Jackpot

According to her most recent column, Nick Coleman's wife Laura Billings has been doing some vanity Googling. And guess what she discovered:

Through e-mails from readers and Internet searches of my own name, I've found some fascinating details about myself. Among them, that I am a failed conservative talk-radio host; a lesbian in a committed domestic partnership; a Dartmouth graduate; the adoptive mother of two children from Colombia; the wife of Joe Soucheray; a member of the Green Party, the Socialist Democratic Party and the Communist Party; a fanatical collector of Beanie Babies; an expert on reintroducing aquarium-raised orcas into the wild; and the sole heir to my husband's family's vast fortune of inherited and ill-gotten wealth, similar to that of the Kennedys.

I think that last blurb can only mean one thing. Laura Billings has caught on to the hottest soap opera in town (at least since Plain Layne was exposed as a Ozzie Nelson), the Newspaper Newlyweds! We welcome Laura to the readership and encourage her to help us flesh out any details we may miss in the future on their continuing romance between the broadsheets.

In today's column, Laura does provide her first piece of feedback for us, in the form of a blanket denial:

None of that is true. But the Internet version of me sounds so very interesting that the real-life me is a bit of a letdown.

I find that last part hard to believe. I suspect she's a bit of a firecracker. How else would she be able to attract and seduce a wealthy, older, powerful man like Nick Coleman? Newspaper Newlweds co-author Man from Silver Mountain (MFSM) also had this observation:

The interesting part is in what she didn't deny: that Nick is her husband, that he has had performance problems, that they have no control over their spending habits, and they fight like cats and dogs. Sometimes what someone doesn't say can tell you a lot.

Very true. It's just that kind of insight into human nature that makes him such a good observer and analyst of Nick and Laura's behavior. More evidence that he's got their number is found in this Billings gratuitous slur, clearly directed at our friend MFSM

...especially those lonely guys who write withering and anonymous social commentary in their underpants.

According to reports, MFSM does write exclusively in his skivvies, but so what? I think anyone who has the option to do that and chooses not to is the real weirdo. If Laura would start knocking out prose in her frilly underthings maybe Nick Coleman wouldn't be so cranky all the time. And maybe she'd be inspired to actually write something a little bolder than random thoughts that occur to her while making dinner. But until that day we're left with things like this:

The Internet may be the most amazing tool for fact-finding and enlightenment ever devised but, just as often, it is a great big garbage can of deception and delusion.

Sometimes you have to take off the Google goggles to see the world as it really is.

Yes, I'm sure this morning heads all over Crocus Hill and Mac Groveland are wryly grinning and thoughtfully nodding at that one (Honey, Laura Billings has done it again!) Might I remind you that Laura Billings is getting PAID for this level of commentary. Any wonder why the Pioneer Press circulation is at historically low levels?

Vox Day has more on the only way the Pioneer Press can possibly hope to survive long term in this market. In summary, the mass extension of the Brian Lambert "reassignment" plan.