ABSTRACT: Today, we celebrate the arrival of Tony Snow as White House press secretary, ponder the president’s desperation, call out the broadcast media for lame-osity and laugh at the Next Big Scheme of local officials. Enjoy!

• Oh, happy day! They did it! The White House heard our pleas and has named Fox News commentator Tony Snow the new White House press secretary!

Even better, they gave him the job while telling him they’d invite him to participate in the debates that shape the policy at the White House. (You didn’t think they even had those debates, did you? Well, they do, and Snow is going to be at the center of it all. Woo-hoo!)

Oh, this is going to be so fun. How long do you think it will be until the first “snow job” joke is made? Hey, we just did it! We’re the first! Hey, we’ve got another one: The administration just eliminated the middleman: Instead of waiting for media mogul Rupert Murdoch to pay Snow to defend the Bush agenda, they’re going to go ahead and pay him directly. Much more efficient that way.

Snow, of course, is smarter than his predecessor, Scott McClellan, which should not be read as a compliment. And if they really do make him an insider, he’ll be much more useful to the press and the public. (Even Snow said in a recent piece that President George W. Bush thinks answering questions from reporters is beneath him.) He’s got on-air experience that will serve him well now that the press briefings are televised.

We cannot wait until this starts. We think Snow should start by trying to partially privatize Social Security again. Yeah, that’s it. And maybe suggest there really are WMDs still hidden in Iraq, too. We should start digging in any place where an improvised explosive device hasn’t yet made a massive crater! That’s a good one.

• And Snow comes on board none too soon, either. How bad is it? The president is getting desperate. No, we’re not talking about accepting a luncheon fund-raiser invitation from fourth-tier back bencher U.S. Rep. Jon Porter. We’re talking oil, baby!

The Republicans are so frightened that rising gas prices will come back to haunt them at the polls that Bush has actually called for repealing oil-industry tax breaks.

You read that right: Bush, who signed $2 billion in tax breaks for new oil exploration into law, now wants Congress to take it back.

On the Armageddon scale, with “1″ being a totally boring and uneventful day and “10″ being “oh, look, it’s Jesus, returning with glory to judge both the living and the dead!”, this is damn near an 8.5.

“Cash flows are up,” Bush explained. “Taxpayers don’t need to be paying for certain of these expenses on behalf of the energy companies.”

Let’s be honest about something, Mr. President: Taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for any of those expenses on behalf of energy companies. Remember that thing called free-market capitalism that you claim to embrace? Under that system, companies would spend their own money looking for oil, and if they went bust (like you did in the oil biz) then those are the breaks.

• Why, oh, why, are our colleagues in the broadcast media sometimes so lame?

We offer as Exhibit A the remark of National Association of Broadcasters President and CEO David Rehr, who suggested that the FCC may want to do a little cracking down.

“On the radio side, the FCC needs to pay more attention to the obscenity and vulgarity that has found a home on satellite radio,” Rehr said.

Oh, do they?

Instead of arguing for the government to stop going after him and start going after his competitors, Rehr should be arguing for an end to the FCC cracking down on anybody. Satellite radio, like cable TV, is home to creative people who decided they didn’t want to work in an environment where a tight-assed appointee of President Bush gets to decide if they can say a bad word in a TV show or on a radio program.

And now the head broadcaster in the land is inviting the FCC to ruin those new mediums, too? Shame on him.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Journalism, dramatic programming or any other creative endeavor cannot be done properly in an environment ruled by fear, or even an environment where writers wonder if they can get something on the airThe Mother-May-I approach that most broadcasters want — asking the FCC to decide for them “where the lines are drawn” on obscenity, for example — is nothing short of pathetic.

Do good shows, and don’t edit yourself. Viewers will seek out quality programs. (American Idol, Survivor and Ghost Whisperer notwithstanding.)

Surely, Rehr says, no one is arguing that the First Amendment allows us to say whatever we want, whenever we want, even on TV and radio?

Yes, David, that’s pretty much what we’re saying. And don’t argue that it’s different for the print guys. You’d have a lot more freedom if all of the broadcasters rose up and demanded it from the FCC.

Then again, broadcasters don’t do that because sometimes, the FCC is their friend. Like when FCC Chairman Kevin Martin promises to “protect” local radio stations from satellite radio by denying satellite radio permission to broadcast local weather, traffic reports and advertising.

Now it’s all clear. As in Clear Channel, the giant radio-station-owning megacorporation that’s really going to benefit here.

• Finally today, the city and the county are coming together to fund a study of whether or not to build a sports stadium with which to lure a major-league franchise to town. The study was announced at a much-hyped news conference today.

Wait. We’re getting a vision here. It’s Mayor Oscar Goodman and Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid. They’re reaching into our pockets, and grabbing our wallets! They’re taking out the money and credit cards, and using our cash to build a stadium! It’s being built in a terrible location, too! But there’s no big-league teams coming! Sports books won’t take games off the boards, and thus major-league sports officials are telling Goodman and Reid to bugger off! But they already spent our money! Oh, the horror!

Whew. It was just a dream.

Or was it?