“Meanwhile, The New York Times, which is supposed to be carking it any minute now, rolled out a much-ridiculed subscription plan for its most loyal readers that in one year has signed up more than 450,000 users, who pay between $15 and $35 per month. It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s hardly a pine coffin, either. At the same time, its Web traffic has remained largely unaffected, and in November the paper announced that its home-delivery circulation had increased for the first time in five years.”

That’s right. Four hundred and fifty thousand digital subscribers. That’s four hundred and fifty thousand people who actually give them money.

At $15 to $35 a month for each of those people, that’s $6,750,000 to $15,750,000 a month.

Read that aloud. Between six million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars and fifteen million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

A month.

Time to send the Shirky & Jarvis Show on its way. Guys, please get off the stage before you’re laughed off. Your fifteen minutes are up.

So how would this all have gone down had there been no public spotlight? Would Mr. Limbaugh have apologized personally to Ms. Fluke? I speculate probably not, because his position traditionally affords him greater immunity to the consequences of his comments.

So: the public spotlight, like the law, can be a powerful leveler in that it can compel the powerful to redress improprieties against the less-powerful. But unlike the law (or most law?), the redress itself is treated with suspicion because it is assumed to be disingenuous. Therefore it has no value.

But it makes for good TV. Panem et circenses.

Smashwords’ Mark Coker says: “I met with PayPal this afternoon at their office in San Jose. They will soon announce revised content policies that I expect will please the Smashwords community. Effective immediately, we are returning our Terms of Service to back to its pre-February 24 state. Beyond that, our friends at PayPal have asked me to hold off sharing additional details until they’ve had a chance to finalize their new policies. Thank you for your patience and support during this crazy last few weeks.”

Bravo Zulu, Smashwords!

All of which suggests you’re right; apologies — at the media level — are only made when the consequences outweigh the pain of an apology, even when those apologies are anything but.

Holy cow, I think she may have found the answer to her own question about why there is suffering in the world.

It might even do better than the one that says “The sentence on the back of this t-shirt is false.” (Can you guess what it says on the back?)

Sounds like the makings of a t-shirt: diagrams of the trolley scenarios with a caption saying “This Ain’t Mister Rogers’ Trolley!”