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.

Like it is barely even about how Barack Obama was secretly born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and is the son of Malcolm X! Most of the movie is just clips of cable news people talking about the election and Obama's first few months in office. But the highlight is surely this all-time classic of unintended consequences:

At the height of its sloppiness, the producers use, in its entirety, a video that Media Matters put together to mock Fox News coverage of the president's first 100 days. You can spot the rip-off because the blue bars and white text that Media Matters mark the 100 days with are still on the screen. Where the liberal group meant to mock the hyperbolic rhetoric of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the network's line-up, WND treats this like pages from the Gospels.

Hah. Nice one, Media Matters. Way to expose and contribute to the crazy. It is nice to be reminded that what is self-evidently batshit nonsense to "us" is just speaking truth to power to "them."

Reporting yesterday after the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, Smith credited the accuracy of a recent Homeland Security warning about violent, right-wing hate groups on the rise. He also mentioned an influx of nutty emails being sent into Fox. For this, he has drawn scorn.

Media Matters points out that a number of anti-Shep diatribes have emerged, not the least of which came from de facto Republican leader Rush Limbaugh.

During his June 11 radio program, Rush Limbaugh said of Smith's remarks: "For liberals to now claim that the atmosphere is somehow more violently anti-Obama is simply preposterous." Limbaugh also said Smith was "whining and moaning and complaining about emails." After stating that he, too, got "vile, sick emails," Limbaugh said, "Shep, you got nothing on anybody out there."

The conservative blog Atlas Shrugs went all the way in calling for Shep's head in a post titled, "Please Shepard Smith Out the Door"

Shepard Smith is scolding us for the 89 year old Nazi Von Brunn — a nut case who served six years in federal prison in the 1980s. Von Brunn had walked into the headquarters of the Federal Reserve System with two guns, a package he said contained dynamite, and a desire to improve the nation's economy, D.C. police said. A certifiable sicko.

How amusing that Shepard feels the need to take this opportunity to scold us for doing the job the Shepardsmithmug media and schmucks like him won't do. He also took the opportunity to vouch for the DHS report on right wing extremism. You know, the one that targeted vets, tea party attendees, Jewish extremists — as the real threats to the country. The 89 year old Nazi Von Brunn served in World War II — are those the new terror threats? WW2 vets? Scary stupidity.

FOX could do so much better than this pompous elitist. If Beck proved anything, it's that if you are halfway talented, your numbers will go through the roof. Beating the competition when you're on FOX is no biggie. The competition of CNN, MSNBC et al drives people to FOX. Leading the leftwing media asshats is not the bar to beat. FOX numbers are the bar. I am sure, for example, if FOX dropped Beck into Greta's spot, he would increase their numbers at 10pm by 30%.

But Shep sucks. And Shep has always sucked, and it's time to get rid of the deadwood.

And World Net Daily, the most widely-read conservative site online, launched a blistering attack, essentially insinuating that Shepard Smith is a closet crazy person capable of snapping just like James von Brunn did:

Smith made numerous references to a Department of Homeland Security report warning of potential violence from "right-wing extremists," and said he's been personally disturbed by an increase in e-mail to him from people "who are way out there on a limb ... out there in a scary place."

He read what he called a representative message that asked, "How dare you tell us to get over the birth certificate ... ?"

Ironically, Smith himself allegedly engaged in activity some might deem questionable.

As WND previously reported, during the presidential election fiasco in November 2000, Smith was arrested at the Florida Capitol for allegedly driving his Mazda Millenia into another reporter who was standing in a parking space she attempted to save for a friend. The victim, freelance journalist Maureen Walsh of Tallahassee, was hospitalized and released later the same day with bruises on her knees and legs.

The St. Petersburg Times reported Capitol Police Sgt. Edwin Maxwell said Smith drove up and "shouted some profanities at her and basically just struck her, striking her at the knees, which threw her up on the car."

According to NewsBlues, a witness to the incident said Smith "intentionally ran into her with his car to try and get her to move from the parking spot. She was thrown onto the hood of the car and ended up on the ground. Smith then parked the car, turned off the engine, turned to the crews assisting the reporter and said "f—- you" and walked into the state capital. Police and paramedics were called."

"When arrested on the street outside the capital, Smith said he couldn't understand why this was happening ... they then handcuffed him."

Meanwhile, Smith talked by phone to an ex-wife of James von Brunn on his show today, who said that his hatred for Jews and blacks began "in New York, when he worked there at an advertising agency." Very fitting.

Andy Borowitz helped us step into Dimension X when he wrote (a satirical piece; update below) earlier this week about a University of Minnesota School of Journalism conference, in which some serious self-doubt commenced over whether or not media organizations have managing covering the Jon and Kate saga proficiently:

"You open the New York Times, and what do you see?" said Davis Logsdon, Dean of Minnesota's journalism school. "Kim Jong-Il, Sonia Sotomayor — but not a word about Jon and Kate."

Mr. Logsdon said that if the media continued to ignore important stories like Jon and Kate, "they will continue their slide into irrelevance."

His umbrella positioning and bizarre ass-backwards logic about why the media's becoming irrelevant aside, he's right: there are important issues to cover regarding this thing. Child labor laws - which the show is currently being investigated over - childrens' mental health care issues, the distinction of labor laws as they pertain to "reality" television programming, maybe even something on what it's like to insure eight kids, and how insurance companies view the parents and surrounding factors as variables and liabilities. Another one of the panel's attendees was thinking of something slightly different:

Tracy Klugian, who heads the Center for Reality Show Media Studies, said that the media are leaving major questions unanswered: "Is Jon really having a fling with the 23-year-old schoolteacher? And what about Kate and the bodyguard? The American people look to the media to investigate these issues, and the fact that they haven't done their job is a scandal."

Or, in other words: if we don't get on this Jon and Kate thing now, journalism's fucked!

Now, yes, this is just some assclown in a room saying assclownish things. But there're a few pretty frightening elements about this, chief among them being that (1) they're telling budding writers to pen Jon and Kate stories under the pretenses that the people need to know those things, which is ridiculous - if the New York Times should write about Jon and Kate, at the most craven level, it's because of the SEO traffic; and (2) this is an actual journalism school, teaching actual students how to go about working as actual, real (!) journalists. Everyone's getting hosed, whether it's the Nu Class themselves or the readers of whatever papers these kids get farmed out to.

Meanwhile, people other than supermarket tabloids (and us) are actually starting to write about Jon and Kate. The aforementioned story about the show being investigated for labor law violations is a start in the right direction, and the New York Post recently made some decent - if not, tabloid-flavored - attempts at putting together a coherent picture of the perks said "reality" stars are getting as well as devoting a recent wide-eyed 2,100 words to documenting the phenomenon (that manages to get the headline wrong and heartily begin with an H.L. Mencken quote).

Elsewhere, however: the New York Times' Gail Collins thinks the TV show is a bad idea, wow, the HuffPo has conspiracy theories, and Michael Wolff is off doing other batshit things, like comparing Jon and Kate Gosselin to Sonia Sotomayor, which I can't even begin to explain.

Insert any ideals about journalism you might have here: there's a story to be had, a real scoop, something that the public wants to know about Jon and Kate that we haven't been given yet. Maybe something that isn't a cross-section of an actual news organization and TMZ. Maybe that's why the Jon and Kate story really is important to the media: it's one giant test being taken in real time, that's going to dictate what's news and what isn't when it comes to the realm of celebrity. And people want the news, right?

Maybe. In the mean time, here's Jon shopping at Barney's. Here's the family on vacation. Here's a body-language expert talking about how sad Kate is. And here's the story about the show not going anywhere, anytime soon.

That's not the worst part: while the lifestyle, Kate's hair, and Jon's "job" might be fake, the kids are still real. And it will continue to look this ugly from every. Single. Angle for as long as this goes on.

Media Faulted for Lack of "Jon and Kate" Coverage [HuffPo]

Update: Commenters pointed out that I was fooled by the Huffington Post - looks like Borowitz is a comedy writer. Ha, even though I couldn't really tell, because it came up on my feed as news. Distinguish, goddamnit! Either way, he got me. But Borowitz, to his credit, wrote a piece of satire that could be read as news, which there's something to be said about (besides my inane research skills). The other examples cited here - Michael Wolff, Gail Collins, the Post, the Daily News, and the AP reports - are all real, so I'm sticking with this as a serious news cycle issue (and how mainstream media's going to treat it being a serious question). But, yup: Gawker Weekend Writer hosed, to hysterical, self-serious effect. Mea culpa.

The gaffe, if it can even be called that because it appears nearly impossible for this to have been an accident, appears to have been originally caught by the blog, No More Mister Nice Blog. The Times, which later pulled the photo from its story, makes no mention of the Obama girls anywhere in the piece, yet clearly identified them in the photo caption that ran with the story.

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS The Obama daughters (above) - Sasha, 7, and Malia, 10 - attended the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. This school year 36 of the city's school children have been killed.

How the hell does something like this happen, even at the country's most conservative daily newspaper during a Democratic administration? Are there no humans with active souls, with warm blood pumping through their veins, around to man the ship over there?

Eric Boehlert at Media Matters chewed on this a bit earlier today.

Think about the specifics of today's case. The Obama children, of course, are not actually mentioned in the news story. But somebody at the WashTimes thought it made perfect sense to insert the image of the underage White House occupants into a story about murdered kids in Chicago.

And no, this was not an example of an unfortunate juxtaposition, where the the Obama girls photo was actually part of another, more innocuous story and because of a layout quirk simply appeared near the murdered-kids story. Instead, the Obama girls photo was specifically selected to accompany the article.

Here's an interesting side note to the story: Looking though the comments, it appears as though only one Times reader, commenting under the name "jiff," bothered to express outrage at the use of the photo.

"I am appalled that you put a picture of the President's children with this article. Please explain the reasoning behind this."

Say what you want about the politics of former Times editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden, and he was as radically conservative as they come, but I doubt there's any way horseshit like this would've happened under his watch.

She critiques Us Weekly and the other glossy rags on the newstands she whizzes by in a black SUV. She urges that even though, yes, she is a big time celebrity training to play a latex-clad superhero in a big, big movie, she is just like us. And she offers some statistics from the unfortunately named National Eating Disorders Association that are, of course, sobering: 10 million women and 1 million men suffer from dangerous eating disorders in this stupid country of ours.

So, she'd like to dissuade girls from trying to crash diet like their favorite shiny celebrities. (Don't try this at home, we're professionals.) To drive home the point that she works hard for whatever body she does have, but that she does it healthily and that exercise is good for everyone and magazines lie and ohhh We Are One.

Which is all well and good! If a bit self-important. But at the end she adds the little dig that, we suspect, sparked the whole rant:

I'm not normally the type to dignify toilet paper rags with a response, but in this case I feel it's my responsibility to comment. In a way, I'm glad some dummy journalist (and I use the term "journalist" loosely) is banking on my "deflating" so that I can address the issue straight from my healthy heart.

The 'deflate' refers to this post, written by our own Journalist Ryan Tate, who, tipped off by a Page Six item, noticed some shrinkage. Of boobs.

We support your non-crash-dieting advocacy and condemnation of gross fattie-fat-fat stories.

But we were just talking about your cans, love. Your precious, precious, career-making cans.

As Eric Bohlert notes in Media Matters today, Drudge has become so divorced from reality that even the serious press people who've religiously trusted his instincts since the Clinton days can't square his headlines with reality. His cherry-picked poll results are plainly ridiculous, last week's Drudge-touted "McCain Comeback" never even pretended to materialize, and he's completely, completely missed, by design, the major narratives of the last month of the campaign: Palin's national meltdown, the increasingly crazed McCain rallies, and Obama's fundraising and ground advantages. Instead we get... Biden on Botox, a little ACORN, and feeble attempts at finding crazy liberals attacking McCain supporters. They all work like a charm on the Conservative Blogosphere, but back in the good old days, that was just the first step toward mainstream discussion. Now, no one gives a shit.

Maybe after the election Drudge will buckle down, like Fox, and provide the voice of the embattled opposition. But a conservative crack-up and the apparent disillusion of the tacit MSM/right-wing noise machine cooperative venture is not great news for Matt. And it's a long time until the next hurricane season.

A judge put Kit on a one year good behavior bond and suggested that he take up exercise or socialize with other people to relax. But, as everyone in the media knows, spending time with other media people only makes things worse! Look what happened to Lou Dobbs!

The article also notes that, last month, "a 'lonely and disturbed' Hong Kong man became stuck and had to be freed by emergency services after attempting to have sex with a park bench."

Things are tough all over. [Straits Times]

Q: Why an entertainment vertical?

A: There is overwhelming demand from customers and members for coverage of celebrity, movies and music. According to PQ Media, the market for outsourced entertainment news content is set to rise by 77% by 2011 to $960 million. So, increasing our entertainment coverage provides an opportunity to give them more of the content they want and to increase revenue at the same time.

SHUDDER. Beyond asking the simple question of how the downturn in ad revenue across media — and thus the resultant belt-tightening, downsizing and shuttering among AP subscribers — squares up with that 77% boost for outsourcers like AP, we'd also like to know: Why a separate organization altogether? Becker notes it's all about the flexibility to "fine-tune" its service, but he sneaks in a bit about a discrete "management structure and P&L" as well. In other words: We're red-headed stepchildren, but at least we're not union stepchildren.

There are some epistemological crises in there, too:

Q: There is a fear that this will take AP closer to tabloid journalism. How will AP ensure it maintains its journalistic standards?

A: The entertainment vertical is not about gossip, unnamed sources and innuendo or about "peephole" journalism with AP photographers becoming paparazzi. It's about recognizing an opportunity to use our journalistic talent and unmatched network of resources to produce high quality, multimedia coverage in an area of growing interest.

Translation: "Did you see South Park the other night? We're going to be just like the photographers outside Britney Spears hospital room, except our captions will I.D. both Stan and Kyle by name. You know — for old times' sake!" Excuse us, we need rush off to stockpile gasoline.

• AP Planning Massive Celebrity Coverage [DHD]

In 2004, Fox' coverage of the New Hampshire primary—a purely Democratic affair, as no one dared challenge the president for his nomination—beat CNN's by 200,000 viewers. In the last New Hampshire primary, heavily contested by both parties, CNN prevailed over Fox by nearly 250,000 viewers. That's one anecdotal story (and Fox's coverage of the GOP South Carolina primary slightly beat CNN's), but maybe it's part of a trend? Boehlert has a damning list of reasons for Roger Ailes to be worried!

Some of them are astute (Fox staked a lot on Rudy Giuliani's campaign, the Dem candidates are largely boycotting the network, the Fox Business Network is a hilarious failure), and some of them are not (Ron Paul? Seriously?).

But is any of this seriously any reason at all to celebrate anything? The resurgence of CNN? On the backs of Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck? With Larry King still unexpectedly appearing to comfort the elderly and terrify children each and every night?

Or hey, maybe MSNBC—with Russert and Matthews, the blowhardiest of all pundits, at their disposal—will finally find its voice. Regardless of how it all turns out, we'll continue receiving precisely the quality of political coverage that we deserve.

Republicans make Fox News sick [Salon]

It could be in reaction to NBC News political director Chuck Todd's blog post yesterday, accusing the group of "facetious attacks" on Obama and John Edwards!

Or! Playing white knight to Obama's distressed damsel could just be a ploy to handily distract people from asking any more uncomfortable questions about the lefty group's alleged angel investor, Senator Hillary Clinton, who acknowledged helping to fund the site at this year's YearlyKos convention.

Also! Media Matters CEO David Brock may have some 'splaining to do. He was the first to reveal details in 1994 of her husband's infidelities. He later apologized for it in Esquire, but we wonder if he's still apologizing.

O'Reilly surprised "there was no difference" between Harlem restaurant and other New York restaurants [Media Matters]