Long Blonde Anchorperson: This is an MSNBC Extremely Urgent Special Deluxe Alert. Here is Senior Sensationalism Correspondent Rita Cosby with her very serious and earnest report on something which isn’t all that earth-shattering, but Rita lusts for airtime. Here’s Rita.

Rita Cosby: Thank you. I’m here in Boulder, Colorado, with a late-breaking exclusive that Greta and Paula would die for. Earlier today, it was reported that John Karr, the suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder, ate a Red Delicious apple yesterday and, according to sources close to the investigation, admitted that he really likes apples.

MSNBC has now confirmed that on December 26, 1996, the day of JonBenet’ Ramsey’s murder, the grocery store nearest to the Ramsey home, a Safeway, ran a special on apples. Specifically–and this is where the story gets very interesting–the apples on sale were Red and Golden Delicious apples. Newspaper archives from that day show that, indeed, a prominent ad announced this special sale. This seems too bizarre to be mere coincidence.

This information could potentially give John Karr a motive for being in that particular neighborhood on that particular day. No doubt prosecutors will be deposing store cashiers from 10 years ago.

MSNBC will continue covering this and other Extremely Important Breaking News as it breaks, until Hurricane Ernesto strikes the southern US, and I need to go stand in the wind and show my journalistic bravado by exclaiming about the gustiness.

This is Rita Cosby in Boulder, doing what passes for “reporting” nowadays.

Hizbollah is scared. The top leaders are scurrying around in a panic, holding meetings to determine if there is any–any–way to successfully face this new threat soon to descend on southern Lebanon.

The French are coming.

The very thought strikes fear, terror, and fashion-consciousness in the minds of warriors everywhere. In its typical shock-and-awe, overwhelming-force manner, France is sending 200 soldiers to southern Lebanon as part of the battle-hardened United Nations contingent. Some of these French soldiers are even trained in the more exotic arts of war, such as loading and, under extreme conditions so long as nobody might get hurt, firing a weapon. And they all carry, in an easily accessible pouch next to their hair gel, the vaunted French Army Knife (right).

Hisbollah’s fighters are quaking in their, uh, whatever they wear. They know that if they fire rockets into Israel or commit other warlike actions, the vigilant French will…watch. With disapproval, mind you. Vigilant disapproval, which they skillfully communicate nonverbally. If such activities continue, the French will escalate to whining. Better wine is now produced in California, but the French remain masters of The Whine.

And if that doesn’t quell Hisbollah’s hostility toward Israel, the French will do what has always, for them, been a matter of very early resort. They will surrender. This is what Hisbollah fears most. Because when the French surrender, it can mean only one thing.

The Americans are coming.

The Americans will first assert their air superiority over Hisbollah by bombing absolutely everything in sight, including Chinese embassies. Then Congress will appropriate billions of dollars to rebuild what they bombed, financing it all by further cutting taxes to the rich, which makes perfect sense to the Bush Administration. The Americans will then arrive en masse and stay for, oh, 15-20 years. And….

Well, actually, that might be kind of fun for Hisbollah.