Now, boys, does Jon Stewart have to intervene?

Nicholas Kristof's ongoing media playground fight with Bill O'Reilly is again the subject of his Times column today, and now Kristof is asking people to e-mail hypothetical offers of how much they would pay to send O'Reilly to cover the Darfur genocide to sponsorbill@gmail.com. Kristof thinks that if O'Reilly directed his hopped-up-ferret on-air diatribes toward the genocide (which he writes today received just 18 minutes of network evening news time in all of 2005, with ABC accounting for 11 of those), he could affect some actual change.

Perhaps, but I think he overestimates Bill O'Reilly's actual mobilizing power. If I had his column, I'd tell people to deluge someone in a position of greater practical command with e-mails calling for action: Oprah. Sure, she'd just use it as self-aggrandizing PR spectacle as well, but at least she's got money and hordes of wealthy followers who might actually donate their easily earned, under-taxed money if the right sob story moves them.