Charlie Rose, the most erudite, urbane, and courteous interviewer on the planet, is for me, going from great to grate. He interviewed Milton Friedman this week. The esteemed nonagenarian prattles on about how great the economy is doing and how surprised he is that anyone could write anything negative about it. So what does Rose do? He follows up with more polite, softball questions. Does he ask Dr. Friedman about the 45 million Americans without health insurance? What about record consumer indebtedness and negative savings rates? (Probably a plus in Friedman-think.) The third of the rising number of personal bankruptcies due to medical castastrophes? No, nope, nada. Rose similarly coddled Karen Hughes of the Bush administration recently (see previous post).