Key evidence: The Times' Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee wrote a story about how the candidate had failed to bridge the race gap. This precipitated a gentle question to Nagourney from the Obama campaign, which he answered. He then awoke the next morning to find himself attacked in an eight-point press release issued by Obama's team and leaked to Talking Points Memo and Marc Ambinder. "I've never had an experience like this with this campaign or others," Nagourney tells Sherman. "I thought they crossed the line. If you have a problem with a story I write, call me first. I'm a big boy. I can handle it. But they never called. They attacked me like I'm a political opponent."

So I guess Nagourney's less of a fan. True, McCain went out of his way to antagonize Elisabeth Bumiller of the Times for probing his red-meat conservative credentials (didn't Kerry offer him the VP slot?). But again, this wasn't schema-altering. Who didn't already know McCain could go from Mogwai to Gremlin when his status as a Maverick was either questioned or affirmed by the wrong inquiring mind? With his wafer-thin lead in the polls (don't email me, Gibbs!), Obama can scarcely afford to keep a reputation like this:

[A]s Obama ascended from underdog to front-runner to presumptive nominee, the flame seems to have dwindled. Reporters who cover Obama these days grouse that Obama's flacks shroud the campaign in secrecy and provide little to no access. "They're more disciplined than the Bush people," a reporter on the Obama trail gripes. "There was this idea of being transparent, but they're not. They're total tightwads with information."

[TNR]

Tina Gaudoin was brought over to the WSJ from the UK early this year to edit the paper's upcoming "lifestyle magazine." She's also the owner of Triyoga, a chain of yoga studios in the UK. And she used to tout that fact over and over again in her column! Which tends to go over less well in the US than in the UK. Still, it was so hard for the WSJ to find a good yoga-as-business quote that they ended up using this one, from Claire Missingham (pictured):

Finance "is the antithesis of what yoga is about in terms of inner peace," says Claire Missingham, a yoga teacher in London. But Ms. Missingham, whose pupils have included bankers and hedge-fund managers, says it can be highly beneficial for them. Yoga traditionalists say practicing yoga should be about more than just gaining physical benefits: It's a way of approaching life, including work. "Yoga teaches you to embrace fear and cultivate patience," says Ms. Missingham.

That's the Claire Missingham who happens to work at Gaudoin's Triyoga Soho! Way to keep it all in the family, WSJ.

The Enquirer is not going to sell papers with nuance or sensitivity. I need more reporting from a credible source before I'm prepared to pass judgment. I'm not sure Edwards is a real candidate for the VP job, but if so will have to address this one way or another.

It's important to keep in mind, when reading this odd answer, that traditional news media used to have something of a lock on the dissemination of information, and allowed themselves to be convinced that they had a bizarre duty to filter even accurate information of interest to their audiences, and to do so in the service of reinforcing various social institutions and norms, even though their jobs, their Constitutionally-protected jobs, were to do just the opposite, to disseminate information and challenge long-cherished moral codes.

This self-shackling, this corruption of a trade, has become fundamental to American news media, and in the quote above we see Roberts concisely showcasing her own deep-seated instincts.

First, there's a dig at the Enquirer, the implication that the publication threw aside the nuanced truth to sell newspapers. This sort of reflexive swipe itself lacks nuance, and ignores history. In 1994, the Times declared that, on the OJ Simpson story, the Enquirer "stands heads and shoulders above [any other publication] for aggressiveness and accuracy." Slate's Jack Shafer in 2004 offered support for the tabloid's standards, if not its presentation, in "I Believe The National Enquirer/Why Don't You?," noting, "if you correct for stylistic overkill, you find a publication that is every bit as accurate as mainstream media."

Granted, the supermarket tabloid has stumbled, including with a 2006 libel case involving Kate Hudson, which it lost, and a retracted story involving false allegations that Cameron Diaz was cheating. But so have plenty of other publications, many with fewer than the Enquirer's 1 million readers.

The there's Roberts' line about the Enquirer lacking "sensitivity." With five reporters scrambling to ask Edwards about his alleged affair, the Enquirer was certainly showing sensitivity to the truth in all its shades. Or maybe she's saying the tabloid should be sensitive to Edwards' feelings by ignoring the story, as the Washington Post and Times and others have done, as though the truth can be kept bottled up at whim, and as if it's a newspaper's role to help perpetuate a lie, to keep Elizabeth Edwards in the dark until — what? — until she passes away?

And what's with the notion that the Washington Post needs to "pass judgement" before it reports the story? Here we see most clearly how news decisions can be poisoned by social pressure. Ostensibly, the Post, like other papers, at least tries to remain objective in its news columns. Passing judgement is the last thing a reporter is encouraged to do. But when a story actually becomes interesting, say by breaking a taboo on talking about sexual infidelity, or by breaking a taboo on criticizing the government during wartime (to pick an entirely random example!), suddenly a moral justification is needed in order to publish. Because, you see, newspapers like the Times and Post still control what information we, the isolated, childlike, reading public, are exposed to! This is a very contemporary, factually accurate and democratic view of the world.

Those who do buy into the bankrupt notion that the news media are morally freighted info-arbiters can still find reason to support coverage of the Edwards scandal. As Slate's Jack Shafer argues in "Why The Press Is Ignoring The Edwards 'Love Child' Story," Edwards' marriage is fair game in the tortured calculus of media relevance because Edwards deployed his wife aggressively in the service of his campaign. In fact, covering the scandal is a moral imperative, since Republicans were quickly hit with news stories during similar scandals of the recent past (Larry Craig is cited). See how slippery things get when news editors start trying to cast moral judgements on the news?

Finally, Roberts argues there is no reason to cover the "love child" scandal unless Edwards is a viable VP candidate, because again you need an excuse to write interesting stories. Again, Slate provides a rebuttal, this time from Mickey Kaus, who points out that Edwards was in fact on the shortlist for Attorney General under would-be president Barack Obama. It is supremely arrogant for news editors to assume they have the knowledge to definitively rule out the relevance of a story that is as interesting as the Edwards affair.

At least partly for the reasons outlined by Roberts, a large number of news organizations have elected to ignore the Edwards story as of this moment. Kaus compiled a list that includes not only the Times and Washington Post but also the newsweeklies, network newscasts and even the Huffington Post ("and it's their story!").

That's actually fine — totally their prerogative. Perhaps some are even even readying Edwards stories at this moment, and just wanted to give him time to issue an official statement (beyond this non-denial on Drudge: "I don't talk about these tabloids. Tabloid trash is full of lies.") and to do more of their own reporting. Wonderful.

But to the extent the silence is due to publishers, like Roberts, intent on dictating news interest to their readers, so much so that they will ignore certain hot topics, these news organizations are mortgaging their future, and in many cases ceding valuable ground to competitors already eating deep into their profit margins.

On the bright side, for the rest of us, this process does have a way of weeding out news outlets that are all-too-eager to suppress news stories rather than publish them.

(Second-to-last picture via Peter King Watch)

The back of the same press pass:

This just goes to show what a solid guy McCain really is, in Howard Fineman's mind.

[CBS]

Shankman tells me he heard from a source that ProfNet is so concerned salespeople have been issued talking points against him. With 14,000 "professional communicators" in its roster, ProfNet has a significant cash flow at stake, especially when your competition gives away its product for free.

Shankman says he'll never charge for his service and would never sell his mailing list — the hour and a half per day that he spends on his mailing list results in great publicity for himself — better than he could ever buy. Though, he does make some coin selling ads at "way over $100 CPMs" to advertisers like American Apparel.

Shankman's little service has been building slowly for a long time. By all outward appearances (not counting his service to American Apparel), he's giving away a valuable service for free, out of the goodness of his heart. Which is why I've always been so god damn skeptical of the whole thing.

What's your angle, Shankman? What's your angle? What's your angle? I fully expect this to turn into some sort of cult, or be revealed as a CIA plot to infiltrate the media. Until then, we're withholding judgment.

[The Industry Standard]

Dickerson:

The risk for journalism, of course, is that people spend all day Twittering and reading other people's Twitter entries and don't engage with the news in any other way. This seems a pretty small worry. If written the right way, Twitter entries build a community of readers who find their way to longer articles because they are lured by these moment-by-moment observations. As a reader, I've found that I'm exposed to a wider variety of news because I read articles suggested to me by the wide variety of people I follow on Twitter. I'm also exposed to some keen political observers and sharp writers who have never practiced journalism.

I thought everyone got their news from blogs, or is that a distinction without a difference now? The kinds of hilarious off-the-record set pieces Dickerson alludes to were once the stuff of shoptalk. There's something appealing about the secret-handshake quality of how a story gets written that is lost in the digital age of premature confession and on-demand tell-all. Who would want to read Gay Talese's memoirs, or any of Ron Rosenbaum's reminiscences about the old Esquire gang, if every professional writer began dishing his juiciest tidbits every five minutes?

[Nieman Reports]

David Blum at the NY Press uncovers a disturbing pattern of ongoing metaphor abuse that makes Carr appear to be a man at the end of his rope. We can only hope that this moment of clarity serves as a wake up call to him and all those who enable his root vegetable comparison habit. Here are Blum's findings, all taken from Carr's own work—starting with his current book and stretching back four long years:

Describing himself:

“Far from clinically handsome, I have a face that looks like it could have been carved out of mashed potatoes, and my idea of exercise was running the length of my body.”

“….with a face made out of potatoes, the Photoshopped picture will have to go a long way to make me any uglier than I actually am.”

“With a face that looks as if it were crafted out of mashed potatoes and a voice that sounds like a trash compactor that needs oil, I’m not a natural for television…”

About Tim Russert:

“He had a face that seemed to be carved out of potatoes, but he worked on television by working harder than your average talking head…”

Describing actors:

“To the Bagger’s eye, [Daniel Craig] has a face made out of potatoes—although the rest of him seems to be made out of titanium…”

“Directors tend to focus on [Steve] Buscemi’s visage, shooting his face so it looks something like what might happen to a bowl of mashed potatoes if it were sculptured [sic] by an ax.”

“And Detective Sipowicz [Dennis Franz], with a face that looks as if it were carved out of potatoes and the body style of a greeter at Home Depot, was an unlikely hero.”

About author Joe McGinniss:

“[McGinniss] had an old cap set against the Sunday morning sun, a handsome Irish face that could have been carved out of potatoes, and a glint of tragedy in his eyes.”

SEEK HELP.

[NY Press; pic via NY Mag]

In mid-May it was reported that the Chancellor had concluded that what the University of Colorado needed was an endowed university chair for a Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy, Conservative Thought he apparently believes, being somewhat different from normal thought, a belief in which he may be correct.

The wonderful thing about having George Bush as president is that a commentator can write about the same subject repeatedly and it will always be timely and fresh. That is because when George Bush finds a bad thing to do, he does it repeatedly because he’s too sure of his own good judgment to notice that it’s a bad thing.

Lowest common denominator. That’s what George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson of ABC news were appealing to during the first half of the debate for which they recently served as moderators. That explains the reason for the really dumb questions they not only posed but pursued with remarkable, if mindless, persistency about lapel pins, helicopter landings, bitter people and sermons, none of which has the slightest relevance to determining which of the debaters would be a better president... Since appealing to the lowest common denominator was the goal of Messrs. Gibson and Stephanopolous, I have a suggestion for a future program that will draw even more viewers than did the debate and will appeal to an even lower common denominator. They should interview Ashley ["Dupre"] Youmans for an hour and a half.

What does George Bush have in common with prostitutes? For the answer see the end of the next paragraph.

As was observed in last week’s column, photographs of French president François Mitterand’s funeral, showed his widow, mistress and their daughter, all gazing sadly at the casket. Had Eliot Spitzer died while consorting with prostitutes there would have been no photographs of the prostitutes standing sadly by the coffin with Mr. Spitzer’s wife and daughters. That’s because prostitutes don’t do funerals. Here is the answer to the riddle. Neither does George Bush.

George Bush doesn’t even like to be in the presence of coffins even though it is thanks to him that the sad remains of more than 4000 service personnel have found resting places in coffins.

It would be unfair to compare the response of Myanmar Junta leader, Than Shwe, to Cyclone Nargis to George Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina. For one thing, the two disasters were separated by thousands of miles. Furthermore, Burma initially rejected all foreign aid whereas Mr. Bush only rejected aid from Cuba.

As the recent hearings show, by not tracking the purposes of the disbursements, there is no risk of embarrassing anyone because of the failure of the recipient to satisfactorily complete the work for which it was paid. As teenagers would say, if asked, “That is SO Iraq.”

Health insurance companies are constantly looking for new ways to make money. Two of the major impediments to their quest are sick people and the drugs they need.

Just-kind-of-hardcore-strident excerpts:

If there were only one agency (and there’s probably not) that has consistently enjoyed the benefits lavished on it by an ignorant president who continuously diminishes its standing in the world of science, it would be the Environmental Protection Agency. No other agency has so thoroughly given in to the importunings of a president who lives in constant fear of what science might offer if left to its own devices, science being a branch of knowledge that cannot be controlled by him or Dick Cheney.

We live in a country run by a consummate liar whose most egregious lies have resulted in (a) the deaths of more than 4000 American servicemen and women, (b) the infliction of life altering wounds on more than 20,000 servicemen and women, and© millions of people in a far-off land becoming homeless and refugees in foreign countries.

Great stuff! If only this blogger could somehow get someone in the mainstream media to pay attention to his concerns! For example, by writing, or calling, or at least coming home for the holidays this year.

[The Human Race & Other Sports]

“I’m kind of relying, my client is relying, on just the inner workings of that station,” said [Brent Williams, account supervisor at Karsh/Hagan, the advertising agency that arranged the deal]. “Not that editorial would ever give a heads-up to sales or be expected to give a heads-up to sales, but these are professionals. They do realize that some businesses’ brands, some businesses’ reputations, could be at stake in terms of how commerce and news are interacting here.”

Setting aside how the deal complicates reporting on certain topics, one also can't help but note how it highlights those parts of the news operation already considered journalistically weakest. For the Las Vegas station, the second part of the morning newscast can be sold for product placement, but not the first, since... the first contains the real, actual, trustworthy journalism? At other stations mentioned in the Times story, the entire morning newscast is marked off this way.

The stations are moving forward with the product placements despite the fact that the national news divisions ABC, NBC and CBS have ruled out such practices as misleading. It's almost enough to make one wonder if the local affiliates care more about ratings than presenting a balanced, helpful newscast.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll take a break from all this journalistic hand-wringing and enjoy a crisp, cool Miller High Life. It is truly the champagne of beers!

[Times]

Readers across the globe, I think, regard New York as a place of fascination and, in many cases, a place of destination. More good stories about a place of such wonder and absurdity, magic and outrage can't but attract more readers — in this city or on other continents.

Jim Dwyer, our gifted About New York columnist, likes to say there are three great, inextinguishable human needs: food, sex and stories. We're going to keep the stories coming, likely including many about food and sex (don't wince yet!)

The Observer wonders if this statement means the paper will create a sex beat (the San Francisco Chronicle created such a position). But maybe Sexton just knows something about one or more elected officials we're not privvy to yet!

[Times via Observer]

(Photo via Times)

What is KNIFE CRIME? It's England's version of our regular crime. Except with scary scary knives instead of boring, conventional guns. And it's a menace that's shaking the very foundations of British society! No Briton can walk down their funny, twisty streets without being HACKED or SLASHED or STABBED these days! Mostly stabbed!

NO PART OF BRITAIN IS SAFE FROM THE BLADE MENACE.

Ministers and police search in vain for solutions! Perhaps knives should be outlawed! But then, as we in America know, only outlaws would have knives. And the outlaws will have extra-scary knives. Like the dreaded WASP KNIFE, a "deadly new knife with exploding tip that freezes victims' organs." Holy shit!

Labour MP for Perry Barr in Birmingham, Khalid Mahmood, said: "Weapons like this are absolutely disgraceful and there is no reason at all why people should be walking around the streets with them.

"There should be high-profile operations and high-profile arrests against anybody caught with them. The way to tackle the wider issue of knife crime is with effective community policing, which the West Midlands force does very well.

"The Met could pick up on the lessons from West Midlands Police in its excellent community work in places like Handsworth, Aston and Lozells."

There does not yet seem to be any evidence that anyone in Britain even has one of these American-made knives. But, you know, PANIC.

The "moose in the room" is one of those unbearably stupid management book stories, in which a moose ends up at a dinner party or something and no one at the table has the nerves to ask why the moose is there. See, the moose represents big problems that no one wants to talk about. So you are always supposed to mention the moose in the room. Get it? The whole thing is asinine.

Of course, Sulzberger is big into management fads and business book bullshit (as we said, buffoon). And back when the Jayson Blair scandal was rocking the Times newsroom, he did this (per Seth Mnookin's Hard News):

Now, though, he thinks that was maybe a mistake.

In an infamous incident, Mr. Sulzberger showed up at a company crisis meeting holding a toy stuffed moose. It was a gimmick meant to symbolize things that people were afraid to say, but nobody was in the mood for goofy shtick.

He wouldn't repeat it. "Obviously not," he said. "The anger that came out of that meeting, it was so palpable that the moose wasn't a necessary tool, it became clear," he said. "It just wasn't. Now, it had proven necessary in other situations, but it wasn't in that one, so no.

"But look, if that's the biggest mistake I make as leader of The New York Times Co., this is a good thing."

Ha ha "the moose wasn't a necessary tool." And you should know about useless tools, Pinch! It's a testament to Pinch's unwavering ability to miss the point that he doesn't realize the Moose Incident wasn't one bad decision but rather a lovely symbol of how incredibly out of touch he is—with his own newsroom, with the state of media today, with the national mood. Former Times reporter John Darnton just published an entertaining murder mystery set at a newspaper that bears some resemblance to the Times. Here's how he paints the publisher of his fictional newspaper:

The prizes and revenue poured in. it was like standing on the bridge of an aircraft carrier and believing that you, not the ocean were actually keeping the damn thing afloat. But now, with the Internet, the blogs, MSNBC, fifteen minute news cycles, giveaway papers in the subway—Christ, you turn around for a moment and the whole damn world is different. A cliché, maybe, but it's true. Just two days ago, he asked Rosen, one of his two sons, a computer geek, to introduce him to some sites; he read a smattering of them (superficial.com, gawker.com, defamer.com) and he was aghast. Where the hell did it come from, this abiding compulsion to read about breakups and breakdowns of third-rate celebrities? To pursue them into restaurants and nightclubs as they turned bulimic or cheated on their partners or adopted African babies? And written in a spirit of such spite (he didn't know the word schadenfreude). "That's the whole point, Dad," his son had said laughing condescendingly. "You've got to be snarky."

But in this book is the seed of the actual good news for Times reporters. The paper is still a great springboard to actual media success. They've taken recently to building personalities out of their contributors. It's a break from Times tradition, and a welcome one. Does it matter whatever Warren St. John's actual salary and position at the Times are? No, not so much. What matters for Warren is how effective the paper is at promoting his book, and his brand. What is David Carr? A film vlogger...? And now addiction memoirist? He's whatever the hell he wants to be at the New York Times, which is good news for people who enjoy his writing, and good news for his Amazon ranking.

Is it good news for the Times? Who the hell knows. Pinch sure doesn't.

Ironically, it's the same overweening tendencies Murdoch displays now to such apparent delight that got Evans sacked from the editorship of the British Times in 1982 after only a year's tenure (he complained about the lack of editorial independence — sound familiar?) But even prior to that, Harry skirmished with Rupert and came away defeated and bruised.

He'd tried to lead a management buyout of The Sunday Times, which Evans edited to great acclaim for 14 years, only to find, as he later recounted to Forbes's James Brady, "we were outwitted by Rupert. My colleagues thought he would better handle the unions, and they were right. He did." That may be read as faint praise for the better businessman, but Evans still thought of Murdoch as a force of true evil in news publishing. As he wrote on page one of his memoir Good Times, Bad Times, "I knew that Murdoch issued promises as prudently as the Weimar Republic issued Marks." Much of the remainder of the book explains why and how this is so.

Evans must really despise the Cheltenham mountain face to sound so generous now.

The blog, TellZell.com, got a sympathy writeup in the NYT this weekend. And while it has some fire in it, it's ultimately a sad relic of the once-mighty newspaper industry. A recent post, for example, contains a bunch of farewell letters from Tribune staffers:

Perhaps I hid behind the smallness of my cog's place in the big machine here, or the fact that I worked in what is perhaps the best photo journalism department in the nation kept me from feeling too worried, but with the loss of talent over the last year or two and the seeming lack of any vision in regard to the future of true journalism (other then to hold to the cliff's edge for as long as possible), I feel that I need to say something, however insignificant it may be.

I'll add to the chorus of goodbyes with an adios y un dicho de mi abuelita: "No hay un mal que por un bien no viene."

The Times literally changed my life. I came here as a musician who occasionally wrote and I'm leaving as a guy looking for work as a writer (not that I, the son of a composer, could ever stop being a musician). I'm proud of having contributed to this paper.

SAD. It really is a quality blog, if you're into that sort of thing. Unfortunately its only chance of impacting Sam Zell is... well, there's no chance.

[TellZell.com]

Of course the Obama campaign will say the decision was made strictly for space reasons — it already has — but given the publicity surrounding the New Yorker cover and around Lizza's story on Obama's early poltical career, his people had to know what signal it would send to exclude the magazine so soon after the cover flap: That the candidate of change is not above trying to manipulate the press like any other politician.

Which, as the New Yorker's luck would have it, not only reinforces the central message of its cover story (that Obama is a politician much like any other) but also smoothes its potentially awkward transition from self-described "extremely favorable" coverage of candidate Obama to the inevitably more critical coverage of nominee and president Obama. Sometimes it's worthwhile to buy your own damn plane ticket!

For Obama, there is at least some risk of blowback from the decision. As Daily Show host Jon Stewart pointed out on his show last week, getting upset about magazine illustrations is not the best way to swat down rumors one is an intolerant extremist:

[Politico]

Here's the release we got on Wednesday:

[Alleged victim], a 25 year-old graduate student who lives in Manhattan was attacked yesterday (Tuesday, July 15th, 2008) at 8.30 P.M. outside of the 14th St.-Union Square subway station. ["Victim"], who was at the time listening to music with her iPod, was wearing a pink t-shirt bearing the slogan "Obama Is My Slave". Four African-American female teenagers approached her and one of them started to curse her because of her t-shirt, screaming at her, and then push her. ["Victim"], who was shocked, started to walk away from the group but was followed by the girls. The same one who cursed her, pulled her earphones and another girl spat on her face. ["Victim"] ran away from them and called the "[Bad designer]" store on [LES] where she had purchased her t-shirt and complained about the attack to the employee who was working in the shop at that time. The employee agreed to give ["victim"] the owner's, [bad designer's], cell phone number and the still shocked ["victim"] told him about the attack and informed him she was thinking of suing him "for all he's got". [Bad designer] in return told her that he was very sorry she had been attacked, but that she could not blame him because as he told her "No one made you buy the t-shirt". ["Victim"] said that she would come the following day and demand a refund for the t-shirt, which cost her $69. [Bad designer] told her that he doesn't give refunds because it is against his store policy. This made her even more agitated and she started to scream at him saying that he should be "ashamed of himself". [Bad designer] asked her for her phone number saying that he would speak to his lawyer and call her back. Yesterday at 10 PM when I, his publicist, called ["victim"] she was extremely upset and told me that she had spoken to her parents and decided to take [bad designer] to court.

* To speak with [alleged victim] about the incident, you can reach her at phone number: [redacted]
* To speak with [Bad designer] aka [prick], you can reach him at phone number: [redacted].
* A picture of [Bad designer] aka [prick] wearing the "Obama Is My Slave" t-shirt can be found at: [Hell]

Sincerely,

Lauren Levy
[Bad designer's] Publicist.

What's wrong with this picture? The guy is supposedly getting sued, and his own flack blasts out a press release with all the alleged dirty details, including the contact info of the girl who is supposedly suing him. Any reporter who's ever seen a press release related to a lawsuit knows that there's no way on earth one side will be happily passing out the other side's contact info and encouraging journalists to call them. And Metro says the "victim" didn't return any of their calls. Which didn't stop them from putting this on the front page.

There are only two possibilities: Either this whole thing is a hoax; or, the girl did get assaulted, and the bad designer and his creepy flack decided that this race-baiting was just the thing to get his face in the paper. Either way, what a bunch of scuzzballs.

Metro: you fools.

[Radar]

Renault complained to the police because the magazine, Auto Plus, "published pictures and details of a new model not due to be launched for another three years." I call that a hell of a scoop. Three years in advance! Such things are criminal matters in France. By contrast, in the greatest country on earth (USA), leaks like this are routine, and it's the company's god damn problem to track down leakers. (Unless you're talking about Apple and the Think Secret blog). Renault says they were just getting a little assistance:

"It kills creativity, you may as well just give our models to the newspapers and our competitors. What's the point of doing any research?" a spokesman said.

"The idea is not to attack Auto Plus but to cut off the sources that feed it, to find the source inhouse."

Interesting interpretation. In that case, police should be raiding Renault and arresting its executives every time an consumer is tricked into buying one of their crappy cars. The idea is not to attack Renault, you see, but to cut off the money that feeds it.

USA, USA, USA.

[Reuters, Folio]

He wasn't cancelled because the topic was no longer of interest — his op-ed coauthor still got to go on air — but because suddenly there was only room for one person.

This could be because Savage is a lefty, and lefties are detested on Fox, but after seeing the segment, I'm going with Radar's theory that the co-author, Maureen O'Connor, was selected for being kind of hot. Fox tends to know its audience like that.

The Girls Gone Wild footage chosen to accompany the on-air chat (above) would tend to reinforce that notion. In any case, a look at Savage's Facebook profile is below.

[Radar]

(Video via RedLasso, Facebook image via Huffington Post)

Karl Rove exchanged e-mails about Pat Tillman with Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, under the subject line "H-E-R-O." In response to Mr. Fournier's e-mail, Mr. Rove asked, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this," to which Mr. Fournier replied, "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."

Fournier isn't trying to explain how telling the White House's main political adviser to "keep up the fight" keeps his journalism unbiased. Instead he said he's kind of sorry, even though he obviously isn't, at all:

"I was an AP political reporter at the time of the 2004 e-mail exchange, and was interacting with a source, a top aide to the president, in the course of following an important and compelling story. I regret the breezy nature of the correspondence."

Right, breezy. I always use phrases like "The Lord" and "great and free countries" in my breezy emails. In text messages, even.

[TPM Muckraker, House Oversight Committee's Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch report (see p. 21)]

(Photo via GMU)

Lehman is examining a handful of options, including a strategic alliance with a partner that it hopes will help restore investor confidence, an asset sale or possibly some sort of stock buyback, according to people familiar with the matter.

...Lehman has continued talks with the Korean financial institutions to which it reached out months ago before its $2.8 billion loss that resulted in a $6 billion capital raising, according to people familiar with the matter. It isn't known if it has held talks with other possible partners. Its initial discussions with the Korean entities didn't culminate in a deal.

Another possibility for Lehman includes the sale of some its more troubled assets, similar to what Citigroup Inc. did in April, when it sold almost $12 billion in leveraged loans to a group of private-equity firms. Lehman officials didn't return calls for comment Sunday.

Gosh, who could be spreading all this inside information about Lehman Brothers' plans? Surely not executives who would personally profit from a rise in company shares, for example those compensated with shares or options. And, if so, surely they are far more sure about their many speculative assertions than the meanies who speculate in the bad, negative way about Lehman Brothers.

Besides, the financial services chiefs demanding this crackdown never intended it to apply to them — it's for hedge funders and maybe journalists and so forth. Go after those guys and the free market will, once again, work properly. (Honest, it really will, this time.)

[WSJ, Previously]

On a recent road trip, I found numerous funny, bittersweet, or just bitter or idiotic political bumper stickers a welcome distraction from $4.50 gas, but also thought I should remind everybody who has anything to do with creating or displaying news content why they shouldn't display their own political views, on cars or elsewhere, in this campaign season or afterward.

But that's not all! The freedom of Times staffers to express themselves is not only being trod upon on the streets, but also on the information superhighway! Whitney sent another memo today on the subject of political expression:

Fellow newsroom hands:
I should have also mentioned avoiding some other potential political entanglements: Web sites, personal blogs, YouTube, Facebook, slogans and so on in e-mails and instant messaging systems. When Facebook asks what your political preferences are, don't answer, and don't say anything in a blog, video, radio or television program or any other medium that you couldn't say in the paper or on our Website — about politics or anything else.

Sigh. Looks like Virginia Heffernan will have to quit the "Official Petition for Colored Facebook Profiles" group.

(Actually, if anyone can find real examples of Times staffers with inappropriate Facebook group memberships, you know where to send the proof.)

I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous. It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.

Rachel Sklar, who jumped on the story over at the Huffington Post, isn't buying it:

...it's got all the scare tactics and misinformation that has so far been used to derail Barack Obama's campaign — all in one handy illustration. Anyone who's tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who's tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism— well, here's your image.

Right, because if there's one source right-wing scaremongers love to cite, it's the New Yorker!

Jake Tapper of ABC News agrees with Sklar:

Knowing the liberal politics of the magazine, I believe the magazine's staff when they say the illustration is meant ironically, as a parody of the caricature some conservatives (and some supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.) are painting of the Obamas.

But it's still fairly incendiary, at least as these things go. I wonder what the reaction would be were it the Weekly Standard or the National Review putting such an illustration on their covers.

Intent factors into these matters, of course, but no Upper East Side liberal — no matter how superior they feel their intellect is — should assume that just because they're mocking such ridiculousness, the illustration won't feed into the same beast in emails and other media. It's a recruitment poster for the right-wing.

So participants in important political discussions, especially those who have loud voices by dint of talent, power or medium of publication, should tailor their self-expression in such a way that it can't possibly be misappropriated by extremists! Gee, that sounds familiar.

Well, this is the part in the campaign where we find out who among Barack Obama and his supporters truly do want to set aside the melodramatic hysterics that have cropped up around political dialog in this country over the past seven years, and who is instead destined to join the extreme right in opposing a long and proud American tradition of brazen free speech and rough-and-tumble dialog that have all too often been set aside in recent years in the name of sensitivity — patriotic or otherwise.

Or maybe I'm just touchy because these anti-French-defamation people weren't happy with my own caricature of stereotypes over the weekend. Whatever, talk amongst yourselves!

[Huffington Post]