PURPLE PROSE ALERT #3

Reuters continued its winning ways this morning with a fine news lede that speaks volumes about the mood of the nation, maybe even the decline of the West: "President Bush may have defeated Saddam Hussein, but he lost to the socialite Paris Hilton in the television ratings on Tuesday night."

That was the night the 22-year-old heiress played at working on an Arkansas farm in Fox's "The Simple Life," while our Maximum Leader retorted, "So what's the difference?" when pressed by ABC's Diane Sawyer to justify his claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction on the strength of evidence that Saddam had the intention (but not the capability) of acquiring them.

Meantime, the front page of this week's New York Observer provided excellent examples of a good lede and a lousy lede. Here's the good one:

Eight months away from the Republican National Convention, party officials already know that President George W. Bush's head will be 21 feet and six inches off the floor of Madison Square Garden.

The President's head, portrayed by a small yellow helium balloon, was greeted with great joy by television producers and technicians, who took their sitings from the skyboxes during a "media walk-through" of the convention site ...
-- Ben Smith

And here's the lousy one:

It's the Night of the Big Defeat, Election Night 1972, at McGovern campaign headquarters in the Holiday Inn in Sioux Falls, S.D., and after drinking a little too much, I decide it's necessary for me to put in a call to Alf Landon in Kansas. You might recall good old Alf, who up to then had been the Biggest Loser in Presidential history off his disastrous 1936 run against F.D.R.
-- Ron Rosenbaum