Slow News Day

How can you tell that it's a slow news day?  Well, sometimes by looking at the calendar and seeing that it's a national holiday.  They're notorious for not much happening, and Memorial Day fits the bill perfectly.  However, sometimes an important -- or even just a semi-important -- story can creep its way in through the cracks.

But if you're the editor of, say, the Huffington Post, the way you know that nothing (and I mean, absolutely freaking nothing) happened is when you have no choice at all but to make your banner headline story on the Politics front page --

Seriously.  This was the Politics front page of the Huffington Post today.

Now, even on most moderate news days Rush Limbaugh criticizing President Obama would not make a banner headline.  It wouldn't even likely make a news story, period.  It's his job description, after all.  For goodness sake, the fellow is a self-proclaimed "entertainer."  He pretty much literally gets paid to lambaste Barack Obama.  If you printed as news whenever Rush Limbaugh slammed President Obama, your news site would look almost identical to RushLimbaugh.com. 

So, for Rush Limbaugh attacking President Obama to not only make it as a "news story", but the banner headline can only happen if -- a) it's a holiday and the main editor is off, and an intern is in charge, b) you're a political "news" website so far to the right that the Drudge Report looks moderate, c) you're on an imminent deadline, accidentally hit the <Enter> key when you meant to hit <Delete> and never bothered to check your own site to correct the mistake, or d) absolutely nothing else happened that day.

Seriously, folks, the only way in the world that a story about Rush Limbaugh and Barack Obama could be actual news is if one day the bombastic entertainer actually said something positive about the president.  Anything positive.  "Rush Limbaugh Likes Obama's Shoes."  That would be a banner headline.

That's how slow a news day it was.