Dobbs would fit much more snugly into the right-wing stable of shouting heads over at Fox than he did at CNN, where he made an awkward lie of the cable network's attempt to position itself as a non-partisan straight-news alternative to MSNBC on the left and Fox News on the right. But Dobbs hasn't exactly been a ratings dynamo: He was recently losing not only to Shep Smith at Fox but Chris Matthews at MSNBC and even Jane Velez Mitchell at CNN's HLN (formerly Headline News). Burn.

Maybe once Dobbs is unshackled from his CNN overlords he can finally make a bright future for himself in a foreign TV land, one that believes in true opportunity for downtrodden and wandering émigrés like himself.

UPDATE: Video of the announcement is above. Dobbs' comments have observers speculating he'll make some kind of political move.

UPDATE: Maybe not; a CNN statement says "Lou has now decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere."

Murdoch and his Fox News Channel monsters like Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly love to frame their fight with Olbermann and his network MSNBC as petty personal bickering. Of course they do; that creates a false equivalency between the two sides. Here's what Murdoch said on a conference call for Fox parent News Corp. the other day, according to the New York Times' Brian Stelter:

Mr. Murdoch pointed a finger at MSNBC, saying "we did not start this abuse." But he said the fighting became "personal" and "finally we had to allow people to retaliate... The moment they stop, we'll stop... We don't believe in it. We don't think it's good business."

So, let's review this supposedly "personal" fighting.

Olbermann has:

• Built a profitable career on taunting Fox News for various falsehoods spread by the right-leaning cable network, in statements made by Fox News staffers on actual television broadcasts;
• Sometimes, in the course of doing this, labeled people "The Worst Person in the World" on his show.

Fox and its corporate siblings have, as part of this feud:

• Suddenly accused the CEO of MSNBC parent GE of being personally at fault for the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, since GE sold medical equipment to Iran (legally), and Iran later supplied Iraqi insurgents;
• Ambushed said CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, for an interview over this invented issue, in Fox's infamous, stalkery manner;
• Ran stale and obviously retaliatory gossip stories that Olbermann mistreats his colleagues and might leave his network;
• Gossiped that Olbermann disrespected his dead colleague's funeral;
• Wrote that people in gyms throughout New York City have complained that "TVs tuned to... Keith Olbemrann" are as disgusting as "pooping in the pool" and "sex in the showers."

Having responded to a debate about the quality of its television news broadcast with trumped up and/or utterly petty unrelated personal assertions, Fox News is now trying to make the narrative about how the whole fight is about petty personal bickering by TV anchors with overgrown egos. And it's actually succeeding, on days when said anchors don't carefully document, with pictures, that they have no personal beef. It doesn't help Olbermann's case that he does in fact, have a hugely overgrown ego, regularly put on display. So he might just end up getting muzzled by his GE overlords, for the terrible "personal" fight he started.

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.

Instead of, I don't know, calling Barack Obama's wife his "crony"? Or calling newspaper editors drooling idiots (most are, but still)? Or writing any number of things that caused a Norfolk, Va., newspaper to drop her column because the editor got sick of her "mean-spirited rantings"?

Anyway, guess how long it took after Malkin agreed that we should all try to be "classy" when we attack our political opponents until she called a political opponent a "two-bit...hustler"? Two minutes!

The folks who think really hard about the machinations behind cable news — that'd include us — are wondering: Was Glenn Beck forced off the air this week by contrite Fox News executives in the wake of an advertiser boycott over his increasingly insane meltdowns? Or does Fox just want you to think that?

TVNewser reported today, citing "several sources inside" Fox News, that Glenn Beck was pulled off the air and sent on a forced, unscheduled vacation this week after executives became increasingly alarmed over the advertiser exodus from his show and wanted to "let some of the heat surrounding him die down." If true, that would be an almost unprecedented instance of the network backing down—rather than its preferred tactic of attacking viciously—in the face of criticism. Aside from the firing of E.D. Hill after her "terrorist fist jab" remark and an oblique apology after a graphic referred to Michelle Obama as "Obama's Babymama," it's hard to recall a case where the famously truculent network acknowledged criticism or reacted defensively.

Fortunately for fans of Fox's unrestrained dickishiness, it's not true: Not long after the TVNewser posted the item, Beck's personal publicist Matthew Hiltzik provided evidence to Politico that Beck's vacation was long-planned: An e-mail from an employee of his production company, dated July 14, saying, "All: Glenn will be off of radio & TV the week of August 17th, returning to air August 24th." Beck didn't start getting into serious trouble until July 28, when he said Barack Obama hates white people. So if it's authentic, the e-mail is fairly solid proof that Beck was planning to be out long before his latest psychotic episode began.

For what it's worth, a tipster tells us that she spotted Beck with his family and a bodyguard—so much for that "just us folks" image—leaving the Museum of Natural History today in Manhattan at about 12:30 p.m. So whether the vacation was planned or not, there was no travel involved.

So what gives? The strange thing about the TVNewser report was the response from Fox's flack: "A Fox News spokesperson denied our accounts and simply told us, 'Glenn Beck will back on Monday.'" That's awful weak stuff considering how easy it would have been to simply knock down the story from the start by, say, providing the e-mail proving that Beck's vacation was long-planned. And the fact that it was Beck's personal publicist, who's paid to look out for Beck's image and not Fox's, who eventually got that e-mail out there leads us to the following highly improbable-and-yet-irresistible conspiracy theory:

Fox deliberately planted the forced-vacation story, knowing it was false. The network generally has no interest in placating critics, but it is highly motivated to placate advertisers, who have moved their spots off Beck's show in droves. Beck's sudden absence from the air presented an opportunity to appear to be sensitive to criticism without actually doing anything: By spreading word that he was taken off the air, advertisers see that Fox has gotten the message. But by not actually taking Beck off the air, they don't have to deal with the blowback from Beck. That would explain the difference between the two flacks' responses. Fox's flack remained deliberately vague enough to keep the story alive, while Beck's flack provided the proof that would have killed it from the get-go.

If you think that's a preposterous theory, you're right. But you've also never worked with the Fox News' dedicated public relations team.

Media Matters has compared the entire exchange to Fox News' take:

Steve Doocy says, "He was downright rude—somebody asked him a question, and he said on what planet do you spend most of your time? And then to somebody else, he said trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table."

Well, yes. Except the "somebody who asked him a question" actually asked about his "Nazi policies," and he made the dining room table remark to the same LaRouchite idiot. The best part is when they play only Frank's response, making it look like he's straight-up yelling at voters, and then cut to a shot of an entirely different woman in a pretty hat to make it look like he was addressing her, and not the one who was carrying a picture of Obama made up to look like Hitler.

Such an agreement would mitigate the most high-profile battle within contemporary media, a feud that hearkened back to the newspaper wars of the early 20th century and which offered heartening — ever so slightly heartening — evidence that, in an era of 500 channel television sets, corporate media didn't have to be toothless or dull media.

But it's last chapter is all too predictable: A powerful, suited overlord got embarrassed by all the boat-rocking and called things to a halt. The suit, in this case, would be GE's Jeffrey Immelt, a frequent target of Fox shouting head Bill O'Reilly and his professional stalker Jesse Waters; according to the Times, Immelt sealed a deal with News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch this past May, "with a handshake" at Microsoft headquarters.

Details were left to underlings Jeff Zucker, at NBC, and Gary Ginsberg, at News Corp:

[They] agreed that hosts on Fox and MSNBC would resist lobbing mortars at each
other or their parent companies, according to an employee with direct knowledge of the agreement.... "For this war to stop, it meant fewer headaches on the corporate side," the employee said...

Then the orders went out to the troops — meaning, to journalists, now being told what true things they should avoid saying or investigating, because it was not in the interests of their corporate parent companies. Or at least that's what the Times' sources say:

Phil Griffin, said on a daily conference call with producers that he wanted the channel's other programs to follow Mr. Olbermann's lead and restrain from criticizing Fox directly, according to two employees. At Fox News, some staff members were told to "be fair" to G.E.

The feud between the two corporations dates back at least five years, to the first of MSNBC Countdown host Keith Olbermann's relentless attacks on O'Reilly, who uses his highly-rated Fox News show to attack various lefty targets, including an abortion doctor, "Tiller the Baby-Killer," who O'Reilly railed against some 28 times on his show, until someone finally murdered the guy.

O'Reilly attacks ginned up Olbermann's ratings, but the feud spread; O'Reilly, who refused to utter Olbermann's name, lashed out at General Electric and NBC News; News Corp.'s New York Post was enlisted to repeatedly jab at Olbermann.

Olbermann can be an insufferable blowhard, and there was no small amount of ego and self-interest behind his O'Reilly slams, a point emphasized in the Times' story. His attacks could go too far; Olbermann once wore an O'Reilly mask and gave a Nazi salute, on air. "It was time to grow up," a source told the Times.

But it's out of a swamp of impure motives and foolish mistakes than good journalism must arise, and for those who distrusted Fox News there was something comforting in the idea that MSNBC was ready to jump on the network's misstatements, tasteless moments and overreaches. Fox-lovers no doubt relished monitoring of the liberal media housed at 30 Rock.'

Olbermann protests to the Times that "I am party to no deal," but the paper documents how he appears to have led the way on this one. Our jaded hearts twinge only slightly for those NBC News staff who consider themselves journalists but swallow these sorts of orders from above; far more upset is our id, at the prospect of relinquishing the great fun of a vigorous — and vigorously cleansing — media feud.

Maginnis today warned Fox's Shep Smith about how North Korea has Taepodong-2 missiles on the pad ready to launch, possibly aimed at the U.S. See the clip at left.

Keep in mind Maginnis' track record. Eight years ago, he participated in the a Pentagon program in which generals shilled for war, even though he felt "manipulated" and "very disappointed" with the quality of intelligence, as he later told the New York Times.

His warnings about Iraq were dire. From Media Matters' compilation:

Maginnis suggested on December 19, 2002, that chemical warfare was going to be a large component of the war and claimed that the Iraqi military was "going to have ... almost booby-trapped use of some chemicals in some built-up areas where civilians are going to be casualties."



Maginnis repeated this assertion — that Iraqi leaders were booby-trapping residential areas with chemical or biological weapons — on the January 15, 2003, edition of On the Record, stating: "[N]ot only [do] they develop them, they hide them. ... They know exactly where these things are. ... [T]hey are in residential areas, and they probably have some of the things that we've heard about," such as "smallpox material that's been weaponized."



...On February 3, 2003, he suggested that the reason U.N. weapons inspections turned up empty was "because some of the information somehow got out to the wrong people, and they were able to sanitize the site before the inspectors arrived," perhaps because Iraqis "infiltrated" the inspection teams.

Another trustworthy patriot, courtesy of Fox! Too bad good old General Buck Turgidson isn't around anymore. He was sort of the Robert Maginnis of his day:

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Her secret?

• Remain calm.
  
• Finish your sentences, even if O'Reilly interrupts you.
  
• Do your research and form your soundbites ahead of time.
• Don't raise your voice higher than Bills, or get more emotional. This way, he looks like the crazy one, as nature intended.
• Leave no charge unanswered, even if it sounds absurd. Especially if it sounds absurd.

The Salon editor's vitruoso performance led an enraged O'Reilly to the fantastic conclusion that, in fact, Walsh was responsible for the death of abortion doctor George Tiller, because she branded him a hero. Uh, OK! Well, it looks like that's all you have time for. Enjoy your weekend, Bill, and try not to think too much about how you had your ass handed to you, by a San Francisco liberal. That'll just make you angry.

Brian Dooda, a Brooklyn film archivist, was riding his bike on East Dr. in Central Park at about 5 p.m. on Thursday when he says a grey SUV cut him off, nearly swiping his front tire. Angered, Dooda caught up with the car, which had "NYP" license plates designating its driver as a media representative, at the next red light. He positioned himself in front of the SUV and told the driver to slow down and observe the park's 25 m.p.h. speed limit. Here's what happened next, according to an account Dooda gave to the NYPD and posted on a cycling message board:

The driver then accelerated, lunging straight into me, knocking me and my bicycle to the ground and to the left side of his car. I quickly got to my feet and positioned myself in front of his vehicle to prevent him from fleeing the scene. I called out to bystanders to call the police and yelled at the driver that he was insane, he just hit me, and he can't leave. The driver again accelerated into me, with no intention of stopping, forcing me, prostrate, onto the drivers side hood of his vehicle. Riding precariously with a 4,000 lb wheel inches from pulling me beneath it, I screamed for the driver to "Stop!!! Please Stop!!" over and over. He continued to ignore my pleas for some 200ft. keeping a steady 5 or 10mph. He then stopped suddenly allowing me to fall off the side of the hood. Just as quickly as he stopped he violently accelerated again knocking me to the side. This time I managed to stay standing. The driver then sped off Northbound. At this point several witnesses came to my aid and reported his license plate.

Dooda emerged from the ordeal with only a scraped elbow, but another poster to the message board who claimed to witness to the incident, painted a pretty scary picture. (In fact, it was her post that originally prompted Dooda to come forward with the statement he gave to police):

It was a bizarre sight ... a cyclist was on the hood, shouting at the driver, to please please stop the car. That cyclist kept shouting to the guy to stop, he was saying/shouting, "You could have killed me. Stop, Please stop. This is my life." something like that. We saw his bike in the road, left behind, as the SUV drove on, with the cyclist on his hood.

When the cops arrived and told Dooda that the "NYP" plate meant that the driver who nearly killed him was a journalist, Dooda told Gawker he joked: "I wonder if he's from Fox News, because he was such an asshole."

He was!

Gawker tracked down the driver, Don Broderick, who says he is a news writer for Fox News (he was formerly a reporter for the New York Post). When we first called him to confirm that he was the man to whom the vehicle that dragged Dooda for blocks was registered, Broderick said, "I don't know what you're talking about," and asked if he could call us back. A couple hours later, he called to acknowledge that he was indeed the driver, but said that he was the victim of a "vigilante" bicyclist who had attacked him: "Whatever this guy is claiming, there's no truth involved—he punched me. And I left, because he was attacking me."

Dooda says he never laid hands on Broderick, whom, he says, stared with "cold psychotic intent" while Dooda was on his hood, and answered his pleas to stop with shrugs of the shoulders and the occasional "get the fuck out of here."

"He wasn't like hanging out the window screaming 'you fucking pussy!'" Dooda says. "He spoke with his car."

Both men agree that the altercation started because Dooda was riding his bike in the left-hand lane at roughly 25 m.p.h., which caused a line of ten or so cars to back up behind him. Broderick's was the last car to get around him, which is when Dooda says Broderick tried to send him a message by abruptly cutting back over into the left lane in front of him, coming close to his tire. "He initiated the whole encounter by almost running into me," he says. "I'm sure he felt like I was antagonizing motorists because I was in the left lane riding a bicycle. But did I attack him? If he considers me pointing out that he is an aggressive and dangerous driver to be an attack, yes. Otherwise, no."

No matter who started it, actually hitting someone with your car, and then hitting them again, and then dragging them on your hood for 200 feet, and then driving away can't be legal! Dooda, who was only slightly injured with some scrapes and bruises, filed a police report with the Central Park Precinct, and says a detective has been in touch. Broderick says he hasn't been contacted by the police, and an NYPD spokesperson couldn't immediately confirm that an investigation is underway.

New York Press license plates are issued to members of the working media who can demonstrate that they are employed by a news organization—in Broderick's case, Fox. They let reporters park in special reserved spots in New York City and avoid tickets for illegal parking if they're actually covering a news story. They also let road-ragers get tagged as media employees, which sparks the interest of bloggers.

A Fox News spokeswoman didn't immediately return calls for comment.

[Illustration by Steven Dressler; if you have actual photos of the incident, please send them our way.]

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The top clip is Beck on Fox & Friends this the morning; underneath it is Beck's show from tonight. In mere hours, the pundit who joked that "we need a blind, deaf, handicapped Asian woman" for the Supreme Court was calling a federal judge racist.

That's just the sort of precious, white-male opportunity we need to protect from this dangerous Sonia Sotomayor!

Beck was already a popular author before his Fox gig boosted his fame, having published two nonfiction books and a novel, all with Simon & Schuster, and all bestsellers, topping out at 775,000 copies for the fiction, The Christmas Sweater.

The ascendant shouting head's new "multi-book" deal must be worth a bundle. No one has yet affixed a price tag to it, but the Wall Street Journal notes Beck is accepting a lower advance in exchange for a full 15 percent royalty on hardcovers and 7-10 percent on paperbacks.

The evening anchor will somehow find time to write three new titles this year, including audio- and e-books, most of them predictably radical-right-wing titles like America's March to Socialism.

But Beck, not known for his emotional stability, will also be reaching out to children. In the fall comes his "picture book" for children (based on Sweater), followed at some point by "young adult" literature, aka stories for teens.

Between the books, the Fox show and his next comedy tour (sure to be huge with your religious-right college kids), Beck is building a collection of media designed to take conservatives from cradle to grave. He should hope his benefactors at News Corporation don't get too jealous.

The last major populist ranter, Lou Dobbs, now appears to be close to finishing out his days at sad, third place CNN, where even the network president is taking potshots at the xenophobic anchor's ratings ("He could stand to attract a few more viewers").

Beck, a "rodeo clown" and would-be comedian, is clearly planning to avoid this fate by blending his political ravings with weird, wacky hijinks that prove he is just that crazy — and just that hard to look away from. If it's easy to become inured to his strategy day-to-day, reviewing the collective evidence really drives the point home, as seen in the clips compiled by video intern Luke Sacherman and posted at left.

Glenn Beck: Flash in the pan or enduring part of the Fox News circus? Only time will tell, but neither Fox not America's many populist demagogues over the centuries have yet lost by underestimating their audience.

Fox's Thomas McInerney is a shill, as established in David Batstow's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on the retired lieutenant general's work, and that of others, to promote the war in Iraq using talking points spoon-fed by Donald Rumseld's Defense Department. ("Good work - we will use it," McInerney once wrote his handlers.)

Like other retired generals, McInerney had defense-industry clients who profited from the war; contractors who placed McInerney on their boards and hired him as a consultant.

McInerney is still going to bat for them. As we reported earlier this month, he went on Fox News immediately after Somali pirates hijacked an American cargo ship to bizarrely insist the supersonic, air-to-air F-22 Raptor jet fighter was perfect for killing pirates, using the same cannon nearly every other U.S. fighter has, plus a high-altitude spy drone and a refueling tanker.

The F-22, the drone and at least one tanker are made, in part or whole, by McInerney's sometime consulting client Northrop Grumman. Northrop is a major subcontractor on the F-22; McInerney consulted for another F-22 contractor, Cobham. Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to cut new orders of the plane.

Fox News by now is well aware of McInerney's industry ties. And yet it again indulged his single-minded ranting in support of the F-22 and against the Secretary of Defense this past weekend on America's News HQ, as Media Matters is reporting. (See clip above.)

No disclosure of McInerney's conflict of interest was forthcoming as he said it's only a matter of time before third-world powers like Iraq outfox our fighter pilots:

We would not have been able to conduct Operation Iraqi Freedom nor Operation Northern Watch or Southern Watch with only 100 F-22s with the threat coming for 30 years.

On the off chance Iraq did acquire some sort of superfighter technology after crawling out of lawlessness, we'd still have the F-35 Lightning II, but Fox's Jamie Colby didn't bring that up. Which is a little bizarre: If the commander-in-chief and his Republican-appointed Secretary of Defense say troops are better off with F-22 money spent elsewhere, why is Fox News swallowing whole private-sector efforts to claw that money back?

The network does have its pride. In fact, it's rather famous for it. Even a disclaimer is apparently too much to ask as Fox's shill general tears into the Department of Defense. Running one might clarify the debate over military spending priorities, and thus benefit American troops, but it would also imply the Times had a point in its Pulitzer-winning series. The combative news network isn't about to let that happen.

[Media Matters]

Watters, Fox News' stalker producer who's afraid to talk to Gawker, apparently read the questions we asked him yesterday. And via Twitter, he says he doesn't have to answer to us. UPDATE: Jesse Watters' Twitter account is fake.

We think you're missing the point of this exercise, Jesse. The fairly simple idea here is to apply to you the same rules that you have repeatedly applied to others. So, as per the Jesse Watters School of Ambush Interviews, you no longer get to decide whether or not to answer our questions. It wasn't up to Hendrik Hertzberg, or Amanda Terkel, or William Arkin, or a host of other people you ambushed. So now it's not up to you. And as for our "sordid, trashy voyeurism"—well, your employer's publicists have found gossip sites useful enough when Fox wanted to spread damaging information about its enemies.

Watters also responded on Twitter to the lie we caught him telling yesterday when he said he doesn't consider his interviews to be ambushes. We pointed out that O'Reilly proudly used that term on the air and online, including a time Watters got wistful about one of his "funnier" ambushes.

Well OK then. Young Watters has clearly been a careful study of the lie-attack-lie Fox News playbook.

UPDATE: Jesse Watters' Twitter account is fake. But the questions we want him to answer are real.

One of Watters' fans wrote this on his Twitter page in reference to Watters' cunning escape from this morning's attempted Gawker ambush: "escape and evade. Live to ambush another day."

Watters responded: "I don't consider what I do 'ambushing', but thanks for the support."

All right, then. This is from a 2007 interview with Watters, conducted by his boss Bill O'Reilly and aired on his network, Fox News Channel:

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: "Back of the Book" segment tonight, ambush journalism. As you may know, "The Factor" occasionally sends out producers to confront people who will not answer serious questions about controversial things they do, like judges giving child rapists probation, for example.


Now, some object to displays like these. But we feel they're a vital tool in holding public servants accountable for their actions, and we do not go after people lightly. We always ask them on the program first, or to issue a clear statement explaining their actions.


With us now "Factor" producer Jesse Watters, one of our field guides.

In 2007, Watters himself wrote a post on O'Reilly's blog about his unannounced interviews. It was called "Producer's Notebook: Ambushed."

Watters ought to get his story straight. He also ought to be held accountable for what he does. For the record, our attempted ambush this morning was distinguished from Watters' way of doing business by the fact that we announced, on this blog, the very fact that we were trying to ambush him. It sort of undermines the whole point of an ambush, but we thought it was the gentlemanly thing to do. In that spirit, and to remind people why we are doing this, we've also decided to give Watters a head start on the questions we will ask him when we find him. Which we will.

• Is everybody compelled to defend their ideas and actions on television to Bill O'Reilly simply because he desires that they do so? Why doesn't Mike Hoyt, the executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, whom you ambushed on his way to work after he said he was too busy to do the show, have a right to decline to appear on your program?
• Why did O'Reilly lie by saying that Hendrik Hertzberg "refused to come on 'The Factor'" last December, when in fact Hertzberg had received no invitation to appear on the show? And why did you participate in that lie by showing up at Hertzberg's home, without warning, to interview him on camera under the false pretense that he would not submit to a formal interview? Why didn't you just invite him on the show?
• Why did O'Reilly lie by saying that he contacted ThinkProgress, the nonprofit that employs blogger Amanda Terkel, before he sent you to ambush her? And why did you participate in that lie by following Terkel from her home in the Washington, D.C., area for two hours and then confronting her outside a hotel in Virginia while she was on a weekend getaway? Why didn't you just invite her on the show?
• How can you refuse to defend your tactics to us, or to the New York Times, when you have repeatedly harassed other people in your efforts to force them to defend themselves? What makes you less accountable for your actions than Hertzberg, or Terkel, or Hoyt? Why are you and O'Reilly permitted to have your questions answered, whenever you like, by anyone you seek to question, while no one else may question you? Aren't you a coward?
• Why didn't you identify yourself as a Fox News employee who was there to gather audio for a television program when you entered the GE shareholders' meeting this week in Florida under the pretense that you own GE stock? Why didn't you alert the participants that you were recording the conversation?
• You wrote that when you ambushed Mike Nifong, the prosecuter in the Duke lacrosse case, "it didn't register until then that I had gotten him on camera in his bathrobe and slippers. As serious as the legal circumstances were, I couldn't help but smile." Why did you smile? Do you think it's funny to capture people on camera in their bathrobe and slippers by sneaking up on them? Is that why you do it?
• You wrote that when you ambushed Meyera Oberndorf, the mayor of Virginia Beach, Va., you were "trying to elicit an emotional response from her." Why? Weren't you trying to get answers to your questions? Why were you trying to rile her emotions? After her husband confronted you and tried to wrestle your microphone away from you, you told your crew that "this will be great TV." Is that why you ambush people? Because physical confrontations and emotional women make "great TV"?
• David Tabicoff, your fellow producer at the O'Reilly Factor, told the New York Times, "We're trying to get answers from people. Sometimes the only way to get them is via these methods." Has anybody, ever, actually answered a question during one of your ambushes? Is the point to get answers, or is to get embarassing footage of you chasing them, hounding them, and peppering them with questions? Because if it's the latter, that would help us refine our tactics when it comes to interviewing you.

Know something we should know about Jesse Watters? Email me.

"I don't want to confuse you," O'Reilly told Colmes, who was like, "OK."

If you know anything about the O'Reilly Factor host, you can see where this is going: Nixon totally shook Mao's hand, on the same historic, initial trip where he similarly greeted Zhou Enlai.

Not only that, but Nixon quoted Mao in a toast to the Chinese tyrant, during an endless communist orgy:

As the People's Liberation Army band played such American favorites as "America the Beautiful" and "Home on the Range," course after course was followed by seemingly endless rounds of toasts. "‘Seize the hour! Seize the day!'" Nixon quoted from Mao, raising his glass to his Chinese hosts.

The president was trying to visibly embrace Chinese leaders to atone for a previous snub against them by John Foster Dulles, who had refused Zhou's hand in Geneva in 1954.

O'Reilly is expected to explain away his petulant ignorance of history by making even more things up, hilariously, probably involving Gerald Ford punching Brezhnev in the face.

Fox News yesterday infiltrated General Electric's shareholder meeting and inundated company executives with questions about why MSNBC is crushing so hard on Barack Obama and why CNBC is being turned into the president's concubine or something.

Tonight network shouting heads Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly revealed their running theory in a conversation with each other: NBC News is "nothing but a propaganda machine... to make money for GE" by promoting limits on global warming.

Obviously, Rupert Murdoch's minions are shocked — shocked — at the very idea that a media conglomerate would use its properties in concert with one another to advance its owner's political line.

The video is at left. All we'll add is that each of Smith's heated on-air outbursts only makes us want to "Fox on" him, as his quarterback, in a piano bar even more.

Video via marcaeld on YouTube.