Novak's Latest Leak, Too Crude for Cable

By James Poniewozik

Viewers expect pundits to dispense b.s. on cable-news debate shows. But it's considered poor form to use the actual word. Hence the big hoo-ha last week over conservative columnist Robert Novak's performance on CNN's Inside Politics. After Democratic commentator James Carville teased him for trying to show fellow right-wingers that "he's got backbone," Novak shot back, "Well, I think that's bulls___." He then pulled off his mike and stormed off the set.

Novak has been a fixture on debate shows for years without displaying such tender sensitivities. But the man has been under pressure lately. After all, it was his 2003 column outing CIA operative Valerie Plame--whose husband Joseph Wilson had publicly criticized the Bush Administration's use of prewar intelligence--that kicked off an investigation into whether officials broke the law by leaking her identity to reporters. Novak has stayed mum as to whether he is cooperating in a case that has sent one reporter to jail for not coughing up her sources. (After the Supreme Court refused to hear Time Inc.'s appeal, the company turned over files from TIME correspondent Matthew Cooper.) But in a column last week, Novak implied that he may have picked up Plame's name from a book. Once she had been identified as Wilson's wife, Novak wrote, her maiden name could be found "by reading her husband's entry in Who's Who in America." Some had speculated that only certain officials would have known her maiden name, which she had not used in years, thus limiting the field of possible leakers.

Inside Politics host Ed Henry, who said he had planned to ask Novak about Plame later in the show, won't get to any time soon; CNN quickly asked Novak to "take some time off." It may want to reconsider, though. People drop the b.s. word on HBO all the time, and the ratings are huge. --By James Poniewozik