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You may have heard about the conservative "journalist" and talk show host who admitted taking $250,000 from the Bushies to push their "No Child Left Behind" program. If not, here's the story:

The New York Times > National > TV Host Says U.S. Paid Him to Back Policy

Among the vocally outraged are conservative "journalists" so the whole thing is pretty funny. Mr. Armstrong is a "journalist" and a PR executive of a small and not terribly successful firm, and the two jobs involve pretty much the same kind of work: talking and writing on behalf of Bushies and evangelicals, for pay or pray. And since the "No Child Left Behind" act is itself a PR campaign, an act in every sense, with lots of money for PR (The Ed Dept pays one big PR firm a cool million a year) but not very much for children or education, it must have seemed like a logical move at the Bushie end, too.

The outrage is just as empty when it comes from the big timers who in one way or another (and usually several) are taking care of their business in ways that would scandalize ethical journalists of a generation ago. The Berlin Wall was not the only wall to fall in recent decades: the Wall that stood between editorial and advertising in print publications and almost made it over to TV, is now so porous that it's like the equator, you know, an imaginary line.