This is the picture that greets you on the New Republic website. No, I'm not kidding. It really is there. Franklin Foer, hunkered down in the deeply fortified underground shelter below TNR headquarters, trying to weather the storm of being caught red-handed running a series of busted stories by a fraud of a writer that has since signed a statement under oath recanting them, offers as his front page story for the internet version of the scandal-riddled magazine Barry Bonds, Heretic.

Look at the landscape in which the New Republic finds itself. Does anyone believe that people are going to think to themselves, "Barry Bonds just broke the all time home run record. I wonder what The New Republic thinks about it?" Of course not. That's silly. It's a diversion. People over the last week are only visiting TNR's website because they either want to see how far down the Dan Rather path Foer is prepared to go, or they're from the fever swamp, and they're rooting for him because he dared to bare his anti-war soul. So while the controversy continues to burn hotter for Foer every day a new revelation strikes at the veracity of the Beauchamp stories, Foer fiddles by running a Barry Bonds story as his lead.

Know what is truly sad about this? Franklin Foer makes Barry Bonds look good by comparison. Whatever the new home run king's faults, and the list is lengthy depending on which investigator you talk to, Bonds, while viewed as illegitimately setting the home run record by many and of not being a generally pleasant fellow to be around, has not used his position in the media to slander the U.S. military in Iraq. Bonds may have not treated the press corps covering him very well, but he hasn't accused them of war crimes and unspeakable atrocities.

Since Mr. Foer wants all of us to talk baseball, let's put his postion in baseball terms. As the editor of The New Republic, Foer is the manager of the team. One of his rookies, nicknamed The Kid, got called up with virtually no minor league experience to pitch down the stretch, and after sportswriters saw this kid get shellacked in his first three starts, they started investigating why the manager kept handing him the ball every five days. They then discover that the kid actually is married to the manager's agent. A writer pokes around after reading in the team's press guide that the kid threw a no-hitter in AA ball, and learns that the kid never was in AA ball, and in fact, the last team sport he actually could be shown to play was high school basketball. And yet Manager Foer continues to give The Kid the rock, unwavering in his support, when all the sporting world now sees The Kid is a fraud. At some point, the crowd is going to sour on the product being put out on the field, and then they'll stop coming to the games.

Think the general manager or the owner of TNR is starting to get a little concerned?