In Limbaugh's WSJ piece, entitled "The Race Card, Football and Me" he writes: "My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race? Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race? Those controversial racial views?"

What are his racial views exactly? Media Matters documented 28 separate occasions where Limbaugh used racially charged language. They didn't go the Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Michael Wilbon route, picking quotes out of thin air, they did the research and the results are pretty damning.

In this clip Rush calls Obama an "angry black guy"

Here he says "[I]n Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering"

There are 26 other clips that don't exactly portray Rush as someone who does not see race. Quite the contrary. Rush seems obsessed with race. Turns out his critics weren't exactly off the mark, they just choose the wrong quotes.

This clip is money shot of a long stretch of live coverage on CNN tonight where they tailed the helicopter carrying Jackson's body to the Los Angeles coroners office with a news helicopter of their own. All the while Larry King interviewed various celebs for their reflections on Jackson's life, including Jesse Jackson, heard speaking to King in this clip.

Anyone else remember the uproar that ensued after Gawker and others showed video of Heath Ledger's body being wheeled out of Soho loft building last year?

If you'll recall back to Clinton friend and White House staffer Vince Foster's suicide and the plane crash that killed Clinton administration Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Christopher Ruddy, at the time working at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, worked diligently to promote his theories that both men were murdered for political reasons, implicating that the Clinton's maybe-kinda-probably had something to do with it in each case. But that's all water under the bridge now for Clinton and Ruddy, who are now a couple of old chums.

Among those he has been friendly with lately is Christopher Ruddy, a conservative journalist who was a chief proponent of cover-up theories involving the Clintons during the 1990s. In his book, "The Strange Death of Vincent Foster," Ruddy rejected official findings that Foster, a deputy White House counsel, killed himself in a Virginia park and suggested the possibility of "a cover-up conducted by people who have, with the help of the press, placed themselves above the law." Ruddy also advanced the notion that Ron Brown, the Clinton commerce secretary who died in an airplane crash in Croatia in 1996, was actually shot in the head.

Ruddy today is the founder and chief executive of Newsmax, a conservative news-magazine. He told me he came around on Clinton after Ed Koch, the former New York mayor, introduced them. That led to lunches and more contacts, and now Ruddy says he was wrong about Clinton. "I do consider Bill Clinton a friend, and I think he would consider me a friend," Ruddy said. "And to think of all the wars we went through in the '90s, it seems almost surreal."

With the passage of time, Ruddy said he came to believe that Clinton was much less liberal than his enemies thought. After all, Clinton overhauled welfare, tamed the deficit and promoted free trade. While still a proud "Reagan conservative," Ruddy said he now thinks the attacks on Clinton in the 1990s went too far. "Did we like and enjoy all the salacious reporting and all the stuff going on in the '90s?" he asked. "I guess we thought, This is just politics. But looking back at my role, I was probably over the top. And if I knew then what I know today, I wouldn't have pursued some of that stuff as aggressively as I did. I did an honest reporter's job. But I have a different take on it now."

Ruddy also attributes his change of heart to Clinton's foundation, which has impressed him and other onetime foes. Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire publisher who financed Ruddy's investigations and other anti-Clinton activities, is now a contributor to the foundation. So is Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman whose Fox News was a regular thorn in Clinton's side. Clinton over the years has also made peace with other former adversaries, like Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich. The elder George Bush told me he now considers Clinton "a real friend." When I asked what changed his view, he wrote in an e-mail message: "I didn't know him personally back then. I knew him, but not up close and personal. Now I do."

So if Clinton is friends with all of his old political opponents, who the hell is he hating on these days? Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy and Bill Richardson and Jesse Jackson and just about every other prominent Democrat who had the audacity to support Obama in the primary against Hillary, that's who!

People close to Clinton said he has largely got over his resentment at Obama but not toward Ted Kennedy and his niece, Caroline Kennedy. As Clinton sees it, they say, he did so much for the Kennedys over the years that he felt they became almost family. Nor has he forgiven Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who endorsed Obama even though Clinton appointed him to two cabinet posts. And the man once called the "first black president" remains deeply wounded by allegations that he made racially insensitive remarks during the campaign, like dismissing Obama's South Carolina win by comparing it with Jesse Jackson's victories there in the 1980s.

"None of them ever really took seriously the race rap," he told me. "They knew it was politics. I had one minister in Texas in the general election come up and put his arm around me." This was an Obama supporter. "And he came up, threw his arm around me and said, ‘You've got to forgive us for that race deal.' He said, ‘That was out of line.' But he said, ‘You know, we wanted to win real bad.' And I said, ‘I got no problem with that.' I said it's fine; it's O.K. And we laughed about it and we went on." The other side is moving on, too. Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, who once recalled an angry Clinton berating him on the phone for criticizing the former president's campaign rhetoric, is letting bygones be bygones, at least publicly. "No fence-mending is needed," Clyburn said through a spokeswoman.

Unfortunately, there was no mention in the article about which models and starlets Clinton banged on Ron Burkle's dirty old man fuck-plane, which was a major disappointment. Oh well, maybe next time.

The Mellowing Of Bill Clinton [New York Times Magazine]

The brief backstory: The Post is a right wing rag and has always been pretty well hated by New York's black community (see, for example, Public Enemy's "Letter to the New York Post"). During the Clinton administration, News Corp got a waiver from the FCC that allowed it to own and operate multiple TV stations and newspapers in the NYC market. At the time, Jesse Jackson was perceived as having some pull with the FCC; therefore, News Corp had to play nice with Jesse and Rev. Al during the Clinton years.

Once little Bush came in, though, News Corp was once again cozier with the administration than Jesse and Co. were, so they were able to go right back to their normal state of outright hostility towards black liberals. Now, Al's strategy is to use the cartoon controversy as an excuse to ask the FCC to review News Corp's waiver.

Could that really work? The FCC will naturally be somewhat less dick-riding to News Corp under Obama than it was under Bush, but this still sounds like a stretch. My sense is that this is just a bargaining chip, which could end up making Al Sharpton look foolish if it totally fizzles out. But that could just be leftover pessimism from the past eight years.

Media beef-starter Michael Wolff actually thinks that Post editor Col Allan is going to get canned for this whole cartoon thing! If News Corp really was in danger of losing its waiver, then it certainly wouldn't hesitate to throw the greasy Australian editor overboard. And the NAACP would certainly be satisfied with that. But it would seem more characteristic for News Corp to just say "Fuck you" to black New Yorkers and forge ahead as usual. That's what makes them so fun, and evil!

10. Thomas Friedman vs. Greenwash Guerillas

9. The View vs. Keith Olbermann

8. Bill O'Reilly vs. Gawker

7. Jesse Jackson vs. Barack Obama

6. Katie Couric vs. Sarah Palin

5. Anonymous vs. Scientology

4. David Letterman vs. John McCain

3. Hipsters vs. Hipsters

2. Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama

1. Soulja Boy vs. Ice-T

Jesse Jackson, Jr. is a quintessential American type in his own way: the son of man who was once a famous radical, who adopts some of his father's politics but channels it into mainstream elected office. Obama is nothing like Jesse Jackson, Jr., except for the fact that they're both black liberal Chicago politicians.

The early indications seem to be that Obama wasn't about to give Blagojevich anything, so the governor decided to try to extract something "tangible" from Jackson in order to make him the leading candidate for the seat. In that sense, it was a clumsy attempt to play the old black power structure against the new (if you consider Obama to be a part of that dynamic, which you really shouldn't). And it didn't work.

But would it have worked, if the Feds hadn't been listening (and assuming we're ID'ing these anonymous candidates correctly)? Maybe. Jesse Jackson himself was famously pissed enough at Obama during the campaign to talk about cutting his nuts off. Would his kid have played ball to score himself a Senate seat, and to thwart Obama? Nobody can say! Let's all wait for the facts, okay? (Too late).

But seriously, if you're the corrupt white governor of a state trying to play various politically powerful factions of a black-dominated city against each other without getting arrested, think twice, chump. [Marc Ambinder; pic via NYO]

[UPDATE: The Smoking Gun believes that Candidate 5 is actually Emil Jones, an Illinois state legislator. We'll tell you when we know for sure.]

Rangel—as a New York politician—vocally supported Hillary Clinton throughout the primaries. But it's not like he's done anything to stab Obama in the back since then! Still, he will not be speaking in Denver. The Hill says there might be some black politicians allowed to speak, though. Like Washington D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty! Who is much younger and less, uh, riled up than Jackson, Sharpton, or Rangel. He's also way more boring.

But this is the face the Democrats would like to present to the nation: the party of calm, cool, young black guys.

(Colin Powell, by the way, is not showing. Bill Kristol is a buffoon.)

Fox News chief Roger Ailes said in a strongly-worded letter Tuesday that "I can categorically deny" a report that Jacskon called Obama a "half-breed n——r." That denial now looks like a fairly Clintonian, technical parsing of the question, although it did serve to protect Jackson's reputation from the worst of the rumors.

The executive producer of the O'Reilly Factor also denied yesterday (to TV Newser) that Jackson called Obama the n-word. That's true, but the network must have started getting nervous its narrowly-scoped denials would come to look disingenuous.

Fox's Bill O'Reilly last week aired other incendiary comments Jackson made in front of the cameras about Obama, i.e. that he wanted to "cut" the Democratic candidate's "nuts off." But the O'Reilly Factor host said at that time he was witholding other, "more damaging" comments from Jackson because they weren't relevant and "we're not out to make him look bad."

Here's Bill O'Reilly telling his guests last week how high-minded and virtuous the network was for not airing Jackson's complete comments:

We said at the time that "it seems inevitable the cable news channel will have to back up O'Reilly's allegations," and, sure enough, amid mounting rumors that's what's happened.

Fox News says it will not be airing the footage or releasing a transcript, which in light of the network's past flip-flops means it could very well be out by the middle of next week.

Oh, also, Jackson apologized, again, and said this time he's even more sorry. "There really is no justification for my comments and I hope that the Obama family and the American public will forgive me." Then he probably muttered something under his breath about how everyone in Hymietown is out to get him, but there were no cameras around to catch it The End.

[AP]

• Madonna did not show up to her alleged lover/disciple Alex Rodriguez's All-Star party, nor did his bitter teammates, so he hung out alone in the club with his mom and two "kabbalah buddies," including a woman spotted leaving his house the next day.
• Page Six detailed all the lies noted liar (and animal-hating monster) Paris Hilton has told them, although you never with the Post, really. One of the more bizarre ones is that Hilton smoked marijuana in front of Page Six staff and then promised to take a drug test, but never did. [P6]
• CNN's Washington, DC assignment editor is on the cover of Muscular Development, a magazine featuring guys with obscenely large muscles, and with a website hawking all kinds of, uh, "supplements." Fox News Channel's buddies at the Post think this makes him a "CABLE BULLY." [P6]
• A cat named Anderson Pooper was just named "Best In Show" on Daily Paws. And he's silver! [OMG]
• Lauren Conrad fails to bring dog to bitchfest, ends up crying and somehow flaking. [Emily Brill]
• It's not so much that Jesse Jackson thinks Barack Obama is "talking down to black people" when the presidential candidate tells black men to take responsibility for their children. It's that he thinks Obama is talking down to him, says the mother of Jackson's love child. [Enquirer]
• Cityfile, which profiles Gotham's rich and famous, is trying to take pictures of wealthy people coming in and out of their fancy apartment towers, and is getting harassed by goons and hangers-on. Genius. [P6]
• NBC Universal is eyeing new offices at 7 World Trade Center and 11 Times Square, a total of roughly 500,000 square feet. [Observer]
• Tatum O'Neal's crack dealer feels abandoned. And that's a bad thing? [Enquirer]
• Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were maybe going to name their baby boy Rex Leon? But didn't? And an embroidered play matt somehow proves that? Something like that. [R&M]
• Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson probably just bought a Tribeca duplex fo $17 million. [Observer]
• OK! magazine is finally showing those Jessica Alba pictures it paid so much for! Actually, $1.5 million is a bargain these days. [Sun]
• Michael J. Fox will return to TV for four episodes of Rescue Me. [Us]

Michelle Obama went to high school with the Reverend's oldest child, Santita Jackson. So young Michelle was a "frequent" Jackson family house guest. In fact: "Michelle and Santita kind of babysat for Junior and Yusef and Jonathan [the third Jackson son] and oversaw the kids when the parents were gone," an old Jackson family advisor told TNR.

And it gets a little complicated here. Michelle is an old Jackson family friend. Junior has been campaigning for Obama—campaigning hard. But Yusef is BFF with supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, who is BFF with Bill Clinton, so Yusef raised money for Hillary. Yusef also—with Burkle—owns Radar!

Now that Clinton's out of the race, all the Jacksons are ostensibly behind Obama. Though Jesse Sr is obviously a bit ambivalent.

BUT it's worth noting (Nick is gone today so we're putting on our Denton Caps as we throw this out there) that not only has Radar not, in any of its forms, covered this recent Jackson scandal, it's also been very kind to Michelle Obama (this is the sum total of their coverage of her "first time in my adult life, I'm really proud of my country" remark). Of course, we've been pretty kind to her too, because we think she's pretty awesome. But still! She didn't go to grammar school with the older sister of our secret owner! TRANSPARENCY!

[LA Times, 23/6 via TV Newser]

Radar's website has studiously ignored the day's hottest story—just as it sidestepped the juicy revelations about conman Raffaello Follieri's relationship with supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle, and the Hollywood rumors of an affair between actress Gina Gershon and former president Bill Clinton.

Burkle's involvement in the pop culture magazine has never been acknowledged, but he joined Yusef in a bid for the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004—and Radar's unusual discretion in covering stories about the California tycoon and his buddy Bill pretty much confirm the creepy Burkle is in Yusef's consortium. "It's fair to say the restrictions that come with Radar's funding are getting more inconvenient," says a veteran of the magazine. Radar's Maer Roshan did not respond to a request for comment.

One shouldn't give too hard a time to Radar, however. It's not as if New York magazine made any mention of financier Bruce Wasserstein's marriage breakup earlier this week. Every publication has investors it can't afford to offend; it's just that Radar has had a lot of them, and it really can't afford to offend them.

Update: Maer Roshan did indeed respond, with a zinger!

Q. Hey, Maer — where's your Jesse Jackson "nuts" piece? (In the same place as all the Burkle coverage?) ;)

A. Actually, it's in the same place as our item on you going down on a go-go boy at Urge on Thursday night.. But while we're on the subject, have I missed Gawker's coverage of the Jezebel fiasco?

According to the Fox Newser, Jackson's comments Sunday at the network's Chicago bureau were discovered by a logger (someone who transcribes video). Due to a backlog of work from the Fourth of July holiday, logging of this particular footage was delayed. The network is also transitioning to an all-digital newsroom this week (as has been in place at Fox Business since launch), though it's not clear if that contributed to the delay.

The source thinks Fox is best advised to just put the video out:

Who knows why O'Reilly said there was more if he didn't want to show it. He must have thought it would make him look classy, but it just makes him look like a liar. Show me the money and all that, you know?

...Given what we know of Fox PR, I'd expect they'll "leak" the whole thing to show that they were being classy and not manipulative.

And asked whether Jackson used the n-word against Obama in a hateful way, the staffer said, "Jackson certainly wouldn't use the word in hate, but neither do the youth he so often criticizes for using it either."

It's hard to see how Fox wins, PR-wise, at this point. If the channel releases the footage, or a transcript, it will look like it was cynically timing its release to extend the shelf life and ratings splash of its Jackson-Obama scoop. If it doesn't release the footage, it will continue to look like its trying to smear Jackson with unfounded insinuations.

Such a jam. And it couldn't have happened to a more unsympathetic publicity operation.

Also, Michelle Obama used to babysit Jesse Jackson's son when he was a teenager. THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, etc.

Video of Jackson's comments, either above or via this YouTube:

Apology:

For any harm or hurt that this hot-mic conversation may have caused, I apologize. My support for Sen. Obama's campaign is wide, deep and unequivocal.

In case there was any doubt Fox News will be repeating this thing incessantly, O'Reilly played it three times in the first four minutes of his show.

Video of O'Reilly saying Fox is holding back footage of Jackson saying even worse things, and speculating that Jackson is scared of Obama winning because if he becomes president that will mean racism is over and Jackson will be out of a job:

These guys are such pros at the art of the smear. You just have to watch and learn: First the gossip and insinuation (as with the non-existent Michelle Obama "whitey" video), THEN the goods, which are totally optional since you can do plenty of damage with just the insinuation part.

Fox has a fantastic story and gets to mock Jesse Jackson, and Barack Obama finds the spectre of "militant," scary-to-whites black people distancing themselves from him without him having to sell anyone out! Seriously, will the white people who watch Fox News think, upon hearing this tape, that they are forced to side with Jesse Jackson? Will Bill argue that Obama has sold out the black community by calling for more personal responsibility and less reliance on the government, which seems to be what Jackson thinks?

Or will everyone just pile on Jesse, like always, and help Barry win over those blue-collar whites Chris Matthews thinks are so important?

WAS THIS WHOLE THING ENGINEERED?

It's all these Clinton-friending liberal rich people who keep getting into messes these days, isn't it? When's the last time you heard anything about rich Republican financiers and executives flying about the nation with models, fucking teenagers, and carrying on sex orgies with movie stars? Is it the liberal connection to godless Hollywood? Former United Artists CEO and Bush Super Ranger Jerry Weintraub stays out of the headlines. Ken Lay was busted for fraud, not massages.

Hell, maybe liberals just have more fun? That's the point of liberality, isn't it? Those European values, that subjective morality, the godless thing? Clinton was impeached for having too much fun in office. Nixon never had fun ever except when he got zonked on painkillers and insulted the Jews, which is not really anyone's idea of a truly good time. Epstein never saw anything wrong with what he did. He just likes massages!

But why the need to congregate around Burkle? To hang out with him? Why did Epstein and Chris Tucker need to fly around on Jeff's private jet? Why does Clinton need to fly around the world on everyone's private jet? Liberal types do like to improve the world, and the rich ones are narcissistic enough to believe that they can do it personally. So they network and party and fuck models while flying to Africa to cure AIDS! Conservative zillionaires just rack up huge profits, contribute money to candidates who can ensure that they'll continue to rack up huge profits, and mind their own fucking (criminal) business. The liberals need to have cake with Arianna Huffington and Bono, for some reason.

So it may just be that Burkle embodies these characteristics the most. The most narcissistic, the most convinced of his own rightness, the most desperate to network with powerful people in the hopes of reshaping the world.

And then they all get tied up in sex scandals and your house is foreclosed, the end.