Speaking of clairvoyant Salon columnists: Eric Boehlert is the guy who wrote that series last year that was dead-on accurate in predicting the fate of the XFL. He has a piece up now about the Letterman-Nightline scuffle that is pretty hard on Dave but probably not far removed from what most in the industry are saying today. (Well, it's nicer than what Howard Stern said this morning…) Basically, he endorses the assumption that everyone's making; that Letterman's side leaked the story that ABC wanted him and suggests a bit of hypocrisy in the assertion that ol' Dave would do nothing to hurt the esteemed Mr. Koppel.
(By the way: If someone thought that all this publicity would catapult Letterman out of third place, they were wrong. Last night, Leno had a 4.5, Nightline had a 4.2 and Letterman had a 3.9. One suspects that reporters — eager to prove that news should not be bumped by entertainment programming — will now be more inclined to report stuff like that. Dave may have a terrific new contract but he's also got a lot more folks rooting for him to fail than he did before.)
By the way, I erred in the item I posted here earlier. A year's subscription to Salon is thirty bucks, not twenty, but it's still worth it, especially for thoughtful, original pieces like this. If you've already subscribed, here's a direct link to the piece.