Odds and more odds (and a few ends, too)

Just about everything you need to know about TV today, in a post that took more time to track down the art than to write!

The CW issued this statement this afternoon:

"The CW and our studio partner CBS Paramount Network Television have made the strategic marketing decision not to screen '90210' for any media in advance of its premiere. We're not hiding anything . . . simply keeping a lid on '90210' until 9.02, riding the curiosity and anticipation into premiere night, and letting all our constituents see it at the same time."

(Translation: They're hiding something.)

(The New York Times is sweet on Jon Stewart.)

The New York Times distills all of its many stories about "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" into one big mash note, because its book critic apparently has a crush on Jon. It seems to think that "the emergence of 'The Daily Show' as a genuine cultural and political force" is something they just thought up, even though people have been saying that sort of thing for years now.

(The very model of jurisprudence.)

Since there aren't nearly enough "Judge" shows out there, they're developing one for wrasslin' governor Jesse Ventura.

("You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.")

John McCain's campaign manager is accusing NBC of "abandoning non-partisan coverage of the Presidential race." When he makes that charge against Fox News, we'll sit up and take notice.

(Yingsel the Tibetan antelope and Olympic mascot is adorably running in terror from her Chinese oppressors.)

USA Today thinks NBC is providing too much of a happy-face portrait of China, grumbling that the network is ignoring "the sterile atmosphere on the Olympic Green in the first week caused by the Chinese government's aggressive security measures. That's something a viewer would have known only by omission. Gone were the Sydney pans of happy crowds, replaced by tight shots designed to hide their absence."

By the way, viewership of NBC's first night of post-Michael Phelps coverage was down, but just a little bit: An average of 26.4 million tuned in, as opposed to the 30+ million that were watching while the swimmer was on his historic tear. 38.8 million watched him splash into the history books Saturday night when he won his eighth gold medal of the games, the highest ratings NBC has received on a Saturday night since an episode of "Empty Nest" on Feb. 24, 1990, back when Phelps was 4 years old.

(Is joining the cast of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" taking the red pill or the blue pill?)

It's official: Lawrence Fishburne is joining the cast of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" in the upcoming season's ninth episode, just before William Petersen lights out for the territory or whatever it is he's gonna do. He plays a pathologist who battles his own violent impulses, which he probably had to do when he read this line in the Variety story: "It's a homecoming of sorts for Fishburne, who played Cowboy Curtis on the Eye's classic Saturday morning series 'Pee-Wee's Playhouse' in the mid-1980s."