Clinton was supposed to get married in Martha's Vineyard this summer, but that didn't happen, obviously. Maybe because she wasn't actually engaged yet to her dynastic boyfriend Marc "son of two former congress members" Mezinsky?

Jake Tapper broke the news on his blog, because that is basically how this news was destined to be broken. Chelsea and Marc sent out an email the morning after Thanksgiving, ensuring that no one would report on it until Monday:

"We're sorry for the mass email but we wanted to wish everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving! We also wanted to share that we are engaged! We didn't get married this past summer despite the stories to the contrary, but we are looking toward next summer and hope you all will be there to celebrate with us. Happy Holidays! Chelsea & Marc."

Congrats, Chelsea. May your reception be free of aspiring reality show characters, and here's hoping Marc doesn't mind the title "First Dude."

Why bother? Because the TV news portion of the White House Press Corps is an exclusive country club of identical privileged tools who've convinced themselves that arguing with a stonewalling flack for an hour a day is doing the dirty work of democracy. And insulting one of them is tantamount to censorship.

White House communications director Anita Dunn said Fox News doesn't behave "the way that legitimate news organizations behave," which is an objectively true statement, as long as your definition of "legitimate news organizations" means organizations in operation after the death of William Randolph Hearst.

This outraged Tapper!

Tapper: It's escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations "not a news organization" and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it's appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –

(Crosstalk)

Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

Tapper: But that's a pretty sweeping declaration that they are "not a news organization." How are they any different from, say –

Gibbs: ABC -

Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?

Gibbs: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o'clock tonight. Or 5 o'clock this afternoon.

Tapper: I'm not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I'm talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a "news organization" — why is that appropriate for the White House to say?

Gibbs: That's our opinion.

First, they didn't say that Fox is "not a news organization." We just said what they said, and it's true. Eric Boehlert lays out many examples of Fox's "news" programs fucking the truth up, though really their sponsoring of, promotion of, and reporting on the fucking tea parties is all the proof you need that they don't behave anything like ABC News.

Back when Jake Tapper worked for Salon, would he have considered it a ridiculous attack to say that that online 'zine was not objective? Would've he really have quibbled with the idea that a site run by liberal journalist David Talbot might not be considered "legitimate" by a Republican president? Even if they were sending real-life good journalists like Tapper and, later, Michael Scherer to cover the White House? (Of course, no site that publishes Camille Paglia and Cary Tennis can be considered legitimate, but their terribleness transcends partisanship.)

Does Tapper understand that despite the fact that he is very good, personal friends with Major Garrett, Garrett's employer is actually a research and communications arm of the conservative movement? In a much, much, much more direct and partisan fashion than almost any liberal "equivalent" news source? Like, The Nation and Keith Olbermann and The New Republic and Air America are liberal news organizations staffed and run by liberals dedicated to achieving liberal political goals, but if they've ever all joined together to organize a partisan campaign as PR-savvy as the Tea Parties (or the Iraq War) while still maintaining poses of objectivity, we've missed in next to the thousands of op-eds and Special Comments on how Obama is continuing Bush's torture regime and Senate Democrats are spineless cowards.

But now, once again, Jake Tapper is a hero to the right-wing blogs. Because he knows that it is the objective reporters job to always object, to everything. If the President says the ocean is quite large, it is heroic reporting to demand that his spokesman acknowledge that outer space is even bigger.

Ben Dreyfuss seems to have inherited certain political values from his father, the actor Richard Dreyfuss, and communicates them in his own spicy way. We approve!

Joe Scabrorough of MSNBC isn't going to address the "twat" thing directly, though you might discover certain conclusions are implied in his response.

Pro skateboarder Tony Hawk's kid got burned by the internet, literally.

The Project Runway deal hasn't quite made Marie Claire a household name yet, according to assistant editor Sarah Wexler.

Hmm, let's see: Microsoft Office... ALL CAPS document... It must be email time for ABC's Jake Tapper! (Remember to select the "Internet" option under File/Print, Jake.)

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(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.)

Forbes' Lacey Rose was party to a romantic moment. The sort of romantic moment you have to testify in court about.

Six Apart's Anil Dash took a swipe at Tumblr's large fonts. OH SNAP, David Karp.

Web-vid host Molly McAleer finally got her money's worth out of that intensive hula hoop class.

ABC News' Jake Tapper got more than a little passive aggressive with Robert Gibbs, and we definitely denoticed.

Macworld's Jason Snell said something about loving communism forever, or at least that's what our limbic system tells us.

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ABC News' Jake Tapper, 40, launched into a sarcastic inter-generational feud with NBC's Joe Scarborough, who is all of 46. Come on, Jake, it's not like there aren't plenty of valid reasons to hate on Joe Scarborough.

Julia Allison asked if it's OK to be rude in order to satisfy one's curiosity, as opposed to acting curious in order to be rude.

Kevin Tofel of mobile tech site jkOnTheRun had a little trouble letting go of his precious, precious internet.

If counting a bloggers' pageviews can damage his ego, comparing his pageviews can obliterate it. Metcalfe's law is a fickle mistress, indeed. Just ask Gizmodo contributor Joel Johnson.

To Gina Trapani, 2003 seems like just it was just five years ago. This is either a natural symptom of aging, or of juggling a podcast, website, columns at Harvard and Lifehacker and two open-source projects.

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South Carolina's The State has once again put the state's open records law to excellent use by getting a hold of more obsequious e-mails from exclusive-hungry reporters to Sanford's press secretary during his disappearance, including a doozy from ABC News' Jake Tapper (click the image for a closer look):

At the time, no one knew exactly where Sanford was, and the Argentinian Connection had not yet been revealed. Tapper was engaging in the age-old reporters' practice of trashing the competition to official gatekeepers in the hopes that said gatekeepers will be goaded into believing that you are "on their side" and and will therefore be the best choice for their client/principal to talk to. Needless to say, the only side Tapper was on is his own. Never believe anything a reporter ever says to you.

The "slimy" spot in question did little else aside from report (gullibly) Sanford's staff's contention that the governor was hiking the Appalachian Trail, recount the previous conflicting explanations for his absence, and raise perfectly reasonable questions—questions that we're sure Tapper himself had—about Sanford's political prospects in light of his strange behavior. There was nothing "insulting" about it.

Tapper followed up with another e-mail, tattling on NBC News's David Gregory for writing about Sanford on Twitter:

Politico reached Tapper for comment about the e-mails:

Busted. In retrospect, the story I was referring to wasn't slimy enough — at that moment the only ones who knew of the governor's affair were Sanford, his wife, his mistress, and the State newspaper. But I shouldn't have said that, and I'll try to leave the media criticism to others from now on.

Good idea! We've e-mailed Mike Viqueira, the NBC News reporter whose spot Tapper trashed, for comment. We were all like, "Tapper's a total tool, I can't believe what he wrote about you! You should totally respond to Gawker. Also-FYI!—he's Tweeting about it. Slimy!" We'll let you know if we hear back.

Well, he did have a second teleprompter to fall back on just in case, so the seance involving Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin that probably made the thing fall and break failed after all! Regardless, Jake Tapper, a man who knows Drudge link bait when he sees it, reports:

Midway through his speech on urban and metropolitan policy in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building this afternoon, one of his two small glass prompters came crashing down, hitting the wood floor and crashing in many pieces. It made quite a ruckus.

"Oh, goodness," a startled President Obama said. "Sorry about that, guys."

He then proceeded on with his remarks, "To pull our economy back from the brink, including the largest and most sweeping economic recovery plan in our nation's history…"

For the rest of the speech the president relied on the one remaining teleprompter, to his right, and notes on his podium to finish his speech.

Shards of glass remained near the president's feet for the duration of his speech.

And here's video of the incident from CNN:

How does he, this man, Obama, do it? He must be the Antichrist! It's the only plausible explanation at this point.

If a teleprompter falls in the White House does it make a sound? [Jake Tapper/ABC]
Video via YouTube

New York's Jessica Coen knew how Michael Jackson would have wanted to be remembered.

ABC News' Jake Tapper, the White House correspondent, was basically just watching Michael Jackson videos all day Friday.

Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow blamed Americans for killing Michael Jackson by not paying enough attention to him, and thus never learning that they were paying way too much attention to him.

This would be Kurt Andersen's moment, if only he'd pursued his morbid dream.

BlackBook's Tricia Romano made her own fun.

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Six Apart's Anil Dash made a joke for people who remember 1986.

Tech writer Glenn Fleischman seemed to enjoy his heroic service in the peanut gallery.

Professional Twitter compiler Nick Douglas immediately grasped the real-world implications of Apple's shiny new toy.

Engadget's Joshua Topolsky made us wish we were more up to speed on Gawker Media gossip.

Xeni Jardin had a surreal CNN experience not involving Lou Dobbs or Anderson Cooper.

Jake Tapper engaged in passive-aggressive tweeting.

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With a title, "The Emergence of President Obama's Muslim Roots," that just pathetically screams "please link to me Matt Drudge," Tapper regurgitates a slew of widely-known facts about Obama's family's Muslim faith, slaps a provocative title on the piece, and repackages the whole thing as some sort of breaking news story in conjunction with Obama's trip to the Middle East. The highlights of the story are these:

-Obama's father was a Muslim.

-Chicago has a high concentration of people who practice the Muslim faith.

-Obama spent time living in Muslim countries as a child.

Voila! And that's how your Jake Tapper jerky journalism sausage gets made ladies and gentleman! Isn't he just swell?!

Predictably, the right-wingers are hysterical over this. In addition to the feature link on Drudge, there are at least four Free Republic posts on it that we saw, not to mention postings in just about every other conservative gathering place online. Just Google "the emergence of Obama's Muslim roots" and see for yourself. Or better yet, go sample some of the comments on Tapper's post. They're amazing.

As for Jake Tapper, we can't put our feelings for him into words much better than Daily Intel's Jessica Pressler did back in March of this year.

There are only a handful of people who live up to the sophomoric term "tool" quite the way ABC reporter Jake Tapper does. For starters: His big break was selling out the story of a date he had with Monica Lewinsky. He dated a Miss America contestant, once called a college-age reporter a "pussy" and, at the beginning of his career, reportedly handed a Salon reporter a wad of his chewed gum, telling her it would be "worth something someday." We're not trying to be mean or anything, or saying he's a bad person. It's just true: The man is a tool.

Yep, that about sums it all up rather nicely.

Evidently so giddy to relive the debates of the Bush Administration, Fox happened to break out its special news crawl just as Obama was in the middle of a passage critiquing the period of fear-mongering after the Sept. 11 attacks. In other words, back when it was cool to be the cable network hyping torture and war:

After 9/11, we knew that we had entered a new era – that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law; that our government would need new tools to protect the American people, and that these tools would have to allow us to prevent attacks instead of simply prosecuting those who try to carry them out.

Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that – too often – our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us – Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens – fell silent.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.That little mention of the journalists, along with a line about how "our media culture feeds the impulses that lead to a good fight," was too much for ABC News' Jake "The Octogon" Tapper, who began Twittering about how Obama was "bashing" the media. Thanks for confirming his point, Jake.

Fox, of course, wasn't the only network to lose its shit this morning. Here's a handy compilation by Gawker video tyro Mike Byhoff.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.But he was paying attention. We noticed yesterday that Tapper has altered the way he posts transcripts of the White House press briefings. He used to put his own questions in bold and render Gibbs' answers in italics, which we thought inverted, in terms of visual presentation, the relative weight that ought to be given to each—not to mention encapsulasted a certain self-regard that we and others had noticed in Tapper's professional style.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.But now he's putting Gibbs' answers in bold and his own queries in italics. Did he judiciously consider the issues raised by our post and, with grace and humility, re-examine his own practices with our critique in mind? We'll say yes, just for kicks.

This afternoon, Tapper asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs about Joe Biden's crazy panic-inducing call for Americans to save themselves by withdrawing from society on the Today Show. Gibbs stammered and blinked a lot and reformulated Biden's comments into his dreamworld version in which they were totally anodyne.

Tapper followed up with his traditional furrowed brow, cocked eye, and subdued voice betraying just a hint of barely restrained outrage. We braced for dickishness!

With all due respect, and I sympathize with you trying to explain the vice president's comments, but that's not even remotely close to what he said.

Gibbs countered with, "Jake, I understand what he said. And I'm telling you what he meant to say." Everyone in the room laughed at him.

Score one for Journalist Jake! If you limit your outbursts to clean hits like that, Tapper, one day we'll stop juxtaposing your photograph with Paul Rudd playing Brian Fontana in Anchorman every time we write about you. Also, you asked a substantive, well-phrased question about torture at the White House press conference last night, so there's that.

For the record: We don't hate all gaffe-centered political reporting, just fake-gaffe-centered political reporting. This one was as real as they come.

Was it a good use of the right-wing darling's time to report that the president wore a "cream-colored baseball cap" during a five-hour game in which he lost to trip director Marvin Nicholson?

Well, Michelle Malkin hasn't linked Tapper's story like last time, nor has Drudge.

But, hey, the president has a big televised press conference coming up, so maybe confront him on this terrible golf game then? You have to make sure the president doesn't lose sight of the small picture.

Castro, who has apparently conquered death through socialism, has written a column about last week's Conference of the Americas, and he cited a press-conference exchange between Obama and someone he calls "Journalist Jake." That would be Tapper—they're apparently on a first-name basis. Later in the column, Castro writes that "when [Obama] stated, responding to Jake, that today, 2004 seemed like eons ago, that was superficial. Do we have to wait that many years for him to suspend his blockade?"

Maybe Tapper should look into this Castro fellow. Unlike Barack Obama, it looks like he actually does hate retarded people.

We've made fun of Tapper a lot lately, so we thought we'd give him a chance to respond to our claim that he maintains a close personal relationship with a murderous dictator. Here's what he said: "It's certainly surreal to be cited by both Rush and Fidel in the same month."

Limbaugh actually liberated Tapper from the "Butt Boy bubble" in March, but yes, we agree that it is surreal.

[Via TVNewser.]

At yesterday's White House press conference, the AP's Jennifer Loven asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs why Barack Obama is only asking his cabinet secretaries to come up with $100 million in budget savings. Gibbs answered the question, and Loven tried to follow up but Tapper smelled big game! So he just talked over her and started badgering Gibbs about the budget, inserting himself into Loven's question like the true gentleman that he is.

Tapper puts his exchanges with Gibbs on his blog with his no-holds-barred take-no-prisoners questions in bold so his mouth-breathing wingnut readers will know who's who. He didn't want any of them to miss out on his hijacking of Loven's question, so he posted that yesterday, too: "I interjected in an exchange between White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and another reporter today, so I've included their exchange (with my interruption) as well as my own."

We should point out in fairness that, unlike many of Tapper's presser questions, the one he interrupted Loven with was actually reasonable. But he still asked it in a very dickish way, so Michelle Malkin's blog thanked him for it. There's a lesson here: Jennifer Loven asked Gibbs about the budget by waiting her turn and being courteous but insistent. No Michelle Malkin link. Tapper asked Gibbs about the budget by interrupting and being confrontational and a dick: Michelle Malkin link!

Get with the program, Loven.

Guardian writer Bobbie Johnson sought proof his employer deserved worship.

ABC newslunk Jake Tapper never thought he'd be on a copter.

Chicago Tribune twitter newbie Stacy St. Clair objected to the belittling of fictional furry creatures.

TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld tried to unload Brooklyn real estate.

Forbes writer Brian Caulfield delivered a veiled threat to his gadget collection.

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