What is it with the national media and Alaska these days? Were reporters infected with a case of Palin-steria after the national elections? Ever since, every Alaska-connected story has had them scurrying around the state like a bunch of crazed lemmings that stumbled into a patch of really good Matanuska weed, and I'm not talking about invasive dandelions.

Sometimes these days it seems the national media -- lamestream and otherwise -- has gone more mama grizzly than mama grizzly Sarah Palin herownself what with all the huffing, slobbering, ground stomping and unthinking charges. It sort of started with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which brought all those reporters north to write about how you could still find oil in Prince William Sound, and now it's spun into the unfortunate death of former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and four others in a plane crash.

The once sedate Wall Street Journal was Thursday headlining that "The 'Chuck Yeager' of Bush Pilots" was at the controls of the crashed plane when it went down -- the implication being clear to all who've read the book "The Right Stuff" or watched the movie of the same name. Yeager, a test pilot, was famous for "pushing the envelope," as they say.

There is no evidence that Terry Smith, the pilot of the plane in which Stevens died, was doing that. Nor is there anything to support this claim in the Journal story: "Pilot Theron "Terry" Smith, who was at the controls of the single-engine airplane that crashed Monday in Alaska, killing five people including former Sen. Ted Stevens, was a flamboyant former airline pilot who reveled in seat-of-the-pants flying."

As someone who spent time with Smith at a number of social gatherings, I can testify that about the last word anyone would use to describe him is "flamboyant." The word "reserved'' would be more like it.

But let's go back to that Yeager claim for a moment. If you're even a wee bit familiar with Alaska aviation history, you have to wonder: If Terry Smith was Chuck Yeager, who the hell was the late Don Sheldon?"

Moses maybe?

Sheldon was a Talkeetna bush pilot who once did something very risky, ie. Yeagerish. He backed a float-plane down through whitewater on the Susitna River to rescue some people stranded on a rock. It was extremely risky, but only for him, because a pilot has only marginal control of a plane drifting with the current. Control is regained only after the throttles are pushed forward and the plane begins powering upstream against the current, something Sheldon admitted he was relieved to do after rescuing the people from the rock. That was a Yeager moment. The crash that killed five people near Dillingham wasn't.

But if the WSJ suggestion that flamboyant flying -- for which, once again, there is no evidence -- was whacked out, how about this from Vanity Fair: "In the News -- What Will Become of Alaska's Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport?"

Apparently, hot dog reporter Juli Wiener is of the belief "like many others,'' whom she does not name, that the airport might want to "dissociate itself from a passenger who died in a tragic plane crash.'' Why? Who knows? Because the name might stop people from flying to Anchorage?

That is, of course, why I stopped flying through Chicago O'Hare International Airport. It's named for Lt. Commander Edward Henry "Butch" O'Hare who died...wait for it...wait for it...yes, here it comes...in a PLANE CRASH!