First Fox got caught lying about the crowd at Michele Bachmann's healthcare protest, then it got caught lying about the size of the crowd at Sarah Palin's book-signing. But the straw that broke the camel's back came last week when producers showed a screenshot of a horrible cruel attack on Sarah Palin called Going Rouge when they should have showed a screenshot of a brilliant sacred book by Sarah Palin called Going Rogue.

So now they've decided to start caring about "quality" to avoid embarrassing Palin again in the future, and sent out a staff memo, obtained by FishbowlDC, threatening everyone who screws up again with "termination." To that end, and to make things easier since facts are hard, Fox will "zero base" production, eliminating everything that has a potential for being wrong from each broadcast. It will be exceedingly boring to watch, but at least Roger Ailes will never have to "explain, retract, qualify or apologize again." Because the whole "never apologize, never back down, always attack" routine only works if you don't constantly get caught lying.

Subject: Quality Control We had a mistake on Newsroom today when a wrong book cover went on screen during a guest segment, the kind of thing that can fall through the cracks on any day with any story given the large amount of elements and editorial we run through our broadcasts. Unfortunately, it is the latest in a series of mistakes on FNC in recent months. We have to all improve our performance in terms of ensuring error-free broadcasts. To that end, there was a meeting this afternoon between senior managers and the folks who run the daytime shows in which expectations were reviewed, and the following results were announced: Effective immediately, there is zero tolerance for on-screen errors. Mistakes by any member of the show team that end up on air may result in immediate disciplinary action against those who played significant roles in the "mistake chain," and those who supervise them. That may include warning letters to personnel files, suspensions, and other possible actions up to and including termination, and this will all obviously play a role in performance reviews. So we now face a great opportunity to review and improve on our workflow and quality control efforts. To make the most of that opportunity, effective immediately, Newsroom is going to "zero base" our newscast production. That means we will start by going to air with only the most essential, basic, and manageable elements. To share a key quote from today's meeting: "It is more important to get it right, than it is to get it on." We may then build up again slowly as deadlines and workloads allow so that we can be sure we can quality check everything before it makes air, and we never having to explain, retract, qualify or apologize again. Please know that jobs are on the line here. I can not stress that enough. I will review again during our Monday editorial meeting, and in the days and weeks ahead. This experience should make us stronger editorially, and I encourage everyone to invest themselves one hundred and ten percent in this effort.

[Via Business Insider.]

Here's a video clip of MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan literally saying "call your congressman" last month, during one of his screeds about "corporate communism." And here he is literally writing "tell your congressman" on the Huffington Post.

King, a former Associated Press reporter, is a devotee of the old school. He once freaked out on CNN management after Larry King hosted an inaugural event for George W. Bush and hugged him on the air. It's kind of quaint, really. Replacing Dobbs' xenophobic self-regarding bluster with King's reasonable, if horserace-obsessed, demeanor is a conscious effort on CNN's part to distance itself from cable demagoguery. From CNN chief Jon Klein's conference call with staffers, via the New York Times:

"John doing that show is obviously a statement about the importance of real nonpartisan news to CNN, and also the importance of political coverage to CNN," Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN/U.S., told employees on a conference call Thursday morning.

We don't really know what to say about CNN. This is the right strategy, but it's a losing strategy. And it can't last long.

On Friday morning, Goldman announced on CNBC's air that Microsoft was reducing its revenue guidance by $200,000,000. Because sophisticated investors know that means that Microsoft was making less money, they dumped the stock—volume spiked instantly from 1.3 million shares traded to 6.9 million, and the price dropped by about 1%. In the words of the network's own Mark Haines, "the Microsoft news just bombed the NASDAQ." The rapid drop on the left-hand side of this chart of Microsoft's performance Friday just before 11 a.m. coincides with Goldman's announcement.

Unfortunately, he got it precisely backward: Microsoft was cutting its operating expenses by $200,000,000. Goldman never corrected or apologized for the error, though he did offer a "clarification" shortly after and reported the guidance accurately in order to "make sure we all understand." Business Insider asked CNBC if that was it, or if an apology was in order:

Given the damage the report caused, we were surprised by this. We asked CNBC whether it planned to issue an apology. The answer was no. The network rep said, simply, "We corrected [the mistake] on air."

Frankly, we share CNBC's contempt for its audience. If you're stupid enough to spend money based on what CNBC says, you deserve to lose it. On the other hand, there's a killing to be made in CNBC fuck-up arbitrage.

Is Fox news developing a little bit of a persecution complex? Uh, yes. Glenn Beck's pointing a Louisville Slugger at the camera while the network feigns surprise that an administration's calling them out for being a complete mouthpiece of the right? They've carried the "Fair and Balanced" pseudo-euphemism for so long now it's starting to sound like they actually believe their own bullshit, which might be the place this Freudian pant-peeing's coming from. This all goes without mentioning (until now) Jane Hall's dishing on having left Fox News precisely because there was such a lack of debate, and Shep Smith's broadcasting like he just knows they're a bunch of clowns. Even O'Reilly can't play a straight face with viewers while Glenn Beck straight-up calls his fans what they are: zombies.

So, yeah: call a crack addict a crack addict and they'll probably get testy about how they're not a crack addict until they're out of crack or in rehab. But there's nothing like the fleeting, peaty taste of self-awareness, especially when it comes to cable news (see: The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, who still won't let themselves call what they make anything but "comedy"). Wonder how long it's gonna take for Fox News to drop the schtick and basically tell their viewers, yes: we're the Al Jezeera of the RNC, let's rock out with our cocks out. It'll probably never happen, but perchance to dream, right?

TV critics get thousands of promotional e-mails every day, and when Fox News sent one to Barnhart last week trying to generate excitement over Glenn Beck's batshit conspiracies about the swine flu vaccine, he thought it was kind of funny. So he posted this to Twitter:

Fox News PR just emailed to let me know Glenn Beck will be raising fears tonight on his TV show. No poop, Poirot.

It's funny because it's true. Fox's unabashed fearmongering—indeed, it's proud promotion of fearmongering as such—tickled Keith Olbermann, who mentioned the e-mail on his show.

But then something strange happened: On Monday, the Huffington Post's Danny Shea posted a story calling bullshit on Barnhart and Olbermann. Shea quoted an anonymous Fox News spokesperson saying the network never sent any such e-mail:

"We never sent anything to Barnhart and he refused to respond to us when directly asked who he received that from," a Fox News spokesperson said.

The distinction is important, as e-mails from the PR department can be perceived as on-the-record and thus legitimized as the network's official position on a subject.

Yes, what a vitally important distinction! Barnhart sadly—and stupidly—deleted the e-mail immediately after he wrote about it on Twitter, so he was left defenseless after Fox denied it and implied that he's a liar who makes up fake mean Tweets about Fox's upstanding public relations professionals. He searched far and wide for a copy of the errant fear-raising publicity blast to prove that he's not, but to no avail. He wrote a mild blog post saying he could have sworn he got that e-mail, but in the face of such a strong denial from Fox, it didn't amount to much.

Then Barnhart remembered his GMail account and—lo and behold!—found the e-mail that Fox said it did not send him:

The e-mail, as you can see, was a "Fox Fan Scoop"—a newsletter sent out by the network to people stupid or lonely enough to describe themselves as "Fox fans." It's an important distinction, because Fox Fan Scoops can be perceived as on-the-record and thus legitimized as the network's official position on the subject of how the swine flu vaccine "scares the heck" out of Glenn Beck.

So when the anonymous Fox spokesperson said "we" never sent such an e-mail to Barnhart, was she talking about "we" the Fox News PR department, or "we" the network that the PR department actually represents?

"'We' as in the Fox News PR department," says Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti. "And Barnhart's blog post confirms that it did not come from the Fox News PR department." No, it just came from the part of Fox News that relates to the public by sending out e-mails to promote it's television shows. Again, it's an important distinction. Anyway, Aaron Barnhart—whom, by way of full disclosure, we know and like—is not a liar, and the anonymous Fox News flack who told the Huffington Post that "we" never sent the e-mail is.

That strikes us as something of a demotion—Holmes appeared frequently on CNN's air, especially during the election, and also has been a regular guest as a right-wing talking head for Bill Maher. Now it looks like she's trying to get out of the punditry game and refashion herself as a newsreader—she's filling in this week and next as an anchor on ABC News Now, ABC News' (mostly failed) attempt to create a 24-hour news network online. No one's watching, but at least she doesn't have to defend all those foaming-at-the-mouth teabaggers who hate her because she's black, right? Must be a relief. We expect Ed Rollins to show up as a CBS News intern any day.

An ABC News spokeswoman insists that Holmes is only "reading the news and debriefing correspondents in the field" as a freelancer in a one-off gig, but it sounds like a tryout to us. If indeed it is, it should come as no surprise that ABC News would move an avowed political partisan and right-wing operative into a purported news slot, because it seemed to work OK for George Stephanopoulos.

Holmes was still listed as a contributor on CNN's website today when asked a CNN spokeswoman about the new gig; the spokeswoman confirmed that Holmes is no longer with the network.

Sure, it was for a good cause, but the fact that Olbermann believed that an hour-long monologue worthy of Fidel Castro was something that people wanted or needed to see, and that his bosses actually let him get away with it, brought to mind Ben Affleck's flawless SNL caricature of Olbermann's mammoth self-regard. It seemed at times last night that he actually took some pointers from Affleck's performance — Olbermann's ego is expansive enough to take such jabs as loving tribute, and incorporate them into his self-image like some ravenous blob that from a sci-fi movie. Watch them both below, and you be the judge.

If you really want to change the course of the health care debate and change minds, Keith—hell, if you even just want to inform people about the world around them, like your sainted Edward R. Murrow, now and again—try pointing the camera at something other than yourself. And let us know when you conquer death.

Ben Affleck doing Keith Olbermann:

Keith Olbermann unwittingly doing Ben Affleck doing Keith Olbermann:

We initially pulled the clip because we thought it showed Brewer misreading the poll data as showing a drop in approval of the congressional GOP from 13% to 9% when in fact, according to the on-screen graphic, it showed the reverse—a four-point rise. But it turns out the graphic is wrong—there was a four-point drop relating to Congress, the GOP, and approval. But it's not, as Brewer says, that just 9% of the public approve of the GOP in Congress. It's that 9% of Republicans approve of Congress, down from 13% of Republicans last month.

Big difference. Especially when, according to Gallup, Republicans and Democrats are virtually tied on the "generic ballot" vote for which party people intend to vote for in their congressional elections, with Republicans gaining two percentage points and Democrats dropping six since July.

As you can see, Brewer made the same mistake with the Democratic numbers, misreporting an 18-point drop in Democrats' approval of Congress as an 18-point drop in the public's approval of Democrats in Congress. But you can hear in her voice how happy it makes her to say that Republican approval "slipped into the single digits," and she probably wishes it were true just as much as Fox News producers wished Mark Foley and Mark Sanford were Democrats.

The last time Olbermann took a sudden, unexplained absence from the show, it turned out to have been a hissy-fit work stoppage after Rachel Maddow booked Ben Affleck and MSNBC brass refused to back Olbermann's attempt to bigfoot her and steal the interview. After CityFile reported on the flap, Olbermann blamed the absence on his mother's death, which had occurred two weeks prior.

We asked an MSNBC publicist where Olbermann has been and, she responded: "He's going to discuss it on the show tonight, he's back tonight."

There could obviously be a variety of interesting and non-interesting explanations for the days off, which he took on the 11th, 14th, 18th, 22nd, 23rd, 25th, 28th, and 29th of September, and we're just wondering, is all.

UPDATE: A tipster sent in the screengrab below from Saturday's Red Sox game at Yankee Stadium. We posted it, saying Olbermann was at the game, because that looks exactly like Keith Olbermann. But we have it on good authority that it is not, in fact, Keith Olbermann. Our corporate brothers at Deadspin got the same image from the same tipster earlier this week, and didn't use it. We knew that. What we didn't know was that Deadspin checked with Olbermann to confirm that it was him, and found that it was not. We should have checked, too, although we didn't think to because doesn't that look exactly like Keith Olbermann? Down to the glasses?

In as sad an indication we've seen yet of how low the politico-media complex has fallen, it took the fucking White House of the United States of America to point out, on its blog, that you can't lose money on the 2010 Olympics if it's still 2009:

RHETORIC: BECK SAID VANCOUVER LOST $1 BILLION WHEN IT "HAD THE OLYMPICS."
Glenn Beck said, "Vancouver lost, how much was it? they lost a billion dollars when they had the Olympics." [Transcript, Glenn Beck Show, 9/29/09]

REALITY: VANCOUVER'S OLYMPICS WILL NOT TAKE PLACE UNTIL 2010. Vancouver will host the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games from February 12 – 28, 2010 and March 12-21, 2010, respectively. [Vancouver2010.com, accessed 9/29/09]

That's why the White House has a blog: To periodically remind us of transparently true and immutable facts about our inescapably temporal existence.

Obama plans an unprecedented (for a president) near-Full Ginsburg this weekend, with appearances on NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, CBS's Face the Nation, CNN's State of the Union, and some Spanish show on some Spanish channel. The only reason it's not an actual Full Ginsburg—defined as a one-day appearance of all five English-language Sunday political talk shows—is that he's deliberately snubbing Fox News Sunday, presumably due to security concerns.

But no worries—Fox will have plenty to cover without Obama, because while he's busy answering questions about precisely how racist every hardworking white American is and why he's so arrogant as to agree to answer questions from the very people who are asking him that very question, Michele Bachmann and a rogues gallery of other non-Kenyan Americans will be gathered at the Omni Hotel for the Values Voters Summit talking about why it's important to vote on such values as whiteness, American-ness, and not letting white teenagers get beaten up on schoolbuses by black kids, which Obama is for.

So there will be a lot of ping-ponging back and forth on cable between clips of Obama, probably saying reasonable-sounding things about putting childishness behind us and getting on with the business of reform, and clips of Carrie Prejean (who addressed the conference today), Stephen Baldwin, Bachmann, Tim Pawleny, Mitt Romney, and all the other bright lights of the Republican Party explaining why it's racist to call someone a racist for carrying a sign featuring the first African-American president dressed up like an African witch doctor. And each viewpoint will no doubt be presented with judicious equanimity, fairness, and balance, because they are always and forever equal in merit no matter what the holders of those views are actually saying, because that's what journalism is. Enjoy!

For kicks, Talking Points Memo published some of the breakout panels that the Values Voter Summit will feature:

"Speechless - Silencing The Christians"
"Thugocracy - Fighting the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy"
"Activism and Conservatism: Fit to a Tea (Party)"
"The Threat of Illegal Immigration"
"Obamacare: Rationing Your Life Away"
"The New Masculinity"

We can't figure out what the "new masculinity" thing is about—maybe this Republican guy? He seems manly. And Obama will hold his own breakout panel, too, after his orgy of self-veneration—a death one!

Interestingly, there are troubling signs that the GOP has come to recognize the political peril of handing over the party to former porn actresses/failed beauty contestants and other crazies. Sarah Palin, the belle of the wingnut ball, has inexplicably decided to skip the conference after previously having pledged to attend, as has Newt Gingrich. And crypto-secessionist Texas governor Rick Perry has asked that his name be removed from the ballot for the conference's GOP 2012 nomination straw poll. The good news is that Mitt Romney, who has thus far ducked many overt associations with the Teabaggers, will be there this weekend, up to his hips in it, and will hopefully be placed on the record as to Obama's noncitizenship, support for beating up white kids, and socialist tendencies for trying to impose a Massachusetts-style healthcare system on America.

Happy Friday.

We learned yesterday, when they posted and quickly removed the leaked CNBC video of Barack Obama calling Kanye West a "jackass," that Politico endeavors to be "respectful" in its coverage of the D.C. media—that's the word managing editor Bill Nichols used to explain the spiking of the video. (He meant, we presume, that they want to keep their reporters getting booked on NBC News programs.) And today, we see a perfect example of that respectful coverage in the site's cheeky little version of the Emmys for pundits, wherein they strung together clips of some of the best practitioners of lowest-common-denominator punditry and asked readers to rank them by how "good" they are at it. The intro explains a lot:

Hollywood knows full well how to craft entertainment — and Sunday night's Emmy Awards will honor the best of the year. But here in Washington, the players know how to entertain and inform with that finest of all television genres: the political chat show. On Sundays, the hosts wake up painfully early to make news and analyze the passing scene. During the week, expert guests zip around town to studios where they pontificate at any given moment - and on any given topic.

The acknowledgment that entertainment is even on the agenda, let alone precedes "inform" in the Politico schematic, pretty much says it all. Of course it's accurate—cable news is entertainment, and Sunday hosts do want to be the ones "making news," rather than their guests. But that's very bad and wrong and they shouldn't be praised for it.

But in PoliticoWorld, our intrepid reporting class is judged not on its facility for rooting out falsehoods or illuminating issues of pressing public concern, but in categories like "Best Gets" and "Best Dynamics." Who's a best get nominee? Why, Barney Frank, of course, because he pulled out his earpiece and walked out during a CNBC interview. Now that is some fantastic TV talking. And why is New Gingrinch a "Best Get" nominee?

Although he hasn't held elective office in more than a decade, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) hasn't given up the power that goes with being a lawmaker.

That's right: People who say shit on TV that Politico writes about now have as much power as actual, sitting legislators who have been elected by their constituents. Because they are on TV.

And when it comes to good cable-news "dynamics," what do you think Politico looks for?

Conflict makes for good television drama. But not every commentator can bring the sizzle solo. Sometimes a producer needs to throw Feisty Pundit A into the mix so that Feisty Pundit B will let loose. A producer needs to look for some on-air chemistry - a little charm between two people who want to rip each other to shreds. And it's out there, all right.

That's actually not a bad summation of the indictment of everything that's wrong with cable-news culture. Now who do you think is best at it?

P.S. Politico media reporter Michael Calderone, who wrote up this "respectful" enterprise, is a good guy, but jesus.

The photo comes from a shoot Greenberg — whom Beck has lambasted as a liberal photo-agitator — did for a GQ story on Beck back in June, in which she made the emotionally unstable Mormon cry. Hey, as long as she makes him look good, right?

Here's the deeply unsettling behind-the-scenes video we obtained of a bawling Beck at that shoot, which we first published exclusively in June:

And now a tear-free shot from the same series is on newsstands around the country promoting Beck's pudgy mug. Which is funny because Beck berated Greenberg almost exactly one year ago for photoshopping her Atlantic portrait of John McCain to make him look like a vampire, and for "terrorizing" children in her infamous series of crying toddlers.

As for the Time story itself, it's a masterwork of equivalence journalism. You can literally feel reporter David Von Drehle's terror at being accused of "taking sides" in the "debate" about whether Beck—who didn't consent to an interview—is a populist hero or a paranoid spinner of conspiracy theories. It's a bizarre, claustrophobic world that Time reporters inhabit, one in which it is literally impossible for the subject of one's reporting to make an objectively untrue assertion. One false move, and Von Drehle might be forced to actually defend a proposition to thousands of outraged, irrational commenters. Better to equivocate.

So we get tortured sentences like these:

Between the liberal fantasies about Brownshirts at town halls and the conservative concoctions of brainwashed children goose-stepping to school, you'd think the Palm in Washington had been replaced with a Munich beer hall.

• Liberal fantasies? Men armed with assault rifles and pistols and wearing shirts calling for the "blood of tyrants" to be shed have attended Obama's public events. A woman shouted "Heil Hitler!" at an Israeli Jew defending Obama's proposals at one healthcare townhall. But on the other hand, the president of the United States told America's schoolchildren to do their homework.

He is afraid that Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people" - which doesn't mean, he hastens to add, that he actually thinks "Obama doesn't like white people."

• Here's what Beck actually said, which, thankfully, was actually recorded by a video camera, a device that creates a record of objective reality: "This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture—I don't know what it is." [Emphasis added.] But on the other hand, Glenn Beck's characterization of his own thoughts at the moment that he expressed them ought not tell the whole story about what Glenn Beck thinks.

Like William Jennings Bryan whipping up populist Democrats over moneyed interests or the John Birch Society brooding over fluoride, Beck mines the timeless theme of the corrupt Them thwarting a virtuous Us.

• A Democratic populist once inveighed against actual, real wealthy people who wielded actual, real power over our political system. On the other hand, avowedly racist right-wing xenophobes once accused the U.S. government of undermining the Constitution by adding a common dentifrice to the water supply.

And so on. After discussing some of the truthful things that Beck has publicized, like Van Jones' trutherism, Von Drehle does another "on the other hand" pivot to examine just one of the many falsehoods Beck has promoted: "But he also spins yarns of less substance. He tells his viewers that Obama's volunteerism efforts are really an attempt to create a 'civilian national-security force that is just as strong, just as powerful as the military.'"

Von Drehle is correct in characterizing Beck's claims about Obama's attempts to create a civilian national-security force as having less substance than his claims about ACORN and Van Jones. Because they have no substance at all. They are lies. But saying that outright—as opposed to locating them on some mythical metric of truthfulness in which all claims seem to have some "substance"—would constitute an assertion about Beck's honesty and reliability. Time is clearly not the appropriate forum for such a conversation.

Business Week tallies Ailes' stunning take, a big chunk of which comes from his cut of Fox News' cashflow, which surged 65% to half a billion dollars last year. Murdoch's bonus, on the other hand, fell 60% because the rest of the company sucks.

That would include Fox Business Channel, Ailes' stillborn brainchild for taking on CNBC, which cost millions and won't earn a penny by Fox's estimation until 2011, which means never. Did Ailes' bonus take a commensurate hit for the $49 million Fox Business lost last year? No! He got an additional $4.4 million in stock, because "the fair market value of the channel 'reached two times its cost.'" We're guessing they calculated the fair market value of a money-losing channel that regularly fails to garner enough viewers for Nielsen to accurately measure by asking Mr. Ailes how much money he would like.

Color of Change, the advocacy organization co-founded by Glenn Beck's archnemesis Jones, began calling on advertisers to pull their ads from Beck's show in early August, shortly after Beck accused Obama of having a "deep-seated hatred for white people." Since then, 62 advertisers—from Geico to Proctor & Gamble to Men's Wearhouse—have pulled their ads from his show even as his ratings surged.

Fox's stock response to the boycott has been that, while some advertisers may have moved their spots to other shows on the network, no one was pulling ads from Fox outright, so the whole hubbub wasn't affecting the network's revenues. But today, citing "data analyzed from industry sources," Color of Change announced in a release that Beck's weekly ad revenue dropped from $1,060,000 in the first week of August, when the boycott began, to $492,000 in the first week of September. The chart above shows the drop.

Color of Change's release doesn't say where it got that data, but we've been told the source and shown the raw data on the condition that we don't reveal where it came from: a well-known firm that tracks advertising revenue and sells its proprietary data. The firm monitors advertising on shows and uses rate-cards, ratings information, and its own industry contacts to estimate how much advertisers paid for each spot. While the firm sometimes performs analysis for the media, it generally doesn't like its proprietary information becoming public, which is why Color of Change won't let anyone say where it came from. While the numbers are only estimates and can't really account for the sorts of deals networks make with advertisers all the time, the firm is respected and regularly used as a best-guess estimate of ad revenue.

The chart puts the lie to Fox's claim about ads just shifting around the network—that may be true, but salesmen sell shows, and at some point the dearth of people who are willing to use Beck's paranoid sideshow to promote their brands has to affect pricing. And as we've shown before, he's been pretty much reduced to shilling for penis-enlargers and miracle egg-cookers. We've asked Fox for comment, but they haven't responded and almost certainly won't. UPDATE: They did! Kind of—a Fox spokeswoman directed us to the response they offered to TVNewser: "The Color of Change figures are wildly inaccurate on all fronts — revenue has not been affected in any way."

The irony here is that the revenue plunge comes during a month when Beck's ratings were off the charts, and Fox couldn't even capitalize on it. And in Beck's defense, the biggest week-to-week drop—from nearly $900,000 during the week ending August 16 to to just over $500,000 during the week ending August 23—came when he was off the air.

Glenn Beck always says false things and then says, "I'm just asking questions." Like yesterday, when—after the White House threw Van Jones under the bus—he said, "Will Van Jones still work with the White House? [I] can't get answers." So some funny kids over at Fark decided to amplify that little trick thusly: "Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990? We're not saying he's guilty, but he won't deny it!" And an internet meme was born—according to Mediaite, last week the top suggested Google search terms when you typed in "Glenn Beck" were "rape" and "murder" (they've since been scrubbed).

Last week, an anonymous 34-year-old computer science student decided the meme needed a home, so he started GlennBeckRapedandMurderedaYoungGirlin1990.com, complete with a fake arrest report and a plethora of information on the "case":

We think the gag strides the border between clever and stupid: Accusing someone, even in jest, of raping and murdering a young girl is tasteless and damns the whole enterprise with useless hyperbole. But the site's mimicry of Beck's bullshit tactics is right-on: "We await evidence that he didn't rape and murder a young girl in 1990!" In any case, it's a relatively harmless little internet parody that now Glenn Beck is making sure you know about by trying to shut it down:

His lawyers are claiming that the site is a "defamatory domain," which it would be if any reasonable person could come away from the site believing that Beck actually did rape and murder a young girl in 1990. But it's an obvious attempt to parody his style, and his efforts to shut it down will only increase the number of times "Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990" are encountered by Google's indexing bots.

According to the site's proprietor, who wouldn't give us his name and therefore should be regarded with suspicion, Beck's lawyers have gone after the domain registrar, the hosting service, and even the data center that houses the servers on which his site lives.

"They basically tried to contact every level to shut it down," he says. "My hosting service isn't happy with the situation, but they're standing by me until they get a court order." The anonymous proprietor says he won't reveal his identity because "I don't want my house to get egged," and says the site is designed to "release frustration" about the way the right wing distorts political debate.

"I'm not actually accusing him of these things," he says. "He uses these techniques."

The paper trail of Beck's efforts to shut the site down can be found here. We contacted Beck's personal publicist, who declined to comment but confirmed that Beck believes the site to be defamatory and is trying to get it taken down.

Anyway, that's the story of GlennBeckRapedandMurderedaYoungGirlin1990.com, the site that promotes for parody purposes the false rumor that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. And here's the gag that started the whole thing:

Like many fallen legislators before him, Mr. Blago has put pen to paper to produce a tome, entitled The Governor. The title alone says it all: here's a man who's astonishing God complex knows no bounds, especially when it comes to playing the media.

From day one, he has courted the press and used various airwaves, interwebs and channels to plead his case: "I did nothing wrong." But now that his book's been released, his true colors come out. So he writes about his first appearance before a judge:

As expected, the courtroom was packed with the media. These are the kinds of things they just love. Good news; forget about it...

This was going to be a great day for them. This is what they live for. The misfortune of others is a mother lode of fortune for them. And in a mad dash to write about the bad news, they're so busy tripping over each other and trying not to get scooped by the competition that the search for the truth is a casualty. It's collateral damage.
....
It's a rat race out there. It's a rush. It's a rush to beat the competition. It's a rush to sell newspapers. It's a rush to judgment! Screw the truth. Edward R. Murrow would roll over in his grave.

Indeed he would. Blago also suggests that the newspaper industry's taste for tabloid blood "undermines" democracy, or some shit. Because, you know, "allegedly" trying to sell a Senate seat helps further the cause. But, as with all things Blago, this must all be taken with a grain of salt, for his clear disregard for reality borders on pathological.

Today, in an interview about the damning FBI transcripts, Blago claims the comments were "taken out of context," such as his remark that he wants "to make money" and won't give up the seat for "nothing."

Blago views the media as nothing more than a stage on which he can act out a nearly primal play about the deficiencies of news-making and, in fact, the political world as a whole. He knew news folk would latch onto his story, a move that both gave him room to grow his ego and simultaneously mind-fuck the nation by pulling the strings like a puppet master who's not only in on the joke, but wrote it himself. (The most definitive proof, we think, came when he made a bid for a reality program that automatically assumes one's "celebrity" status.)

Sadly, all this pain and sorrow hasn't helped book sales. The Governor is only 5,519 on Amazon's entire book list. Not too shabby, no, but certainly not what he expected, we're sure. Maybe the next act will be better.