'Nothing to see here, move on': One of the all-time great ledes, w/video clip

Jimmy Orr of the Christian Science Monitor's "the vote" blog has the perfect lede to the latest wrinkle in Illinois' political troubles. It's on the website today.

Roland Burris clears everything up: Nothing to see here, move along

Remember that scene in Naked Gun where that guy runs his car into a gas tanker, miraculously survives only to hit an Army tank carrying a missile (which just happened to be in the area), surviving that fiery explosion only to plow into a fireworks stand causing yet another fiery explosion?

Trying to dismiss the crowd’s interest, Lt. Frank Dreben says, “Move along. Nothing to see here. Please disperse. Nothing to see here.”

Some cynics might say this sounds a little like U.S. Senator Roland Burris.

And so it goes. [To see a YouTube clip of the scene, follow the link in the story.] Orr's point: Burris isn't doing himself any favors as he tries to persuade reporters there's no inconsistency between his stories about conversations with people in former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's policical operation.

“When we got the transcript, it was determined that I had said ‘yes’ in the transcript to all those names, but we had not addressed those names,” he explained. “So that prompted me then to make the decision to file a separate affidavit that would show who we talked to and what we said.”

He pretty much said the same thing yesterday in a press conference.

“The ‘yes’ was for the names,” he said. “Please, media people, the ‘yes’ response - I said I talked to my friends, and ‘yes.’ The ‘yes’ was for all of those names.”

OK. He said, “yes.”

Nothing to see here. Move along.

And he's able to use the resources of the World Wide Web in a way the old print Monitor never could have, by linking to that YouTube clip of the scene in "Naked Gun."