Ozymandias of the West Wing

I was a bit surprised by the traffic my last Grand Rounds post generated, until I looked at my Sitemeter and found that a significant percentage of the new traffic had nothing to do with my apolitical post about stem cells research.  With great effort, I went through that post and removed all the political commentary.  I figured it might be more effective if I presented just the facts.  Anyway, part of the traffic came, not from that, but from the O'Neill NSC memo, which has gotten some renewed interest in the wake of the Downing Street memo.  

In this post, I try to explain why the media make a big deal out of some things, and not others.  The explanation involves Pet Rocks and the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley.  Continue reading here.