Oh, hand me again my teeny-tiny violin, to play a sad song for poor oppressed Time Inc.

I thought I was out of things to say about L'Affair Plame and, in particular, the arrogant, short-sighted, whiny mainstream media snots from the New York Times and Time Inc. But I just read former Time editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine's op-ed entitled "How Libby's Trial Hurt the Press." And I discovered that I have not quite lost my capacity to be made snark-filled and angry by L'Affair Plame's participants from the Fourth Estate.

"Was it all worth it?" Pearlstine asks — and he then proceeds to demonstrate that nobody can top Time when it comes to treating excellent questions as shallow, rhetorical ones that they have no intention of even trying to explore honestly.

Here, for example (italics mine), is just a great factual set-up for a frank admission using the benefit of hindsight:

During my tenure as Time Inc.'s editor-in-chief, we spent millions of dollars — on our own behalf and that of Matt Cooper — fighting the special prosecutor's subpoenas in the courts. We lost every round. Only when the Supreme Court refused to hear our plea did I agree to turn over our notes to the grand jury.

After that paragraph should come something like this: "Man, we were incredible idiots who — by picking the wrong fight in the wrong case on which to go all nuclear against the DoJ in federal court, and thereby solidifying all of the legal precedents against us — were actually grinding down to their smallest possible nubbins the very legal interests of our profession that we were purportedly trying to protect!"

But what lesson does Pearlstine actually claim to have drawn from all this?

Reporters Without Borders publishes a press-freedom index, based on responses from media organizations and other experts around the world. The U.S. ranked 53rd out of 168 countries last year, trailing embarrassingly behind Bosnia, Namibia and the Dominican Republic. Without relief from continued assaults on the press, we shall fall further toward Russia (147) and last-place North Korea.

Give me a blooming break, Norman! No, no — I don't want a break. Give yourself a floating press internship through Bosnia, Namibia, and the Dominican Republic, Norman.

And then report back to us in a year with about 600 words on a nice civics and journalism topic. Say, something like: "How I Learned that the First Amendment is Not to Be Mocked by Stubborn, Myopic American Magazine Editors With Unlimited Budgets to Pay Lawyers, Because Freedom of the Press in the U.S. Really Ain't In That Bad a Shape After All, and Police Nightsticks in Bosnia, Namibia, and the Dominican Republic Really Do Hurt!"

Like there are really 52 other countries where you could be this naïve for this long without anyone rather rudely bursting your bubble of idiocy?