Sure, they didn't have Princess Leia begging Obi-Wan Kenobi for help like CNN, but they did have Mike Barnicle. Elias winces:

The abiding drawback to working the polls on election day is watching Mike Barnicle run his meat hole by the hour on MSNBC.

After a mere sixty minutes he runs out of sensible things to say and is reduced to decrying the "the 24-7 cable news culture", y'know the one that otherwise keeps the wolf far from Mike's door. ...

Brian writes:

Over the next few months, it might be fun to keep a tally of how many times Civic Disgrace Mike Barnicle talks up his friendship with the late Tim Russert. ...

The Columnist Who Will Not Die shows up on Huffington Post with a column that, as Dan Kennedy shows, probably took him five minutes to write, given that it's the same exact column he's been writing since the 1980s.

Back when he was a metro columnist, Brian McGrory would always write about Opening Day. Yesterday, his replacement in the Globe's White Guy slot, Kevin Cullen, expressed his disgust at being mistaken for a Yankee fan and a geezer (bonus points for slipping in a reference to a 1979 British labor dispute). Today, the grande dame of Boyo Columnists, Mike Barnicle Himself, weighs in (granted, at the Herald), with a Column for the Ages that complains how future generations will look back and wonder why developers ruined Fenway by building condos around it, instead of leaving it surrounded by Howard Johnsons and Burger Kings, those bastihds.

WBUR should either finally hire him so people can start donating to WGBH instead or they should announce they're not hiring him so people can stop getting heartburn.

Speaking of 'GBH, Emily Rooney kvetches about the lack of substance on local newscasts these days and fantasizes about marching into some local newsroom and shaking things up. Apparently, Rooney doesn't remember the days when WGBH had its own local newscast. Instead of complaining how vapid the commercial newscasts are, why not restart it? Isn't public television supposed to provide intelligent alternatives to commercial TV? Or has it all come down to Peter, Paul and Mary concerts during Pledge Week?

UPDATE: Looks like the site was taken down. Oh, well. It was full of Mike Barnicle's greatest hits.

If it had a Web site, it would look like this.

I'd forgotten the Mandingo quote.

Via Amy Derjue.

WBUR general manager to Barnicle haters: It's been 10 years, people, give it a rest. But while he tells Dan Kennedy he thinks Boston needs Barnicle, he doesn't say whether he's offering Barnicle a job on 'BUR.

Adam Reilly, back to blogging, reports on the interesting/depressing possibility that Mike Barnicle might wind up on WBUR, now run by Paul LaCamera, who worked with Barnicle at Channel 5 and who thinks Barnicle got a bum deal just because he plagiarized George Karlin 'n' stuff.

See if you can top this (no, of course I don't like him).

Jessica Heslam reports Barnicle doesn't want to permanently replace Don Imus on WTKK.