PAGE SIXTH CIRCLE OF HELL. Boy, this gossip columnist really lets Katie Couric have it:

Andrew Lack, former president of NBC, described Katie, during the good times, as a "fist in the velvet glove," while for years her staff has called her "Katie Dearest." Bryant Gumbel... once complained, "I've had one assistant for 18 years. Somebody who shall remain nameless went through five in five years..."

...the stress of crashing ratings has obviously made her inner Cruella de Vil — always there under the surface — emerge full-time...

Each morning she is now expertly and heavily made up — not exactly the look most harried working moms can emulate. And while doing interviews, her bare legs in stiletto mules are perpetually center stage, getting more attention from the camera than the guest she is supposed to be interviewing...

Mee-yow! But wait'll you hear this, girls:

But what I think has contributed to Katie's major loss of appeal is that millions of women have finally caught onto the liberal bias in much of her reporting.

Wha? Huh wha? Wha huh wha?

(chuckling amiably) Aw, alright, she isn't a gossip columnist, she's -- well, I'm not sure what she is but she writes for NRO so she must be something. You caught on right away, didn't you? What a disagreeable old man I have become.

Part of what makes me that way is this vision of an alternate universe where not just headline news, and the arts, and sports, but even tabloid celebrity burble must be about politics.

PS: I really just went to American Scene to grab the link, but can anyone explain this gibberish? "Levantine beauties," "men without chests," the notion that "increased levels of disposable income" make women in their mid-20s more attractive than women in their early 20s -- maybe "Reihan" doesn't exist at all except as a code name for Douthat's id.

UPDATE. Baseball Crank cries foul in comments, and he's right. (Following the Mets gets you a fair hearing at alicublog!) BC does not conflate baseball and politics. You have to go back to vintage Noonan for that kind of thing. Or Robert Ziegler. Or -- but I'm digging here. I can see that the politicization of sports is running behind the politicization of everything else -- but give it time.