What I've been watching: a political pie chart without the pie

50% Keith Olbermann: a Churchillian throwback who knows how to talk pretty. Like Isocrates before him, this guy can subordinate long periodic clauses, toss off some anadiplosis, recite the Iliad from memory, and stage an impromptu lecture on the origins of rhetorical invention without breaking a sweat, or forgetting to castrate Bill O' Reilly. Olbermann is so intelligent, so articulate, so lucid, and so perennially correct that I bow before his righteous example. And he's funny, too. Yes, the anti-O' Reilly. Keep counting, Keith, for one day the numbers will add up to something.

25% Jon Stewart: Seen here as an "athletic young man"--well done, Stewart. Someday your running and kicking a small octagonal ball will be rewarded when soccer ninjas threaten the White House with a bomb built of a net suspended between two poles, disabled only by a gentle orb passing between the posts and coming to rest within it. Then you will have the respect you deserve. But until that day, remember, Jew-fros are awesome, so let's grow the hair again.

25% Rachel Maddow: #1 fighting lesbian and Rhodes scholar. She began as a substitute for Olbermann on MSNBC whenever the old man took a few days to harrass Bill O' Reilly in person. Then she got her own show, which, much to her mentor's delight, consistently beats Olbermann's in the ratings. She's a twenty-first century smartass with a twenty-third century education; if she gets any smarter or funnier, she'll automatically transport to the halodeck of the Enterprise, because unlike John McCain, whom she once described as "a man of words about actions," she can hold her own against anyone, blustering Sean Hannity or dodgy, big-foreheaded Klingons. She don't scare, she's a fembot.