Where have you gone, Bill Safire?

John Tierney has done the impossible: He's made the left of center blogosphere yearn for William Safire's return to the pages of the Times.

If a man-bites-dog story is news and dog-bites-man isn't, why are journalists still so interested in man-blows-up-self stories?

See Tierney doesn't like reading about the daily body count in Iraq; it keeps us from learning more about the happy stories such as...well, Tierney never mentions one.

Tbogg doesn't take this well.

And, dammit, he's absolutely correct. If a few recently liberated Iraqis standing in front of a fucking police station looking for jobs get cuisinarted into Muslim tartar, why should a hardworking corresponent have to report on that when there might be a Iraqi runaway bride out there just begging for 24/7 coverage? I mean, Wolf Blitzer didn't get where he is today by filing police procedurals, did he? (Actually, that's a good question. How the hell did Wolf Blitzer get where he is today?)

Tierney, a columnist known for not letting a fact get in the way of a good angle, does offer a prescription for reporters:

I suspect the public would welcome a respite from gore, like the one that New Yorkers got when Rudolph Giuliani became mayor. He realized that even though crime was declining in the city, people's fears were being stoked by the relentless tabloid and television coverage of the day's most grisly crime. No matter how much the felony rate dropped, in a city of seven million there would always be at least one crime scene for a live shot at the top of the 11 o'clock news.

Mr. Giuliani told the police to stop giving out details of daily crime in time for reporters' deadlines, a policy that prompted outrage from the press but not many complaints from the public. With the lessening of the daily media barrage, New Yorkers began to be less scared and more realistic about the risks on their streets.

Geez, I thought that happened when the New York City police stopped making up terrifying stories of youths gone "wild."

In any case, this is neither a man-bites-dog nor a dog-bites-man story. It's a reporter-bites-own-ass story.