A friend woke me up at 8:30 a.m. this morning to tip me off that former New York Times editor Howell Raines was appearing on NBC's "Today Show" to talk about his new memoir, The One That Got Away.

You can read a short excerpt on the MSNBC Web site here.

The pitch?

"Newsman’s memoir proves to be quite a catch. In his second autobiography, Howell Raines reflects on fishing, marriage, fatherhood and his career at The New York Times ... Raines writes about what it was like to be fired from the New York Times after a distinguished career was brought to an end by the fabricated articles of a young reporter named Jayson Blair. But the book is about much more than just the famed newspaper, it's a love story between a man and a fish."

As we told another friend of ours and Raines' via e-mail this morning, he looked more relaxed and likeable than we've seen him before on TV. We noticed he did not tell any Bear Bryant stories, which is most likely a good thing.

But the way he kissed up to the Manhatten crowd just goes to show you there's no such thing as telling a story "without fear or favor" anymore - if there ever really was such a thing.

The world is now totally a kiss ass place - with the possible exception of Locust Fork-blogland, where we take no prisoners.

We also heard recently from a Raines cohort who wishes to remain anonymous and does not visit blogland. In his down home humble way, he said, "At least they let us work there for a little while."

I am not so sympathetic. As far as I'm concerned, the way things went down . . . a dirty bomb would not be such a bad thing. It would clear out a bunch of assholes from the planet who think they rule the world and can blow people off just by not returning their phone calls.

There is an incontrovertible law in nature that dictates: "What goes around comes around."

In other words, there is a price that will be paid by people who treat the world like it is THEIR garden and everybody else is banned from eating the fruit. They will get ahold of some bad fruit one of these days - and we'll be laughing.