Can the daughter of a wealthy and well-connected Washington gasbag and Vietnam War apologist who looks like a shikse goddess and was educated at Madeira and Williams find personal and professional happiness?

Don't ask us; we didn't read the damn thing. If the answer to that question resonates with you, by all means fork over the $14.97 to read the heart-rending tale of Mika Brzezinski's rise from a modest O Street townhouse to the co-host of the fourth most watched morning basic cable news show.

OK, we're willing to admit being rich, well-connected, smart, and beautiful isn't necessarily a recipe for surefire happiness. (Sometimes, the determinate negation generates more jollies – just ask Kim Kardashian). And we'll admit that raising a couple of rugrats whilst climbing the cable news greasy pole and holding on to a rich husband might be a trifle wearying at times.  And it's never fun to lose your job: just ask Mika or the 11,000,000 stiffs chucked onto the street since the beginning of the Bush Recession.

So we listen sympathetically when a fellow party guest complains about her juggling act, especially if she looks at all like Mika. And we appreciate the struggles of the 50 million or so other women in Mika's position, minus the wealth, family connections, education, and looks. We just aren't going to take the few remaining tattered bills from our pocket to read about it.

Although we missed Elizabeth Gilbert's unreadable first volume of her memoirs (Eat, Pray, Love), we can't pass up the chance to pass up Volume II, in which a middle-aged woman, having wandered around the world exploring inedible food and idiotic self-aggrandizing fake mysticism, finally gets what she really wanted: a husband.

Good for Liz. Now we don't like to mictorate all over someone's wedding, but the story of a woman who after many hideous wrong turns finally ropes some guy into matrimony (apparently by dangling a green card in front of his, um, eyes) isn't a particularly remarkable story. It's the oldest one in the book but, thanks to the tastes of reading public, it's also the oldest story turned into a book.

We gather that even the beaming bride finds her own story thin gruel, because she's padded out the tome with her own analysis of marriage customs around the world. Only after this analysis, and the exhaustion of her advance, does she finally take the plunge, as we used to say at the mikveh.

Now we've given away the ending. Or not: how much would you be wiling to bet this marriage will end up in another divorce, and the divorce in yet another book?  Best of all, from Ms. Gilbert's perspective, she can repeat this process indefinitely or at least until every tree in the forest has been pulped.

A half century ago, the quadrennial "inside story" of the Presidential election as told by a then-prominent dispenser of conventional wisdom was a surefire best seller and widely viewed as a source of invaluable information on vital subjects like what Ted Sorensen had for breakfast on the morning of the West Virginia primary.

Now we know its sole purpose is provide fodder to cable "news" ruminants and crudely partisan talking points for whomever is adroit enough to peddle them, at least until some real news, like the deaths of thousands in Haiti, supervenes. This year's version represents the "effort" of two notoriously vapid and credulous stenographers to transform the self-serving leaks of disgruntled campaign hacks into fanciful "you are there" reconstructions. (For more on the egregious Halperin, click here.)

As ever, these two clowns miss the point. Hillary Clinton did not lose the nomination because of what Bill said to Teddy; she lost it because the Democratic base wouldn't accept her craven vote to give Cheney and Bush a blank check to lay waste to Iraq. McCain lost not because his advisers were incompetent, but because his preposterous selection of a lazy, unqualified Schlox News Commentator as Vice President proved to the country that the high-strung trophy husband had the judgment and stability of a WWE villain.

Those stories remain to be written. As long as establishment Washington hacks get the big advances to produce this kind of dreck, don't expect to see the real story of the '08 election in hard covers anytime soon.