The media has a terrible habit of comparing their serendipitous successes with horrific human tragedies. When Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston split up in Jan. 2005, Us Weekly's Kent Brownridge (then Jann Wenner's No. 2, and now the head of OK!) said, "For a celebrity weekly, this is our tsunami," before rushing to print a 40,000-word book on the break-up. That was, of course, one month after an earthquake in the Indian Ocean created devastating tsunamis that killed a quarter of a million people in 11 countries. Brownridge apologized the very next day.

Then, in the summer of 2005, back when Gruner + Jahr still had a U.S. presence, then-editor of Fast Company John Bryne described the countdown to a decision about which mags would survive — G+J was selling four titles to Meredith, but ended up keeping FC and Inc. — as "kind of like being in a hostage crisis." TOTALLY THE SAME THING!

So how does Lorne Michaels, the Saturday Night Live executive producer, feel about the way things have transpired in this presidential election, which he has reaped for comedic gold?

Well, it's nothing so great as comparing his situation to a natural disaster, but Michaels does think Sarah Palin getting the VP nomination, and allowing Tina Fey to play her every week, was a matter of divine intervention:

“I think the gods smiled on us with the Palin thing,” Mr. Michaels said. “Like if [McCain had] chosen Romney, I think it would be completely different.” In referring to Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential contender, Mr. Michaels added, “As exciting as a Romney-Biden debate would have been, it just would have been politics as usual.” [NYT]

So Happy Yom Kippur. Now, what page is the prayer for "50 percent spike in ratings" on?