The TV talking head and former right side of CNN's political cluster#*$& Crossfire has passed away.

Robert Novak died Tuesday morning at the age of 78 from his bout with brain cancer.

The right-wing pundit was a journalist first as evidenced by his long stint in the ink stained world of newspaper reporting from his days as an Illinois sports stringer to his columns for the Chicago Sun-Times. But he's probably best remembered by audiences' eyeballs for his work as a TV pundit and his uncanny ability to make news as he reported it.

One of my pet peeves is when someone says that they're too young to remember something that happened in history. As if they couldn't have read about it somewhere. I thought of that after seeing this clip from Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher. It's Democratic strategist Paul Begala making a joke about Meghan McCain's comment that she wasn't born when Reagan was president so she wouldn't know what he's talking about.

Now, I'm not a big fan of Begala, but he does have point (though he could have used a more accessible example than the French Revolution, it would have been more pointed). I can't decide if McCain was being serious or if she was making a joke about Begala's age or if it's part of the "dumb blonde" joke she makes later in the clip. You decide.