Here's a video clip of MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan literally saying "call your congressman" last month, during one of his screeds about "corporate communism." And here he is literally writing "tell your congressman" on the Huffington Post.

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

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

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

Olbermann has:

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

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

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

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

Update: This story may be quickly going from odd news to tragedy. CNN has reported, but not confirmed, that the boy has fallen out of the balloon.

The boy is Falcon Heene, son of Mayumi and Richard, who is a scientist and storm chaser. The family has twice appeared on Wife Swap, which is where we got this picture. He is the youngest boy, picture in the center.

The aircraft is 20 feet by five feet, covered in shiny foil, and shaped like a giant flying saucer. It is flying through the air as television helicopters photograph the action for everyone sitting home watching cable news. He is in a plywood structure at the base of the balloon that was left unlocked. The wind has taken the balloon from the family's home in Fort Collins and it is flying untethered. It is currently about 40 miles north of Denver, but who knows how far or fast the balloon can fly. The parents who made this thing say that it can go as high as 10,000 feet.

Naturally, since things like this don't happen every day, no one knows quite what to do to get it down and not harm the boy who is trapped inside. Good luck, god speed, and we hope this kid is OK!

Update: Here's footage of the balloon landing.

• So, what does Lindsay Lohan have to say about her disastrous Ungaro show in Paris? She just didn't have time to make a collection that didn't totally suck. And those pasties? She didn't even know about them! "I wasn't aware of the nipple tassels on the girls until they were walking out..." Don't worry, though, because the actress says she's "still learning," which gives us an iota of hope her next effort won't fall so flat. [People]
  
  
• A crazed "in love" fan waited in line five hours so that he could punch singer Leona Lewis at a book signing. She cried a bit, but has made a full recovery. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Neither side will admit it, but Fox Business and MSNBC are both working double time to make sure their respective morning hosts — rivals Don Imus and Joe Scarborough — beat one another at the ratings game. Scarborough's winning, but newcomer Imus could still come up from behind. [Page Six]
  
  
• Here's something none of us could have ever predicted. Britney Spears, who once lost custody of her two tots, has been named "best celebrity mom" in a completely scientific poll put out by a Christmas savings company, the most important source on Earth. [Mirror]
  
  
• Hillary Swank will stop at nothing to have children — someday. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• We're really sorry to be the ones to tell you this, but we're sure you've predicted it, so here it goes: Jon Gosselin vowed to continue a career in television. [NYDN]
  
  
• All wait staff should be on high alert: Miley Cyrus does not tip well. You've been warned. [Splash News]
  
  
• A former bodyguard claimed Howard K. Stern helped Anna Nicole Smith shoot valium. Because, at that point, why not? [NYDN]
  
  
• The late Stephen Gately's Boyzone bandmates will sleep in the chapel with his body the night before his funeral because he wasn't fond of being alone. [Mirror]
  
  
• Eminem must be quite the diva: he refused to work with Madonna. Chump. [NYDN]
  
  
• Because domestic life no longer appeals to viewers, the fifth season of Tori Spelling and family's reality show will be a cross-country trip. Next season? Ultimate fighting. [ET]
  
  
• Rather than simply pleading insanity, one of the men accused of extorting John Travolta after the actor's son's death claims that Travolta's lawyer offered him the $15 million as "hush money." [NYDN]
  
  
• Former Seventeen editor Atoosa Rubenstein will appear at Baruch Barnard College today to discuss the trials and tribulations of Iranian... hair. [Page Six]
  
  
• It's officially official: Avril Lavigne has filed for divorce from Sum 41 singer Deryck Jason Whibley. Now perhaps we'll never have to hear those names again. [AP]
  
  
• Joe Francis recently boasted that if he saw rival Brody Jenner, Jenner was "dead." Then he ran into Brody and his friends and did nothing. What a cock. And a tease. [Page Six]

Sure, it was for a good cause, but the fact that Olbermann believed that an hour-long monologue worthy of Fidel Castro was something that people wanted or needed to see, and that his bosses actually let him get away with it, brought to mind Ben Affleck's flawless SNL caricature of Olbermann's mammoth self-regard. It seemed at times last night that he actually took some pointers from Affleck's performance — Olbermann's ego is expansive enough to take such jabs as loving tribute, and incorporate them into his self-image like some ravenous blob that from a sci-fi movie. Watch them both below, and you be the judge.

If you really want to change the course of the health care debate and change minds, Keith—hell, if you even just want to inform people about the world around them, like your sainted Edward R. Murrow, now and again—try pointing the camera at something other than yourself. And let us know when you conquer death.

Ben Affleck doing Keith Olbermann:

Keith Olbermann unwittingly doing Ben Affleck doing Keith Olbermann:

We initially pulled the clip because we thought it showed Brewer misreading the poll data as showing a drop in approval of the congressional GOP from 13% to 9% when in fact, according to the on-screen graphic, it showed the reverse—a four-point rise. But it turns out the graphic is wrong—there was a four-point drop relating to Congress, the GOP, and approval. But it's not, as Brewer says, that just 9% of the public approve of the GOP in Congress. It's that 9% of Republicans approve of Congress, down from 13% of Republicans last month.

Big difference. Especially when, according to Gallup, Republicans and Democrats are virtually tied on the "generic ballot" vote for which party people intend to vote for in their congressional elections, with Republicans gaining two percentage points and Democrats dropping six since July.

As you can see, Brewer made the same mistake with the Democratic numbers, misreporting an 18-point drop in Democrats' approval of Congress as an 18-point drop in the public's approval of Democrats in Congress. But you can hear in her voice how happy it makes her to say that Republican approval "slipped into the single digits," and she probably wishes it were true just as much as Fox News producers wished Mark Foley and Mark Sanford were Democrats.

The last time Olbermann took a sudden, unexplained absence from the show, it turned out to have been a hissy-fit work stoppage after Rachel Maddow booked Ben Affleck and MSNBC brass refused to back Olbermann's attempt to bigfoot her and steal the interview. After CityFile reported on the flap, Olbermann blamed the absence on his mother's death, which had occurred two weeks prior.

We asked an MSNBC publicist where Olbermann has been and, she responded: "He's going to discuss it on the show tonight, he's back tonight."

There could obviously be a variety of interesting and non-interesting explanations for the days off, which he took on the 11th, 14th, 18th, 22nd, 23rd, 25th, 28th, and 29th of September, and we're just wondering, is all.

UPDATE: A tipster sent in the screengrab below from Saturday's Red Sox game at Yankee Stadium. We posted it, saying Olbermann was at the game, because that looks exactly like Keith Olbermann. But we have it on good authority that it is not, in fact, Keith Olbermann. Our corporate brothers at Deadspin got the same image from the same tipster earlier this week, and didn't use it. We knew that. What we didn't know was that Deadspin checked with Olbermann to confirm that it was him, and found that it was not. We should have checked, too, although we didn't think to because doesn't that look exactly like Keith Olbermann? Down to the glasses?

It's not clear what they were trying to gain or who they were trying to serve by the stunt. Even at Fox — which repeatedly used the horror anyone felt that day as an excuse to push all sorts of ill-fated policies — they spent the morning airing live pictures from the memorial service at the Pentagon. So did CNN.

MSNBC did this last year, too. Even posting a news quiz on their site to see how much info you were absorbing. All we learned — before we quickly turned the channel — is that this is a dumb tradition that MSNBC ought to stop.

We reported a little over a month ago that the Today show had booked Blagojevich to appear on the morning he happened to be arrested by the FBI, but bumped the interview so they could flack for Jay Leno's new show. We found that out through a Freedom of Information Act request to the state of Illinois asking for e-mails from representatives of the media to Lucio Guerrero, Blagojevich's press secretary (we got the idea from South Carolina's The State, which did the same thing—to comic effect—after Mark Sanford's Argentinian Rhapsody).

The first raft of e-mails we got were from December 8, the day before Blagojevich got popped, and it included one from Today producer Lexi Dauber apologetically canceling a scheduled remote Q-and-A with Matt Lauer to make room for Leno news. We just got another batch covering the 48 hours after the arrest, and guess what? Dauber and her fellow Today producer Stephanie Siegel all of a sudden really wanted to talk to Blagojevich!

The traditional route for a reporter desperately trying to convince someone to submit to an interview when it's obviously not in their interest to do so is to drop all pretense of toughness and objectivity and lie to them: We will be your friend! Not like all those other mean reporters. While Dauber and Seigel's e-mails to Guerrero are understandably sympathetic, an internal write-up of a phone call with Siegel outlining the terms of her interview request shows what they were really willing to give up. Matt Lauer or Meredith Vieira would call Blagojevich before the interview to "go over the line of questions," and Seigel stressed that "they are sensitive."

CBS's Early Show also went the simpering route, telling Guerrero that there is "far too much hearsay going around" and offering Blagojevich an opportunity to "set the record straight" and "clear his own name." They were even willing to "rent a private space to keep him away from the rest of the media's view." We all know how annoying prying reporters can be.

ABC News' Diane Sawyer, on the other hand, didn't try to buddy up to Blago. To her credit, Sawyer's producer offered a fairly straightforward pitch that managed to avoid over-the-top sycophancy.

Larry King's producer relied on the rogue's gallery that has traipsed through King's studio in the past, positioning the host as the go-to guy for crooks, liars, and other humiliated figures—go with us and you can be in the fine company of Jeffrey Skilling, Gary Condit, and Bob Packwood!

King's CNN colleague Anderson Cooper wasn't even trying: His producers sent in a perfunctory, We-asked-Governor-Blagojevich-to-come-on-the-show requests that they knew weren't going to open any doors.

Likewise the producer for CNN's Campbell Brown dashed off an email that would allow her to dutifully report that a request was in.

Sometimes brevity is your best bet when dealing with a harried flack who's clearly deluged with requests. That's what Andy Shaw, a political reporter for Chicago's local ABC station, decided to go with.

That kind of approach is important when you know your target is dealing with all manner of zany proposals. Like a request for comment from "a representative for Dan Ackroyd [sic] and Jim Belushi" on their call for Blagojevich's resignation. When a press aide forwarded that message to the governor's press assistant, she responded, "What? I want you to explain."

(For the record, it looks like that was a hoax call—we can't find any evidence that one-half of the Blues Brothers and the talentless brother of the other, dead, half ever made such a demand.)

The most pathetic request comes from Pat Curry, the news assignment editor for WGN, a local Chicago station. He wasn't even asking for an interview with Blagojevich—he wanted Guerrero himself to come on, and delivered a masterwork of flattery and faux sympathy. "I wouldn't expect you to be able to comment on a federal investigation, and could easily brush that off," Curry wrote, signing off with, "Humbly, Pat Curry."

A producer for a local Chicago talk radio show hosted by husband-and-wife pair Don and Roma Wade wins the award for discretion, declining to put in writing the "incredible offer" he had for Guerrero.

We'll never know what that offer was, but guess who got the first post-arrest interview with disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich?

You can read the whole batch here. Interestingly, not one e-mail from Fox News turned up. It could be that they relied solely on the phone, or that their e-mails somehow got missed by our FOIA requests. Or maybe they figured it wasn't worth trying.

[Video by Gawker intern Bill Zilla.]

This morning MacNicol posted a story on Mediaite crediting Gawker for prompting a State Dept. investigation into the ArmorGroup security contractors by publishing photos of them acting out a gay porn version ofAnimal House. MacNicol's hilarious (if flattering) headline: "Does the Long Arm of Gawker Reach the State Department?"

Over at MSNBC — where MacNicol's P.R.-man boss Dan Abrams is the ex-boss and current contributor — they were fascinated. "The question that you guys have raised on the web site today," Brewer said to MacNicol, "is whether it took Gawker.com, a popular blog web site—the headline 'Our Embassy in Afghanistan Guarded by Sexually Confused Frat Boys,' along with those pictures—whether it took Gawker posting the pictures to prompt the State Department to take action."

Now, we're happy that we were the first news organization to publish photos of State Department security contractors engaged in homoerotic hijinks and hazing rituals. We're also happy that the State Department is launching an investigation into allegations of a "Lord of the Flies environment" among employees of ArmorGroup North America, the contractor tasked with ensuring the security of State Department facilities and personnel in Kabul. But it's also very strange to speculate that someone in the State Department said, "Oh shit, it's on Gawker now. Investigate!"

We think it's stranger still to assume, as MacNicol did, that we were fed the photos by the Project on Government Oversight, the good-government group that conducted the investigation into ArmorGroup North America, as part of a deliberate media strategy:

What may be the most interesting part of all this is that POGO chose to "provide" Gawker with those pictures early on, when no doubt there are plenty of mainstream organizations who would have been happy to pick up. Someone at POGO knows their new media stuff: Gawker is the online tastemaker and is capable of immediately getting a story out to a large, connected audience, who will pay attention and quickly pass it on.

Ah, if only it were that coordinated. But there's a funny story behind all this, one that's instructive about the way mainstream media organizations approach digital media and the way digital media organizations approach reporting.

Here's how it happened:

1. The Project on Government did an enormous amount of work uncovering a pattern of coercive and unprofessional behavior at ArmorGroup North America, including "extensive interviews with eyewitnesses, and examination of documents, photographs, videos, and emails." POGO's executive director, Danielle Brian, assembled that work into a letter to Hillary Clinton, which she sent along with attachments, photos and videos. Then she posted the letter on the internet.

2. We read it. It mentioned a whole bunch of pictures of gross stuff. We wanted to see the pictures!

3. We called POGO. They are lovely people. Could we see the pictures?

4. Yes! They e-mailed us the pictures.

5. They were gross, so we put them on the internet.

The end. That's how you launch a State Department investigation. What makes this amusing to us is that POGO held a news conference at 10 a.m. yesterday, six hours before we published the photos. Ten or so reporters showed up. Brian walked them through the letter, and then showed them all the pictures — the self-same pictures that we published — on a projector screen. POGO provided CD-ROMs with the photos to reporters who asked for them. After the conference, the AP, Mother Jones (that's how we initially became aware of the story), and a handful of other outlets ran stories, but no one thought to put the pictures of the guys drinking vodka off the other guys' butts online.

There's a lesson here for newspapers, maybe? And popular blog web sites?

The attack included the usual snipes about Fox News' super superior ratings, like how the network's 9am morning show beat MSNBC's 8pm evening show. How embarrassing, indeed, O'Reilly! He also made sure his viewers feel personally invested, for MSNBC thinks they're all "paranoid" and "racist."

"Pinhead," insists O'Reilly, doesn't begin to describe NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker and his crew. We're sure O'Reilly's longtime foe, Keith Olbermann, feels a bit left out after not even getting a mention.

Steve Anderson is a Baptist preacher who prays to Jesus Christ for Barack Obama to "die and go to hell." That is just one of the many crazy hateful things he says all the time!

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, MSNBC reminds us, warned us about the crazy right-wing extremism on the rise. And as the former governor of Arizona, she should know: this insane Anderson preacher is from Tempe, Arizona!

It was just 18 short years ago that Chuck D and Flavor Flav were on their way to Arizona to set those dumbass white folks straight, but apparently they never made it.

The gun nuts bringing loaded weapons to town halls? Arizonans! Tent City prisoner-torturer and rounder-up-of-dark-skinned folks Sherif Joe Arpaio? He rules Arizona's Maricopa County!

John McCain? He actually lives in the DC area and has precious few connections to Arizona. But it's where Cindy and Meghan are from!

Arizona, what is your deal? Is the heat making you crazy?

Update: Oh, hey, welcome to the party, Arizona congressman Trent Franks! So you considered a lawsuit to get Barack Obama's birth certificate, did you?