How strange: Smith posted the video, which shows a smiling Obama surrounded by giggling aides as he makes clear that the remark was intended as off the record, at about 2 p.m. today. But within an hour or so, he took it down with this note by way of explanation:

UPDATE: Not so much: Wiser heads than mine at POLITICO made the call to take down the video of the "jackass" moment. Sorry about the tease if you missed it.

CNN didn't miss it. They grabbed the video and began airing it, complete with the Politico watermark.

Why would the heavies at Politico force Smith to take down a video that everyone wanted to see? Smith's commenters, as well as Business Insider and Mediaite, accused the site of "kissing up" to the White House, but that's unlikely given the fact that Politico's business model is based on enabling the ongoing—and now literal—demonization of the president. It's all very queer. We asked Smith for an explanation, and he responded, "You'd better ask those who made the call." He referred us to Politico's flack.

UPDATE: Smith has forwarded a response from Politico's managing editor, Bill Nichols:

We just felt upon reflection that it was more respectful to a fellow news-gathering operation to take it down. We had no complaints from ABC, CNBC, the White House or anyone else.

Nice to know that an online upstart like Politico has officially joined the Washington good ol' boy culture! And that they willfully acknowledge membership, apparently without realizing that it makes them look like snobbish insiders who would rather be in the good graces of their "fellow newsgathering operations" than publish shit that their audience cares about! Someone should tell their media reporter Michael Calderone, the guy they hired to report (respectfully?) on those fellow newsgathering operations.

While the disappearance of the video may have initially been a mystery, Smith's original take on its significance is not. As per standard Politico positioning, it was bracing blast of narrow-minded and defensive self-justification:

And here's that video, which shows, above all else, the president as a normal person — and moreover, a normal pol, utterly immersed in the cable-news frivolity he affects to disdain.

Affects to disdain? Barack Obama thinks something Kanye West did on TV makes him a jackass, ergo Barack Obama secretly loves everything on every cable channel and his sustained years-long critique of the mouth-breathing cable-news idiocy that Politico trades in is a lie and he really loves Ben Smith and he's just like everybody else and One of Us! One of Us! One of Us!

Why couldn't he take that sentence down, instead?

(And we need a break from absurd conspiracy theories about devious flacks, too.)

1. HOLY SHIT BARACK OBAMA THINKS HE IS ALLAH!!

Yesterday, on a conference call with rabbis about healthcare, Obama declared that "we are God's partners in matters of life and death," which is evidence that his messianic tendencies have merged with his hatred of the elderly into a potent tonic of cartoonish villainy. He was inspired by a Rosh Hashanah prayer—"On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed / And on Yom Kippur it is sealed / How many shall pass away and how many shall be born / Who shall live and who shall die"—and signed off the call with a hearty "L'shanah tovah," Hebrew for happy holidays (even though Rosh Hashanah's a ways off, but still). Politico's Ben Smith smelled Drudgebait, so he wrote it up without really drawing attention to how insane people would surely interpret the comments. Drudge smelled traffic from insane people, so he linked to it while only subtly drawing attention to how insane people would interpret the comments. Insane people saw the story on Drudge, and went insane: "You know who used to talk like this? Jim Jones and David Koresh." (Interestingly, Smith's source for the Obama quote was a rabbi who was in on the call and "live-Tweeted" it. That rabbi has since deleted all the posts—including the one about being "God's partner"—and apologized for publicizing it.)

2. HOLY SHIT JAKE "THE OCTAGON" TAPPER THINKS BARACK OBAMA IS MALCOLM X!!!!

ABC News' Tapper wrote a blog post yesterday in which he quoted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's spokesman saying, of the healthcare bill, "we are determined to get something done this year by any legislative means necessary." Malcolm X once strung together the words "by any means necessary," so Journalist Jake decided to add a video of Malcolm X to his post just to underscore the point that Barack Obama is a radical Muslim black separatist. We kid! While we've been perfectly happy to mock Tapper in the past for offenses big and small, we think this (crazy) conflation of Malcolm X and the legislative process is motivated more by a misguided attempt on Tapper's part to be cheeky rather than to remind terrified old people that Obama hates "working white people," or to get Drudge's attention. Poor Tapper has been furiously defending himself on Twitter, reminding folks that "President Obama not even mentioned," and the DailyKos says, "Seriously, WTF Jake?"

3. HOLY SHIT SOMEONE THINKS DYLAN RATIGAN SHOULD BE FIRED!!!!!!!!!!

That's right—the president of a group has written an angry letter to MSNBC, and Politico's Michael Calderone has it exclusively! Apparently MSNBC, like Fox News, cut its tape of the guys carrying assault rifles outside Obama's Phoenix town hall to make it look like it was all white guys, when the most prominent gun-toter was in fact black. Which means, according to Greg Gutfeld, that MSNBC is trying to start a "race war." And the president of Americans for Limited Government has written a letter to MSNBC demanding that Ratigan, Contessa Brewer, Touré (!), and "any and all others involved in any way with the fraudulent 'news'" be terminated immediately. Now that we think of it, we've got to get started on our item about the letter we just got from MindY0urOwnBiz demanding that President Obama immediately seek the resignations of "geitner and bernaki." (We don't blame you, Michael, we blame August.)

The New Republic's Gabriel Sherman has learned about Wolffe's proposal for 30 Days: A Portrait of the White House at Work, which would be an insider-y, behind the scenes account of the Obama White House. Wolffe, whose book Renegade, The Making of a President chronicled the Obama campaign, and his now-revealed proposal present an ethical dilemma for the White House. Would it be acceptable for them to grant special access to the presidency to a man working on behalf of corporate interests in his side gig?

In the proposal, Wolffe writes that he has personal relationships with Obama officials at "the highest level" who have already "expressed support informally" for the project. Wolffe envisions a fly-on-the-wall account of a month inside the White House, where he'll be "capturing group dynamics and people in action."

Meanwhile the White House claims that Wolffe has yet to "formally present" his plans:

"Mr. Wolffe has not formally presented the White House with a book proposal," a White House spokesperson wrote in a statement to TNR this afternoon. "When and if he does we will evaluate it as we evaluate numerous others, taking account of all relevant factors."

And of course, Richard Wolffe doesn't see any problem with any of the things he's presently doing:

Wolffe doesn't see his corporate ties as a potential conflict. "The idea that journalists are somehow not engaged in corporate activities is not really in touch with what's going on," he told Politico's Ben Smith in June. "You tell me where the line is between business and journalism."

Sherman goes on to detail an interesting encounter between Wolffe and Ben Smith that took place in an airport lounge after Wolffe read something critical Smith had written about him, a story that only adds to the avalanche of unflattering information to come out about Wolffe in the last few days.

VandHei and Harris are nauseatingly self-satisfied people and must be tyrants to work for. They dazzled Rose with talk about how newspapers are dying but Politico makes money and deserves a Pulitzer Prize. Allbritton actually said that.

Also: VandeHei respects POWER and FEAR and claims—literally—that every member of Congress reads Politico OBSESSIVELY, and Harris talks about how avant garde it was of him to hire an untested Ben Smith from the pissant New York Observer and doesn't seem to know that he actually hired Smith from the New York Daily News, which is the sixth-most widely read newspaper in the Unites States. Nice work turning a nobody loser bum like him into a WINNER.

Then, after bragging ad nauseum about how Politico goes DEEP and is IMMEDIATE and OWNS things and devotes more resources to the White House than any other news organization, VandeHei admits that the one thing he'd really like to know the answer to is "how does it really work" in the White House. Seriously.

[Via The Plank.]

Reines, pictured with his boss, is the guy behind the "reset button" misspelling fiasco that sparked a war between Russia and the United States more than three weeks ago, and Smith goes deep on the episode, offering a richly layered and prodigiously sourced 1,100-word tick-tock of a stupid thing that happened more than three weeks ago!

Reines forgot to spell-check the button. He apologized for it in a kind of funny statement. But Smith gives it the Cuban Missile Crisis treatment, using words like "drama" and "buzzing" and "tussles" and "blunder" and "appalled" to describe petty complaints from the media regarding Reines' failure to tuck them in at night during Clinton's first trip to Europe and the Middle East—one reporter even wrote on his blog about it!

Ben, this is three weeks old. Please reread your boss' memo about the "velocity" that Politico stories need in order to be "ESSENTIAL READING" so Politico can become a "KEY OUTLET" and you can "OWN THE MORNING"—hey wait, Drudge linked to it. OK, then. Keep up the good work?

Like, for god sakes, yes motherfucker I majored in personal electronics assembly but there just weren't a lot of opportunities in that.

*But isn't this just because bloggers do not wear pajamas, being as they pass out in their clothes?

Subject: Blogging from Applebee's

Hi Ben -

I hope you are well. I wanted to see if you would have any interest in setting up camp this week or in the next few weeks at Applebee's in Times Square so you can interview "true Americans" about the election, candidates, etc. We would obviously set up an area for you and provide food throughout the week. We thought this would give you great insight into what Americans think for your blog, etc.

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks!

MerchantCircle is continuing to spam local businesses, despite promised by CEO Ben Smith that it would stop. Smith still hasn't addressed complaints that his company autodials merchants with false claims, a full year after he told John Battelle that "he's on it." Even to this day, MerchantCircle's targets complain in the comments on Battelle's Searchblog. MerchantCircle says it plans to reach an additional 750,000 businesses over the next year. Local businesses make money through their phone lines. Telemarketers, they'll gladly tell you, take bread from their tables. Is this a merchant-first business model? Or MerchantCircle-first?

A directory on its face, MerchantCircle at its root, it is a cynical, poorly-conceived search-engine-optimization play using deceptive techniques to harvest business data. MerchantCircle is notorious for autodialing merchants to build its database. The recorded message tries to dupe merchants into entering their data with the lie that someone has left a bad review. It's a classic bait-and-switch not unlike Rapleaf's "someone has searched for you" emails. Hoffman's new buddies have used this technique for at least a year despite numerous complaints.

MerchantCircle's response, like Hoffman's has been to pay lip service to its critics. Entrepreneur John Battelle contacted CEO Ben Smith a year ago. Smith promised to address the deceptive practice but — surprise, surprise — MerchantCircle continues the spam-calling to this day.

And Auren Hoffman can't plead ignorance to MerchantCircle's behavior. He has been prominently listed as an advisor to the company for quite some time.

How will Hoffman spin this one? His words promise one thing. His actions, quite another. As in the real world, one's reputation is best judged not by what one says, but by the company one keeps.

• Here come the layoffs at the Philadelphia Inquirer. [NYT]
  
• The Times might feel confident enough that everyone's forgotten the whole Jayson Blair thing to ditch the Public Editor position altogether. [NYO]
  
• Gerry Levin's "inner poet" turned out to be some dude who runs a spa. [NYP]
  
• That Allbritton online politics thing scores another defection; this time it's Ben Smith of the Daily News, who snared yesterday's scoop on the stolen Giuliani documents. [NYDN]
  
• Radar's John Cook, Jeff Bercovici get all Woodward and Bernstein on some dude who wrote a mean thing in Brit Hume's Wikipedia entry. [Radar]
  

• Diane Sawyer's not going anywhere. At least until June. [NYT]
  
• Liberty Media's John Malone looking to pick up some Cablevision assets. [NYP]
  
• Union representing WSJ reporters and editors takes out ad in NYT lambasting its own paper. [WWD]
  
• Did the Times use a source who had an interest in the direction of the story he commented on? We're shocked. [Brooklyn Vegan, first comment]
  
• We hope Jon Friedman isn't as quick to pull the plug on his loved ones as he is on Katie Couric. [MarketWatch]
  
• WaPo's Richard Cohen makes HuffPo's Rachel Sklar fear for her decayingg ovaries. [ETP]

[t]he top-secret plan for Rudy Giuliani's bid for the White House. The remarkably detailed dossier sets out the budgets, schedules and fund-raising plans that will underpin the former New York mayor's presidential campaign - as well as his aides' worries that personal and political baggage could scuttle his run.

I have to say that your article goes miles toward identifying yourself as a Giuliani non-supporter...Hopefully, if something comes up in McCain's past, you have the balls to publish that too... And if Giuliani wins the nomination, can we all please kick your ass?

Revealed: Rudy's '08 battle plans
Readers Write: Open Threats Edition [NYDN]

So I think Ben Smith left his dirty laundry on the floor between our desks. Yuck! I left it on his chair to greet him when he comes in tomorrow.

That's the chair, with bag and sock, above. And there's a closeup of what Rose calls "the incriminating dirty sock" here. Ew.

More on NYDN Bloggers [The Derek Rose Blog]

Smith says he'll be moving crosstown — considerably crosstown, and also considerably downmarket, though also considerably up-circ — next Wednesday, and that he'll be writing a weekly politics column and launching a politics blog for the paper, which we imagine will complete directly with The Politicker. Observer editor Peter Kaplan, we hear, is already hot on the trail of a replacement for his lead politics writer. We tried to get one of the two to deliver an Observerish pithy comment on the news, but both provided merely standard HR platitudes. Oh well.

Ben Smith News [The Politicker/NYO]