What to make of things when a group of well-meaning Hollywood liberals flies into the mouth of the lion’s den by suddenly visiting Iran?

Some of us are left thinking that there must be more here than meets the eye.

After all, no one in Hollywood wakes up the day of the Oscars and thinks: “Hmmm. Perhaps I’ll head to Tehran.”

And yet that’s what happened – Annette Bening, Sid Ganis, Tom Pollock, Frank Pierson, Phil Robinson, Alfre Woodard – all respected veterans of the industry, but utterly new to Middle East politics.

Call it birthing pains. Call it a life lesson. I don’t know what else to call it but pure hell when your new web site goes down for reasons you can’t quite fathom and for --  tick-tock, tick-tock -- many hours you cannot retrieve.

I guess this is life in the digital world. We built a site, tested it, ran it for a month without incident, started a dialogue with the world, and then – poof – we were sidelined.

The New York Times, my former mother-ship, is offering to “retrain” its reporters and turn them into new media whiz-kids. Only one problem with that.

Nobody wants to do it.

I can’t exactly blame the reporters. The memo a couple of weeks ago from one of the least user-friendly assistant managing editors at the paper, Susan Edgerley, held out what at first appeared to be the possibility of transformation: retraining print reporters to be producers for the web.

William Morris is merging with Endeavor? I don’t think so.

Hollywood’s agency row was on fire all afternoon with the publication of a remarkably fact-free story in The New York Times recycling the rumor that Endeavor was going to merge with the William Morris Agency.

At least, that’s what the headline said.

The story was a lot more careful to say almost nothing commital at all.

Interview? It was a pantsing by Jon Stewart.

I have no idea why CNBC Mad Money-man Jim Cramer decided to go on Comedy Central to face down Jon Stewart, who has been skewering him for a week. Why in the world?

Cramer was assured an opportunity for public humiliation on television, with the guarantee that it will subsequently go viral.

And that’s what he got.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. TheWrap has received a letter from a lawyer for Audrey Kelly of Fade In magazine, seeking a retraction of the piece investigating complaints about its screenwriting contest.

Given the long list of legal claims involving Kelly and Fade In, this was probably to be expected.

Updated Wednesday morning:

It was a rare performance by one of America’s great corporate communicators.

 

On Wednesday, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz faced a room of more than a thousand anxious shareholders in a display of accountability that we haven’t seen from the failed bankers and insurance tycoons of our nation.

 

As a career journalist with experience in Washington and elsewhere, I’m as cynical as anybody, so I was about to make fun of the Army rolling its military might -- think M1 tank and armed Humvees -- down Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills Wednesday night in support of a 30-minute, pro-military film, "American Identity," that’s premiering at 8 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

The punditry sunk its teeth into President Obama Tuesday after a news conference in which he defended the budget he was sending to the Congress and explained why he was maintaining a middle class tax cut and a hike in taxes for the rich during an economic recession.

They were not pleased: “He was tired.” “I saw a flash of anger.” “He wanted to go home,” were some of the observations around the table on CNN, and they’re the friendlier ones.