Elliot Spitzer’s frío as can be, but is the local media hot on the story? Hosts Ruth Samuelson and Erik Wemple are back with Episode #3,457 of Fuego/Frío—you know the drill:

Fuego: Dana Milbank, the Dupont Current, and today’s Post story about Michelle Rhee.
Nope: The Washington Times—who knew Pennsylvania and Ohio were similar?—and Deborah Howell for her take on Charlotte Allen’s stupid piece.

Got a story you’d like to see discussed on the next Fuego/Frío? Let us know in the comments.

Weekend marked an end to a mid-winter Sunday slump for the Washington Post. Readable articles this time included:

*Definitive assessment of ravages of condo conversion trend. Sure, story’s a decade old, but still compelling.

*More immersion on the drama of the superdelegate votes for Hillary and Obama.

*The last word, hopefully, on Charlotte Allen’s idiotic piece on women and her editor’s craven pursuit of buzz.

*A solid piece by Liza Mundy on the true meaning of those marriage vows that you parroted without really thinking about.

*The Examiner’s prize bit of wire copy discusses bad water being used by the troops in Iraq.

*The Washington Times could have come up with a less duh headline than this one: “Pennsylvania demographics resemble Ohio”. Well, you don’t say.

*New York Times Mag–in the Money Issue–goes deep on the impact of celebs in advancing do-gooder causes worldwide.

As we all know, Ruth Samuelson and Erik Wemple have been taking the local media’s temperature on Fuego/Frío for two decades now. But the following episode, in this viewer’s humble opinion, is the all-time best.

Who’s hot? The Post, el Comercio, the Washington Times, and Express, who took home this week’s award for Outstanding Selection of an AP Wire Story.

And who ain’t? Ryan Lizza, Harry Jaffe, the Current and the InTowner’s headline writer.

Got a story you’d like to see discussed on next week’s Fuego/Frío? Think cupcakes are not, in fact, “so over”? Let us know in the comments.

John Solomon took over the Washington Times on Jan. 28.

But he arrived today, via a message from the paper’s copy operation.

The news, in short: No more scare quotes.

Longtime Washington Times readers know well what this is all about: Under the regime of Wesley Pruden, the Times, unwilling to acknowledge anything so radical and immoral as gay marriage, treated the term in its pages as gay “marriage.”

Likewise other terms. In the old Washington Times, there were no illegal immigrants, just “illegal aliens”; no gays, just “homosexuals.”

Now comes the following memo from the Solomon regime, wiping out this legacy in one flick of the wrist:

All:

Here are some recent updates to TWT style.

1) Clinton will be the headline word for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

2) Gay is approved for copy and preferred over homosexual, except in clinical references or references to sexual activity.

3) The quotation marks will come off gay marriage (preferred over homosexual marriage).

4) Moderate is approved, but centrist is still allowed.

5) We will use illegal immigrants, not illegal aliens.

Kudos to the Washington Times, home to strong-willed Eagles fans, for flooding the zone on the Pope’s visit to D.C. in April–for about a month now the paper’s had a dedicated blog on the subject. Today it brings word that parishioners at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in New York City, where Benedict XVI will lead a prayer service, are getting the shaft as far as actually getting to attend. Worse, only 27 tickets are being made available to St. Joseph’s parishioners to attend the pope’s mass at Yankee Stadium.

Closer to home, the blog also brings word of the crucifix that will hang behind the Pope when he delivers mass at Nationals Park on April 17. The winner, pictured above, currently resides at St. Mark the Evangelist Church in Hyattsville.

Pretty uneventful weekend on the news front. Highlights include winds and a dashing former AFC quarterback getting his second promotion of his offseason. On that latter front, let’s just take you “around the Zorn”:

*Wilbon says an important Redskins moment without fanfare, without great expectations, is a good thing.

*Wise writes that…well, actually what DOES Wise say? (Reading again to see what Wise actually says.) OK, checked again, and Wise doesn’t actually say anything. No thing linkworthy, at least.

*Smart poster on extremeskins.com says that if Zorn had been all that, they would have given him the same deal they gave to Mora–i.e., taking over the reins when Holmgren steps down.

*The Washington Times sounds like some announcer on CBS’s JV team in the broadcast booth: “But like most coaching hires, it all depends on the quarterback. And for Zorn, his stamp on the Redskins will be Campbell’s development. As it should be — that’s how he got the job. ” Real original analysis there, Moonies!

*The Examiner reports on a council bill to limit noise levels. Yeah, like the cops and the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs will go out and enforce that!

*On other D.C. news fronts, the Post on Saturday reported on the resolution of its mysterious Friday scoop about the D.C. tax-office servers that showed up in a Columbia Heights alley. In the end, nothing doing here: Servers were properly disposed of by the gov’t and had lame data on them to begin with.

*Inane Outlook piece of the week: Ya know, on Friday Slate columnist Jack Shafer wrote an awesome hit on the Newseum, saying that with all the money spent on this lavish monument to a dying profession, hey, perhaps it could be used to actually save the profession, or at least a newspaper. Well, I feel the same about all that cash that funds stupid stories glorifying the wonders of French living. Yeah, resveratrol, pedestrian living, moderation, and so on. We know, we know, we know too well.

Now here comes Pamela Druckerman pointing out that French women continue having sex late into their lives, whereas American women don’t.

Druckerman says that if she is to grow old, she wants to do it in Paris. What’s stopping you, Pam? Visa troubles?

Washington Times sportswriter John Mitchell has issued a public apology for last week’s outburst against Len Shapiro. Well, sort of.

For those not following the catfight: Mitchell, who didn’t like the non-appreciation Shapiro wrote for Sean Taylor when the Redskins star’s body was barely cold, called the Washington Post veteran a “racist, conniving skunk” and a “racist, conniving dog of a skunk” on the WOL-AM sports-talk show, The Sports Groove.

The burgeoning brouhaha got the sort of attention that writer-on-writer verbal violence typically gets in Internet media gathering spots.

And it sure looks like that attention inspired the posting Mitchell made over the weekend on his newspaper’s blog, which ranks among the least sincere and sorriest “I’m Sorry!”’s ever banged out on a keyboard.

Mitchell starts off his alleged mea culpa, written in the form of an open letter to Shapiro, sounding contrite. He writes that he “got caught up in the emotion of it all” and that the dog-calling diatribe he directed at Shapiro was “an egregious mistake.”

“Len, you didn’t deserve to be attacked like that,” Mitchell writes.

But before long Mitchell makes a U-turn, and begins arguing that, well, Shapiro probably did deserve the bash. Mitchell even adds that at least one important player on the local sports scene has his back, though this player apparently won’t put his name to this alleged backing of Mitchell.

“[O]ne Wizard who saw what I said reported on local blogs voiced his support of my position with a protracted hug and a handshake prior to the game in Philadelphia,” Mitchell wrote.

And before closing, Mitchell finishes his journey from “Forgive me!” to “Take that!” by informing Shapiro “you now appear to be dead wrong in your rush to judgment” about Taylor’s behaviors playing a role in his murder.

Meanwhile, Shapiro and Sports Groove host Mark Gray seem ready to let things pass. Shapiro was on Gray’s show live for 45 minutes on Friday night, and they told each other they weren’t totally proud of what was written in the paper or went out over the airwaves.

The only obvious sore feelings in the super-long segment came about 10 minutes in, when Gray identified Shapiro as a writer with “the Washington Times.”

“Washington Post, thank you!” Shapiro blurted, as if he found Gray’s innocent gaffe more painful than Mitchell’s blindside hits.

The Washington Times‘ Adrienne T. Washington today goes on the offensive against overreaching government. Her Metro column blasts the “grannies” in MoCo for taking up a measure that would ban restaurant foods cooked in trans fats, a la New York. That’s all fine and de rigueur for a paper like the Washington Times.

But then Washington hops on a sentimental cliche that columnists have ridden for ages: the old small-businesses-are-suffering line.

After decrying this trend of excessive regulation, Washington says that the public health and safety bans “are none too helpful to some small owners of hospitality businesses.” (Note to WaTi copy desk: It should read, “some owners of small hospitality businesses,” lest readers think you’re not addressing large-framed tavern owners.)

And then Washington’s editors fall asleep, as evidenced by the following graphs:

“Some bar owners in the District, for example, are complaining about the drop in their clientele, especially during happy hours, since the smoking ban was enacted earlier this year.”

Fine, but let’s see some receipts. This is a common post-ban refrain—Gee, we’re not getting the crowds for happy hour. Perhaps true, but hardly definitive. Bars, after all, are open all night long, long enough for a lot of clean-air-loving folks to drop in for a pop. Open up your books, owners, and let’s see the proof.

“I know a group of guys who used to spend a lot of their money in a small D.C. eatery who now often meet in a private home to enjoy their cigarettes and cigars in peace.”

My, Adrienne, how definitive is that!!! The cash thrown around by this “group of guys” promises to send the D.C. economy into a tailspin. As for me, I’ll be happy they’re not blowing poison down my windpipe.

Scare quotes: Not just for the Washington Times anymore.

In 1994, a coalition of union and religious leaders successfully campaigned for a law in Baltimore mandating that employers with city contracts pay workers what they called a living wage. A movement was born, now among the most successful over the past decade; today, 130 cities and counties have similar living-wage ordinances.

But at the Washington Post, “living wage” still needs quotes, meaning it gets the same treatment that the Times gives gay “marriage” and “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. On Sunday, in a story about 17 student protesters arrested at the University of Virginia, the Post’s Martin Weil wrote, “The protest has been described as part of a ‘living wage’ campaign.” (Only an Associated Press story is posted on washingtonpost.com; the story that ran under Weil’s byline is not listed. Both quote “living wage.”)

The Post followed up on Monday with a B1 story reporting that the UVA protests are continuing despite the arrests. The first time “living wage” appears, reporter Jamie Stockwell’s article calls it the “so-called living wage,” leaving off the quotes. There are also no quotes around “poverty-level” wages. We meet the phrase “living wage” five more times in the 834-word piece, none inside quotes.

Weil was not available, but Stockwell, when told “living wage” was in quotes in Weil’s piece, said, “Oh, God.” Her “so-called,” she said, was inserted by a copy editor. “That was not my writing,” she said. “It is a real campaign. It’s a national campaign to call to attention the fact that people are being paid wages that are unlivable. It’s not like [the UVA protesters] made it up.”

On Page 1 of today’s Times, “amnesty” once again gets quoted up, after a couple of instances last week where the copy desk let the word get away quote-free. But only in the headline: “amnesty” gets to relax in the body text, plus in a cutline and a graphics box.

Meanwhile, in Metropolitan, behold the latest Times scare-quote fodder: D.C. “statehood.”

The hed on Amy Doolittle’s story today about congressional opposition to the District’s statehood-education spending gets the treatment; her story yesterday on A1 disclosing the spending left “statehood” alone. A Nexis search of articles from the past year turns up no previous instances of “ ‘statehood.’” Or, for that matter, “D.C. ‘voting rights.’”

In a story about the Massachusetts supreme court’s decision to ban out-of-state gay couples from marrying, the Times quotes up “gay ‘marriage’” no fewer than six times before the jump.

Meanwhile, across the page, Times editors have apparently decided since Tuesday that “amnesty” is concept unworthy of punctuational skepticism. No quotes.

Today’s Washington Times splashes its A1 with a classic example of Times scare-quotery. In this instance, the “Coast-to-coast ‘movement’ ” isn’t really a movement, because that’s just what the hundreds of thousands of marchers his weekend in L.A. said it was. Not what America’s Newspaper said it was.

And proposals to grant some illegal immigrants citizenship shouldn’t really be called “amnesty” because—well, I mean, it is an amnesty and all, but—let’s just say some people just don’t think it’s a good idea.

But the Times’ skepticism doesn’t make it past A1. Follow the jump to “ILLEGALS, page A14,” and you’ll find the following quote:

Rep. Tom Tancredo, the Colorado Republican who has led the fight against illegal immigration, said the committee’s proposal “provides nearly universal amnesty” for the more than 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S….“No plan with amnesty and a massive increase in foreign workers will pass the House. Amnesty and foreign workers are fundamentally incompatible with the House’s approach….”

Clearly that quote should have been rendered as such:

Rep. Tom Tancredo, the Colorado Republican who has led the fight against illegal immigration, said the committee’s proposal “provides nearly universal ‘amnesty’ ” for the more than 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S….“No plan with ‘amnesty’ and a massive increase in foreign workers will pass the House. ‘Amnesty’ and foreign workers are fundamentally incompatible with the House’s approach….”

Meanwhile, in an A4 story titled “Bush Asks Congress to Boost Green Cards,” the subhed again lets “amnesty” get off unquoted: “Tells news citizens he opposes amnesty,” it reads. The rest of the article mentions amnesty twice more—no quotes.

Wes, Fran—come on, guys! Tell the copy desk to get with the program!