careers looking over their shoulders.

Dumb stories run all the time, but when they're played on the front page of the New York Times, they're going to echo significantly louder than they should.

There's no question that broadcasters are having trouble right now, just like every other advertiser-dependent medium. But Tim Arango's piece, "Broadcast TV Faces Struggle to Stay Viable," features so many glaring omissions I'd like to think some disconnected editor demanded it, and the reporter simply obliged.

Mostly, the article focuses on all the things that network TV has lost, but nothing that it's gained. There's no mention that the networks are controlled by major studios, which more often than not own -- and occasionally profit quite handsomely from -- the programs that they broadcast. There's no mention of TV programs being sold on DVD, which has helped cannibalize syndicated viewing but also offset some of those losses. Arango cites "Lost" but never mentions the robust demand for selected hits like that one abroad, with Disney (which produces it) receiving an especially lucrative license fee for the U.K. broadcast rights.

Instead, there are a lot of references to broadcast TV being a different animal now than it was in the days of "All in the Family" and "Hill Street Blues." Well, that's about as big a "duh" as there is.

Years ago, a network executive was bitching about a TV-related story in one of the Times -- I frankly forget if it was New York or L.A. -- and muttered to me, "If they're that naive about our business, you wonder what else they don't know."

Indeed, let's all hope the guys writing about the stimulus package have a better grasp on that than Saturday's story exhibited about network television.