Paranoid Poll: CBS has a poll out saying New Yorkers are so nervous and jerky in the aftermath of 9/11 that they don't eat right, sleep deeply or want to go to a ballgame. Why extrapolating this from this poll helps CBS is anyone's guess but, the city is jumping, the restaurants are booked solid and Central Park is wall-to-wall activity. Add to that the fact that we are supposed to be up to our armpits in babies conceived when the subways shut down (it doesn't take long). Scared people must make better copy. The New York Times sees the poll in a rosier light and says New Yorkers are "extraordinarily optimistic." They got that right.

Oh, Those Brits: Here's a piece in the Guardian that says Americans are filled with panic over a possible radiation bomb. Huh? Now this is news. Perhaps they would like to have that be the case but America went about it's summer day business yesterday. They must have interviewed Sally Quinn while she cleaned her Israeli gas masks.

Choose Your Poll: Here's one from the Washington Post/ABC that says most of us think what Dubya is doing to revamp the government is really cool. His favorable numbers remain at a pleasant 77% after his announcement that the time has come to crowbar the bureaucracy. Now let's start a movement to drop the quilt-knitting Homeland Security title and just call it the War Department.

Still Whining: Former Super Editor Tina Brown, unable to get over the first real floppola in her life, tells a London audience 9/11 was what crushed her magazine "Talk" and that her former staff now has no place to "be dramatic with their work." This must mean the terrorists have won.

Today's Ka-Ching Thing: The New York Daily News' Rush and Malloy tell us that Michael Skakel must pay his lawyer Mickey Sherman $2.5 million for getting him convicted of murdering Martha Moxley. That's a lot of bread for someone whose last job was driving his cousins and their baby-sitter dates around.

-Your Observant LComStaff