With the erasure of Osama bin Laden hours away, D.C. fixated itself on this slight glimpse of fame—it was nighttime and the end of the weekend of the White House Correspondents Dinner.

“Bristol Palin!” Wolf Blitzer said to The Observer as they both leaned against the cracked marble bar-top. People and Time had wrapped the ceremonial first party of the weekend, long forewarned to be the last chance to experience something other than drunkenness or pre-brunch hangover.

When approached earlier, Ms. Palin refused to talk about two things: whom she wanted to meet at the dinner, and the president’s birth certificate.

“Is she still here?” Mr. Blitzer asked.

She wasn’t.

“I’m looking for celebrities but I’m really bad at spotting them,” he said. “National-security-type figures, foreign leaders, yes. Celebrities, I’m not particularly good at. But I’ll find some.”

Over at the W for The New Yorker’s party, David Remnick stood looking out the window next to Sean Penn, a contributor to the Huffington Post.

“Evidently, that’s the Treasury Building,” Mr. Penn said. He was pointing to the building draped in yellow glow that houses the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Washington Monument shot up behind it.

“David Remnick is a fantastic writer,” Jon Hamm told The Observer.

Standing by the sushi platters, the man who plays Don Draper pointed to The Observer’s tweed jacket. The Observer glanced down at his sleeves and fraying elbow patches.

“That Rag & Bone?” the actor asked.

The reporter had purchased the item for a few dollars at a thrift store in the South.

“No,” he said.

“Shit’s great, man,” Mr. Hamm said.

Next was a party co-hosted by The Atlantic and that magazine’s peer institution, the Web site Funny or Die.

ON SATURDAY THE CORRIDOR beneath the Washington Hilton stuffed a publication in each of its identical rooms. A tired Samantha Ronson spun at Reuters, purply-eyed, headed back to New York after. Andy Samberg posted up at the bar at CNN. Arianna Huffington kissed friends on the cheek. Tina Brown and her handlers beelined toward the dinner, her bob of porcelain hair glossy as ever. CNBC’s Jim Cramer tried to pluck a beer from a bar after closing time and went Mad Money on the man slinging drinks at the Reuters booze kiosk until he relented.

Mayor Bloomberg lingered near Steve Buscemi.

“What’s the main difference between Washington and our city?” The Observer asked.

“Talk to Stu Loeser, my press secretary!” the mayor yelled back at him. “What part of that don’t you understand?”

The Observer smiled and, upon recognizing that sneer, missed New York City.

Mr. Blitzer had apparently learned how to spot celebrities.

“Oh, Wolf’s my date,” said Mila Kunis. “He’s showing me around.”

He had other fans, too.

“I hear that Wolf Blitzer is somewhere around,” Scarlett Johansson told The Observer. “I would really love to meet him.”

But Ms. Johansson was taken. The Washington press corps had been abuzz over the rumors that she’s dating Mr. Penn, an occasional freelancer for The Nation.

At a party hosted by MSNBC, The Observer had Rachel Maddow mix a French 75, went to the Johnnie Walker Cigar Tent for whiskey and a smoke and saw Elliot Spitzer walk in. Then he left to watch the autograph seekers at the enormous mansion.

The next morning, The Observer woke needing coffee and walked five blocks, a long search for something omnipresent in his home city, but soon found a cup and a Sunday Times. A man he’d seen just hours before exited the Hilton, slowed down and politely approached. He knew this man: thin cheeks warped inward like old balsawood, oversize head, live-wire shock of white hair.

Then came a question that has never been uttered in New York.

“Where did you manage to find that coffee?” the Talking Heads singer said.

Mr. Byrne, you were always right. Home is where I want to be.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

It was after 11 p.m. on Saturday, May 1, in the foyer of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., where the incongruous combo of the chef Bobby Flay and CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer were co-hosting a Capitol File after-party for the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. Mr. West was standing right where Kim Kardashian had fought her way through a clamoring mob a few minutes earlier, while her escort, Greta Van Susteren, played the patient handmaiden.

"This isn't about politics," said Hardball host Chris Matthews. "It's about the scene. Wherever you have a lot of people together at an event like this, good-looking people show up. And they just stand around. So you'll notice groups of good-looking people just standing around because they've heard there's a scene. And since they make it on looks, they must be seen."

All the pretty faces made the party planners nervous. Press people asked reporters not to bother the guests inside. Security was tight: Lists were dutifully double-checked; IDs were required.

In the ballroom, Mr. West sauntered along behind two of his co-stars-Michael K. Williams (the scar-faced bandit Omar) and Sonja Sohn (Kima, the tough lesbian cop)-who were holding hands (unromantically) and making a beeline for a back staircase, where a beefy security guard protected the entrance to a VIP balcony.

Mr. Williams whispered in the guard's ear, but nothing happened. The group stepped aside while others were let up. Mr. Williams patted his brow with a cloth, and tried again. Ms. Sohn sat down on a ledge.

Desiree Rogers-the former social secretary blamed for letting the infamous gatecrashers past White House security-floated down the stairs in a red dress, followed by a waiter with a big tray.

Mr. Williams tried again, but the security guard was unmoved, and the group finally trudged off. (They would go on to surface at the glitzier Vanity Fair party later in the night.)

“You can’t totally stereotype it,” Ms. Vieira began, as if to soften the point she was about to make. “But there are some men that have a lot of sensitivity and, in turn, there are some women that really have … well, they have balls!”

The 55-year-old anchorwoman would go on to personally demonstrate, pausing during her speech about how technology has changed the business to tell a little anecdote concerning satirist Stephen Colbert, who recently visited the Today show.

“I asked him if he Twittered and he said, no, he Twatted!” she informed the crowd of women in Chanel suits, munching on Asian chicken salad. (For every giggle in the room, there seemed to be a crinkled nose.)

After Ms. Vieira’s speech, young scholarship recipients came up to the stage to declare their professional determination, saying things like “I am the next Amy Astley,” referring to the Teen Vogue editor, and “I am the next Anderson Cooper.”

This seemed to inspire a few of the day’s presenters. “I am the next Wolf Blitzer!” announced NBC’s Brian Williams, who was presenting an award to CNN anchor Campbell Brown. He then admired the actress Jessica Lange, who was seated onstage, waiting to present an award to her publicist, 42West’s Leslee Dart, and offered up fratastic props. “You totally killed it in Grey Gardens, by the way,” Mr. Williams said.

Deutsch Inc.’s chairman, Donny Deutsch, who was presenting an award to the CEO of the company, Linda Sawyer, followed suit. “I am the next Judy Garland!”

Earlier, Mr. Deutsch explained why, in his opinion, female ad execs were actually “superior” to their male colleagues.

“I think women are more collaborative,” he said. “I think they spend less time on the emotional nonsense like whose office is bigger and instead it’s all about, ‘Let’s get the job done and let’s get it done well.’”

Daily Candy’s Dany Levy invited author Kurt Andersen, her former boss at New York magazine, to present her award.

“I’m not trying to be p.c., but I just don’t have a clear gender-differentiation in terms of writers and editors,” Mr. Andersen told the Daily Transom. “I personally like hanging around with women more than I tend to men, but …”

Here, Ms. Levy began to nod along before finally interrupting. “Me, too!” she said. “But I do like men a lot.”

Ms. Dart perhaps attracted the most attention during the luncheon due to her celebrity presenters, Ms. Lange and actor Tom Hanks.

When asked what makes Ms. Dart a good publicist, Ms. Lange said, “It’s a combination of things, of course. It’s her extraordinary tenacity, her amazing loyalty, intelligence and grace.”

Later, when the Grey Gardens star was presenting her publicist with the award, she said that she lacked the right words to describe Ms. Dart, and so she was going to borrow a phrase that the actor John Goodman once used to describe Ms. Lange herself: “She has the balls of a burglar!” (Again with the balls!)

With that, Ms. Lange introduced Mr. Hanks, who seemed to bring the entire room of nearly menopausal women into a giddy swirl. “Hi, Leslee, darling! How are you?” Mr. Hanks said before launching into comedic bit about what it’s like to have Ms. Dart as one’s publicist: “She tells you how stupid you have been, if you should get your eyes done and if you should lose some weight.”

Ms. Dart agreed that women were a superior species.

“When you do what I do, you have to be a shrink, a stylist, a best friend, a strategist—all while doing 10 million things all at the same time,” she said. “And that’s something women do much better than men because women work and women have families, so they have become amazing multitaskers.” (Ms. Dart also pointed out that a lot of men in publicity are gay men, so it really all depends!)

By the time Ms. Vieira returned to the stage to close the ceremony, she seemed glad she wasn’t the only one who mentioned those spherical wonders of masculinity that day and exclaimed, “I, too, want the balls of a burglar!”

Ostensibly, the appearance was about his efforts to bridge a $1.5 billion budget deficit (and get a head start on next year's shortfalls) in a special session next week. But also the question of the day: what he knows about Hillary Clinton's prospects of becoming secretary of state, and who might replace her in the Senate.

He didn't say anything earth-shattering. (Full transcript here.) But anchor Wolf Blitzer's last question, and Paterson's answer, bear sharing:

PATERSON: Well it's very hard for a lot of our legislative leaders, and also our advocates, our unions, people in the fields that are going to have their growth reduced, to accept it. It's very hard. I don't think they fully appreciate the seriousness of our budget deficit. Our national deficit is a trillion dollars, and what we've got to recognize is this is the worst downturn in our economy since the Great Depression, and if we want to avoid going through what California went through, we've got to get back to Albany and get to work.

Around Albany, the forecast next week calls for plenty. Of. Turmoil.

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer taped for The Situation Room, Carter said that if superdelegates overturn what is nearly certain to be a majority of pledged delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Denver (the only way Hillary Clinton can win at this point), it would be "uncomfortable." Carter, while admitting to having a favorite, still refuses to say who he voted for in the primary, or who he plans to support at the convention.

Carter is one of the Democratic Party elders, along with Al Gore, who could conceivably play a role in tipping the nominating process towards one candidate by weighing in at some point. In Carter's case, at least, that candidate would probably be Obama. (Carter previously told a Nigerian newspaper, "My children and their spouses are pro-Obama. My grandchildren are also pro-Obama.")

Here's the transcript of the exchange, sent over by the CNN:

Instead, the two surviving Democratic contenders spent close to two hours—the debate at the Kodak Theatre wrapped up a few minutes earlier than planned and included three commercial breaks—aiming most of their attacks at John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, and engaging in lengthy, painstaking and rather dispassionate discussions of policy.

From a civics standpoint, the debate was something approaching a triumph. But in terms of political theater, it didn’t even begin to approach the tension and pique that defined last week’s debate in South Carolina.

Both candidates had good reason to play it this way.

For Clinton, the prevailing media narrative of the last few days is that she and her husband went overboard in attacking Obama in South Carolina; that both Bill and Hillary showcased their worst characteristics—whether it was Hillary’s withering, prosecutorial assault on Obama in the pre-South Carolina debate or Bill’s too-cute-by-half efforts to insinuate race into the campaign—and that it prompted a backlash at the polls, delivering to Obama a victory that approached 30 points.

Whether this interpretation is fair or accurate doesn’t really matter. Had Hillary won—or come unexpectedly close—in South Carolina, the media would now be fixating on how devastatingly effective her debate antics had been and how ruthlessly brilliant Bill’s coy racial pigeonholing was.

But because she lost so badly, the media drew the opposite conclusion. And that necessitated a change in style for Hillary and Bill. Had Hillary launched the same types of attacks in last night’s debate that she did in South Carolina, the post-debate coverage would be dominated with stories about Hillary’s “risky” decision to continue attacking Obama even after that tactic had been repudiated. So instead, she struck a more conciliatory—and far less demagogic—tone.

A revealing moment came early on, when she was asked to itemize her policy differences with Obama. She obliged, but notably absent were the inflammatory and misleading extrapolations of Obama’s views that she has happily employed in previous debates.

On the subject of health care, she correctly pointed out that she and Obama differ on the need for the government to mandate that every individual receive coverage. She then made the case for a mandate, arguing that it represents a necessary statement of principle—universal coverage—that needs to be expressed at the start of any negotiation over health care legislation. What she didn’t do—this time—was to conjure images of poor and helpless citizens and demand to know why Obama would deny them health care.

Hillary leveled her share of criticism at Obama last night, but she did it sparingly and in a manner that was respectful—both of her opponent and of the audience’s intelligence.

A similarly conciliatory spirit defined Obama’s performance. He led off the night with an opening statement in which he referred to Hillary as “my friend,” and took pains throughout the debate to point out the common ground that he and Hillary share against the Republicans.

This style suited his needs, too, because he is a weak technical debater when it comes to a hostile back-and-forth format, unable to recognize the rhetorical traps that Hillary occasionally wanders into and either incapable or uninterested in conjuring pithy jabs on the spot.

Plus, the debate came after a few days of surprisingly intense media coverage of Obama’s supposed “snub” of Hillary at Monday night’s State of the Union address, a development that gave the press license to recycle Obama’s “You’re likable enough, Hillary” comment from the final pre-New Hampshire debate. If he went after Hillary too aggressively at the debate, Obama putting Clinton once again in the same victim’s role she assumed in the final days in New Hampshire, a posture that seemed to rally women to her side and keyed her upset victory.

Twice, though, Obama did take to the offensive. The first time, midway through the debate, he brought up Hillary’s evasive non-response at a debate last October when she was asked about driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. But, realizing that he risked violating the civil tone of the proceedings, Obama took pains to say that he was only mentioning it as proof that “this is a politically difficult issue” and then added that he and Hillary share the same basic values on the topic.

His second attack, at the end of the debate, was more effective. It came, not surprisingly, on an issue that has bedeviled Hillary for years: Her support for the 2002 war resolution, which Obama opposed.

“I don’t want to just end the war,” Obama said. “I want to end the mindset that got us into the war in the first place.”

Like an over-excited child egging a participant in a schoolyard scrap, moderator Wolf Blitzer immediately jumped in.

“Senator Clinton,” he said. “That’s a clear swipe at you.”

Clinton made a show of laughing it off—which seems to be her response whenever debates or interviews veer into subject areas in which she is uncomfortable—then offered a rambling justification for her vote, essentially contending that she never thought President Bush would use to resolution to launch a pre-emptive war—even though she was silent in March 2003 when it was clear he was about to do exactly that.

In response, Obama was simple but effective: “The authorization had the title ‘An authorization to use U.S. military force in Iraq.’ I think everyone the day after that vote was taken understood that this was a vote to potentially go to war.”

He then added what may have been his biggest applause line of the night: “Senator makes the point…that she has the experience to be president on Day One. Part of the argument that I am making is that it’s important to be right on Day One.”

Both candidates did well tonight and gave undecided voters who may be leaning their way plenty of reasons to come on board. For Clinton, who is leading in most Super Tuesday states, that is probably good enough. Obama, who is gaining, but still appears to be playing from behind, needs to hope that the numbers-boosting benefits of his ringing South Carolina victory last for a few more days.

Not surprisingly, James Carville, one of Bill and Hillary’s closest friends, and David Gergen, a Clinton (and other) White House alum, agreed that it had been a winning night for Hillary Clinton. Apparently, Harry and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason weren’t available.

The use of Mr. Carville, and to a lesser extent Mr. Gergen, provoked some criticism, with watchdogs griping that CNN didn’t properly disclose its conflicts. But disclosure isn’t really the issue. The question is why, given the endless supply of eager political pundits who are unaffiliated with the Clintons and every other campaign, CNN ever offered such a prominent spot to Mr. Carville and Mr. Gergen in the first place.

Not that it was the only insult to viewers last Thursday.

Once the gold standard for all-news television, the Cable News Network used the night to make a convincing argument that it should never again be entrusted with a presidential debate.

The network’s journalistic crimes are legion, starting with how the debate—which, at least in theory, is supposed to serve as a public service to voters—was promoted. In full-page ads, CNN cast it as pure sport, a boxing match in which “the gloves will come off.” Really? How would CNN know ahead of time that that this would be a contentious forum, especially after most of the previous debates had been tame, unless they were planning to force conflict?

There was also the warm-up act, a full-hour of Lou Dobbs fulminating against illegal immigrants and reading letters from adoring and sycophantic viewers, all presented by CNN as some sort of debate preview. This is the same Mr. Dobbs who has done little to quell talk that he himself wants to run for President next year. (Not that this came up on CNN, either.)

It got worse when it was time for the actual debate. First, CNN persisted with the prize-fighting motif, with moderator Wolf Blitzer playing the Michael Buffer role and calling the candidates to the stage individually, like boxers entering the ring. Then Mr. Blitzer introduced Campbell Brown, John Roberts, and Suzanne Malveaux, fellow CNN personalities who would join in the questioning.

“They are part of the very best political team,” he informed viewers.

As the candidates were fitted with their microphones—shouldn’t that have been done backstage?—Mr. Blitzer awkwardly handed off to analyst Gloria Borger, who stuck with the boxing imagery as she told viewers which candidates could be expected to come out “swinging” in the public policy forum they were about to watch.

If CNN was intent on giving America a fight, it could have at least tried to put on a fair one.

But the audience at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas was slanted heavily in favor of New York’s junior senator. One of the first questions of the night, from Mr. Blitzer, sought to incite a tangle between Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Clinton used her turn to criticize Mr. Obama’s health care plan, but when Mr. Obama began, loud shouts from the audience distracted him and viewers at home.

So pro-Clinton was the crowd that Mrs. Clinton needed only to pause for a beat during an answer and the audience would fill the vacuum with raucous cheers. Meanwhile, when Mr. Obama and John Edwards sought to engage Mrs. Clinton, they were shouted down.

Conspiracy theorists will say that CNN had packed the crowd for its old friend. But the audience imbalance, like the inclusion of Mr. Carville and Mr. Gergen, was more an indictment of CNN’s incompetence. The network farmed out the distribution of tickets without insisting on any kind of balance. The resulting Clinton rah-rahing was both distracting and misleading to viewers.

Similar incompetence was at work in the framing of questions. Time and again, candidates were presented with simplistic hypothetical scenarios and told to pick one side. They were invariably presented false choices—human rights or national security?—but if they failed to provide direct answers, they risked looking like typically evasive politicians.

And nothing but incompetence can explain why CNN decided to end on a “cute” question, prodding a UNLV student—who had hoped to quiz the candidates on the Yucca Mountain issue—to inquire if Mrs. Clinton preferred diamonds or pearls.

Knockout stuff.

“I thought it was odd that the moderator didn’t follow up,” Axelrod said.

Referring to Blitzer’s decision not to press Hillary on her “no” response to a question surveying the candidates on whether they did or did not support the controversial and politically troublesome subject of giving drivers licenses to illegal immigrants, he said, “She gave an answer that was diametrically opposed to the one she gave two weeks ago. Where I come from, they call that news. But it didn’t get asked and the subject moved on and it was hard to come back to.”

“A lot of this is in the hand of the moderator,” said Axelrod.

Obama was surprisingly vague and wordy when asked for his position. That was unexpected given all the heat Clinton took for in the last debate for saying that she thought it was a good idea but didn’t necessarily support it.

“I understand that Wolf pressed him for an answer,” said Axelrod. “And he gave an answer.”

The Clinton campaign was having a field day with Obama’s convoluted answer.

“He was inexplicably unable to answer the question in a yes or no fashion,” said Clinton’s top media consultant, Mandy Grunwald, who was working the spin room a few feet away. “After the last two weeks we’ve all lived through, it’s just bizarre.

When told about Grunwald’s comment, Axelrod offered this.

“If I were Mandy this would be the last thing I would be accusing other people of doing,” he said. “I don’t know if it is the mark of forthrightness to give six answers in two weeks to the same question.”

After weeks of withering attacks by her Democratic rivals, political missteps by her own campaign and a seeming inability to give a straight answer on the hot-button issue of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, Ms. Clinton took the platform at a debate at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, pointed to her charcoal jacket, and said “This pantsuit—it’s asbestos,” suggesting she was ready to withstand any onslaughts.

And they started right away.

Barack Obama explained his problem with Ms. Clinton by saying, “what the American people are looking for right now is straight answers to tough questions, and that is not what we have seen out of Senator Clinton on a host of issues—on the issues of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.”

Ms. Clinton, who has largely refused to take the bait from her Democratic rivals, choosing instead to contrast herself with the Bush Administration, effectively engaged.

“Well, I hear what Senator Obama is saying, and he talks a lot about stepping up and taking responsibility and taking strong positions,” she said. “But when it came time to step up and decide whether or not he would support universal health care, he chose not to do that.”

Mr. Obama defended himself, saying, “The truth is that I do provide for universal health care.”

He argued that his emphasis on cutting costs for health care insurance paved the way for universal coverage and as a result, a mandate was not necessary. (Many advocates of universal health care were surprised by the lack of a mandate for universal coverage in Mr. Obama’s plan, which distinguished it from Ms. Clinton’s and John Edwards’ proposals.)

Ms. Clinton, who prides herself on her intricate knowledge of health care policy, refused to let Mr. Obama’s point stand.

“I can’t let that go unanswered,” she said, adding “Senator Obama’s health care plan does not cover everyone” and “he does not mandate the kind of coverage that I do.”

She concluded, “There is a big difference between Senator Obama and me.”

(The Clinton campaign, clearly prepared for their candidate to raise the health care issue, quickly flooded reporters’ inboxes with statements arguing that Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards had failed to support universal health care.)

Wolf Blitzer, the debate’s moderator, then invited Mr. Edwards into the spat, and the most dependable firebrand of the Democrats' recent debates did not disappoint.

“She says she will turn up the heat on George Bush,” he said of Ms. Clinton, but she “voted with Bush and Cheney” on a vote to label Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization.

Ms. Clinton, seeming to relish her position in the crosshairs, smiled and said ironically, “I respect all my colleagues on this stage.”

“I don’t mind taking hits on my record on issues,” she said, “but when somebody starts throwing mud, at least we can hope that it’s both accurate and not right out of the Republican playbook.”

Speaking specifically of Mr. Edwards, she said, “For him to be throwing this mud and making these charges I think really detracts from what we’re trying to do here tonight. We need to put forth a positive agenda.”

The crowd applauded.

After the initial volley, both Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards seemed to lay off. The tone softened, due in part to another solid and humorous debate performance by Joe Biden. (“I know you’re not supposed to answer questions, based on what I’ve heard,” he said after giving an answer about Pakistan.)

Then Blitzer raised aquestion that originally tripped Ms. Clinton up two weeks ago at a debate in Philadelphia and has since emerged as a Republican wedge issue, asking whether she supported driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.

Mr. Blitzer solicited answers down the line. Mr. Edwards went first, in a wending answer that ultimately said he would not support drivers licenses. Mr. Obama, who has highlighted Ms. Clinton’s obtrusiveness on the issue as indicative of the reasons she should not be president, said he wasn’t proposing such a plan, then hedged, then was eventually pushed into a “yes.”

When it was Hillary Clinton’s turn, she simply said “no.”

(The Clinton campaign provided the groundwork for that simple answer yesterday, when, after a two-week long evolution on the issue that she originally called a “good idea”—on the very day that Governor Eliot Spitzer abandoned the plan—she came out against it.)

After the Philadelphia debate two weeks ago, Ms. Clinton’s rivals boasted that that they had knocked her off her pedestal and shattered the girding aura of inevitability in which she seemed encased. Tonight, the Obama and Edwards campaigns hoped for more of the same. Instead, Ms. Clinton hit back and seemed to recover.

When Ms. Clinton was asked if she had exploited her gender in the last debate, by referring to the piling on of an “all-boys club,” Ms. Clinton again flashed a smile and launched into her stump speech.

“I’m not exploiting anything at all,” she said. “I am not exploiting the gender card here in Las Vegas; I am trying to play the winning card.”

That language echoed a memo sent out hours before the debate by Ms. Clinton’s Chief Pollster Mark Penn, who wrote that she was the field’s sole owner of “the leadership card.”

“While opponents are strategizing and re-launching their campaigns with aggressive personal attacks on Sen. Clinton, one truth remains—running for president is not a qualification for president. The voters are looking for someone who has the strength and experience to lead, and little has changed in the last few weeks outside of the massive media coverage of the attacks."

The media will likely go with a different storyline for November 16.

On Saturday, Mr. Moore published an "open letter" to CNN on his web site, introducing complaints about his treatment at the hands of interviewer Wolf Blitzer with some crazy-talk:

"I bet you thought I was just going to go quietly away. Think again. I'm about to become your worst nightmare. 'Cause I ain't ever going away."

Well, now, CNN has used its own Web site to respond, releasing a statement on its news site and using it to introduce a point-by-point rebuttal of Mr. Moore's letter.

"It's ironic that someone who has made a career out of holding powerful interests accountable is so sensitive to having his own work held up to the light by impartial journalists, as we did in our examination of 'SiCKO,' " the statement from CNN begins.

Follow the links below for video of Mr. Moore's appearance on Mr. Blitzer's show; Mr. Moore's open letter; and CNN's response. If you care.

• Video: Michael Moore on CNN 
• An Open Letter to CNN From Michael Moore
• CNN's Response to Michael Moore