"John From Cincinnati" is becoming of perverse interest to me. It is just so awful. I forced myself to watch the fourth episode this week, after seeing the first three for review, and I was as irked by it as ever. It gave me a headache. Seriously, this show may be the most bombastic, nonsensical drama I've ever seen on TV.

The characters aren’t characters so much as instruments for David Milch to make some tired points about commercialism and selfhood. None of the actors comes off well, as they all natter on about nothing and project the self-importance that Milch has shoveled onto them. Poor Rebecca De Mornay is now forced to be all angry and rageful against the heavens, about what it's not clear. And Ed O’Neill seems particularly ridiculous as Bill the bird owner, who delivers Milch’s words as if they were Shakespeare. "John" is as awful as "Deadwood" was great.

Scooter Libby doesn't have to worry about jail anymore, but "Survivor" winner Richard Hatch is still there. I still hear from him via e-mail from time to time since interviewing him last year, and wasn't at all surprised to get one from him this morning, with the subject line "Wow:"

"What a country! Excessive sentence! Where's my pardon/commutation?

If Bush believes the judge in Scooter Libby's case sentenced Libby too harshly, perhaps Bush should closely examine what bigoted and otherwise biased judges are doing every day all over the country. Our system, with its judges (simple, flawed human beings) appointed for life and virtually without oversight, is destroying lives. I suggest we begin in Rhode Island with Ernest Torres."

Torres is the judge who presided over Hatch's 2006 tax evasion trial, and sentenced him to 51 months in prison for tax evasion. Hatch is serving them out now at a minimum-security facility in Morgantown, West Virginia, and awaiting the results of his appeal to the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. He spends a a lot of his time writing, about both his case and his increasingly bitter feelings about the U.S. legal system and the Bush administration; the tentative title, he told me, is "Naked for a Reason: Exposing Americans' Ignorance and Apathy." (In the e-mail, he punctuated the title with an emoticon: ":-)." Even when he's angry, Hatch is always good-natured.)

He also recently sent out a long e-mail treatise titled "Burn, Hatch, Burn," in which he compares himself to a Salem witch. It's a recap of the arguments he's offered to anyone who's asked about his post-"Survivor" legal woes: that the judicial system has treated him unfairly ever since his "Survivor" exposure began; that his tax liability was complex, partly because of a promise made by producers caught cheating on the Borneo beach; that he always intended to pay taxes on his $1 million winnings," but was waiting for the IRS to name the price. Hatch has a lot to say; the question is who will listen.

"So far, nobody has expressed much interest in most of what has occurred or is true in my case," he writes. "I am absolutely innocent and I find such apathy personally sad but nonetheless fascinating."

Yes, the car is charred, and the fire is out. But I've got the news channels on mute today, and boy, if you didn't know better, you'd think that airport in Glasgow was burning to the ground RIGHT NOW. Gotta love stock footage. Then again, at least they aren't talking about Paris Hilton anymore.

Another pet peeve: on the Fox News Channel today, I spied a report about a young person killed. Much of the story didn't register at the time, because it was on mute, but I did see the headline: "Convicted killer charged in strangling death of intern." This, I suppose, is the Chandra Levy legacy: if you are an intern at the time of your death, that's what you'll be remembered for.

I'll leave you with a couple of news channel programming listings. Tonight at 9 on CNN, Larry King interviews Isaiah Washington, who has been tireless on the publicity circuit since getting fired from "Grey's Anatomy." Note to Isaiah: I'm not entirely sure this will help your career. Also, Fox News announces an "O'Reilly Factor" marathon on July 4. No Paris or Isaiah here. It's all about Bill, plus the likes of John Ratzenberger.

Yesterday's Concert for Diana may have been a rockin' day 'o music, but you'd never have known that if you watched the condensed version of it last night on NBC. The hour culled from the concert was really poorly put together, I thought. It was a model of how NOT to present live music on TV. The hour was whatever the opposite of intimate is -- distant, cold, strange.

The camerawork made Wembley Stadium feel hollow and only emphasized the fact that the show was not sold out. The cameras kept cutting away from the stage to sweep across the audience, which looked sort of underwhelmed. The seats seemed oddly far apart from one another, which was particularly clear when the camera panned the princes, who seemed stiff even when they were swaying to songs. And then the stage came off as far too big, as if none of the performers could really fill it with their presence or their music. Elton John, Rod Stewart, Nelly Furtado, and Joss Stone and Tom Jones together -- none of them quite registered.

Grumble, grumble.

P.S. The worst sin? Denying us a clip of Tom Jones singing a cover of the Arctic Monkeys' "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor."