Good morning, City Desk readers, and welcome to another Freedom Friday!

Theory: Mainstream political reporters are to Sen. Ted Kennedy what Sports Illustrated’s Peter King is to Brett Favre. Kennedy wasn’t just any old senator—he was a monolith, a model, a(n) [insert ejaculatory praise here]; Favre, despite his retirement shenanigans, isn’t just any old quarterback—he’s the Lion of the NFL.

I think WaPo’s Paul Kane would agree with me here, as he couldn’t even bring himself to touch the senator when the man clearly needed a helping hand:

…I realize that the back flap on Kennedy’s jacket is up. Hunched over from a debilitating back injury he suffered in a mid-1960s plane crash, Kennedy wasn’t able to reach his arms around his neck to pat down the jacket. So he sat there in the elevator flapping away on his jacket, not able to get the damn thing down.Should I help, I thought. Am I allowed to touch a Kennedy? I grew up in a household with busts of both Jack and Bobby. I can’t touch a Kennedy. They’re royalty.

So I let Kennedy walk out of the elevator looking silly, too afraid to help him.

I could go on: Favre hasn’t won a Super Bowl in 12 years; Kennedy, uh, helped pass No Child Left Behind. To Kane: The Kennedys weren’t—still ain’t—royalty. They were professional proles. To King: Favre? One helluva QB, but there will be others. And unlike King/Favre, no one in the mainstream media had the good sense to push for Kennedy’s retirement when he had a seizure in May. The man’s ability to rally support for a lefty agenda (which most MSM reporters happen to support) was (and still seems to be) more important than his health; not to mention the mental health of all those 16-year-old pages atop which he offered to beach himself. (Oh wait—It’s not abuse of power when a Kennedy acts like…Don Draper!)

Almost forgot: RIP Sen. Ted Kennedy. Make sure and ask St. Peter if he’s heard any good jokes lately.

NEXT UP: Crazy is as crazy does, and P.J. O’Rourke—despite claims to the contrary made in the Weekly Standard—ain’t crazy:

Why is the paper intimidated by dissent that’s tame even by Adlai Stevenson standards? Not that the Post has ever been exactly a “profile in courage.” (A little joke there about the propensity to endorse anything with a Kennedy stuck to it.) No doubt it’s always alarming to the know-it-alls when ordinary people decide they’d like some say in ordinary life, when regular folk tell the know-it-alls to take their fishwrap and go blog themselves. And the Post has been extra jumpy since it got caught trying to pimp Washington’s power elite to K Street lobbyists at a pay-to-play bun fight in the publisher’s manse. Personally I thought this was great—the first time the newspaper had shown any respect for the free market system since Eleanor Roosevelt was a pup. But terror, like the Post, is not a thing of reason. Dread lurks in wise and prestigious institutions across the land. Rick Perlstein has a phrase that gives poignant expression to this fear and trembling: “America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendency.”Oh, it’s a crazy tree. And the taller it grows, the crazier it gets. And I roost upon the tip-top branch. Ye of the Washington Post, Don’t park your SmartCar under my perch.

Rhetorical flatulence aside, O’Rourke may be the first sane conservative to identify himself with the bozos who frequent health care townhall meetings as a way of Bronx-cheering his leftist counterparts. Sad thing is, O’Rourke’s too smart for lowbrow affectations. Like, literally.

Jesus. If this is how “I am Spartacus” sounds in the age of Limbaugh, Kirk Douglas is probably blanching into his diaper.

Have a good weekend, y’all!