Anyone who's seen or heard Larry King over the last quarter-century or so (which includes just about everyone who has cable TV) knows that he's been known to tell tales of his life that are, to put it charitably, less than true. Big surprise from a guy who's been married seven times and pleaded no contest to passing bad checks in the early Seventies, right?

Anyway, with the release of King's new book, which is full of stories from his past, it seems like it's again time for journalists to point out that -- gasp! -- King makes some of his stories up. Jack Shafer in Slate, for instance, has decided to bring up King's claims that he knew Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax when the two of them were growing up in Brooklyn, a story that even Shafer acknowledges was refuted by Koufax himself... way back in 1991.

Jack Shafer of Slate presents a very funny slideshow that illustrates the proliferation of blonde hair -- natural and otherwise -- into the TV news business. In the slideshow, he muses on why the women on network and cable news feel compelled to "hit the bottle," causing them to have mounds of unnatural-looking yellow hair atop their heads. Men aren't immune to Shafer's criticism, either: he criticizes sixty-something pundits Chris Matthews and Lou Dobbs (whom he dubs "thinning and thinninger.") for not letting themselves go dignifyingly gray. He even imagines what my girl Campbell Brown might look like if she were asked by her agent to go blonde!

The last panel, where he describes "Fox Lips" as being the new blonde, is a riot.