Good morning, City Desk readers, and welcome to an especially morose edition of Freedom Friday. The Bulletin in Philadelphia, the first real paper I wrote for, has closed. It was an odd place, what with the publisher’s preference for syndicating only the brightest intellectual stars of conservatism: “Chuck Norris, Oliver North and Patrick J. Buchanan.” And this after they launched a nice new website! I went looking for Dan McQuade’s opinion on this (a former Bulletin employee who hated the place so much he took a job at Philadelphia Weekly in part so that he could bash write media criticism about his old employer). Turns out he’s not blogging at PW anymore, but I did manage to track down his twitter reaction.

Obama’s Top 10 apologies, P.J. O’Rourke, some nice things about David Carradine, after the jump.

• Mark Tapscott at the Examiner has collected Obama’s “Top 10” apologies. I don’t know why these made it to the top, seeing as he has apologized quite a few times (I’m still waiting for him to say sorry for making me a shareholder of GM). My favorite one (on the list) is his apology to Turkey for even thinking about recognizing the Armenian Genocide: ““The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. … Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans.” What kind of apology is that? I mean, really? He’s sorry for threatening to recognize that Turkey may have killed as many as 1.5 million Armenians in between World Wars I and II? Diplomacy goes right over my head.
• P.J. O’Rourkeis coming to town! From Jeff Winkler’s pick this week: “The title of P.J. O’Rourke’s newest book is a mouthful: Driving Like Crazy: Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-Bending, Celebrating America the Way It’s Supposed to Be–With an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac Escalade in Every Carport, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Mowing Our Lawn. Its contents can be reduced to this: A hilarious ode to environmental enemy No. 1 from one of the country’s best living satirists….As sharp as the man can be, greenies and granola types shouldn’t shy away from O’Rourke’s tendency to reverse his Cadillac-sized thesis over one’s head again and again.” Hahaha! I’m laughing just thinking about it! Read the whole pick for relevant deets.
  
• Pop culture guru Nick Gillespie did some eulogizing yesterday of David Carradine: “Having the Caucasian scion of a great American acting family playing a dispossessed Chinaman was weird enough, but the show itself was a relentless rotoscope of mystic Orient cliches that never stinted on displaying the (historically accurate) odious racism of prior generations of Americans. Somehow those lessons emanating from the backlots of the San Fernando Valley in the late 20th century seemed way too cheaply learned (especially from a Hollywood that continued to be leery of casting actual Asians in any but supporting roles), but the show absolutely helped broaden our cultural palate in all sorts of ways.” (In case y’all missed it, Carradine was found hanged in his Bangkok hotel room, apparently a result of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Somehow that seems more fitting than dying of old age.)