[Reason via Wonkette]

From the Times:

In the last couple of weeks Mr. Obama has graced the front of Rolling Stone for the second time this year, and the cover of Us Weekly (both of which are owned by the company of a prominent Obama supporter, Jann S. Wenner). Beth Jacobson, a spokeswoman for Wenner Media, said the issues were among the better-selling magazines of the year.

Ned Martel, the deputy editor of Men’s Vogue, said, “He’s what is called in the magazine world an ‘interest driver.’ ” The magazine put Mr. Obama on its cover in 2006 and recently dispatched the photographer Annie Leibovitz to produce another spread for a coming issue. It did a feature on Mr. McCain in 2006 as well that did not make the cover.

So, basically, Obama drives ratings, which makes sense. He's a fresh face. McCain is more familiar to the media due to his longer tenue as a senator and his 2000 presidential campaign.

What should McCain do to get more attention for himself? You have to love this suggestion, from "one news executive:"

“If McCain went to Vietnam, all three anchors would jump at the chance to go with him.” This executive requested anonymity to speak candidly.

Excellent: A Rambo trip!! Which might sound crazy at first, but all bets are off when you do a professional wrasslin' video and refer to your supporters as "McCainians."

Also, Michelle Obama will not join Barack in Iraq or anywhere else on the trip to make her customary "God Damn Whitey" speech, because she will be raising her daughters, at home, like a proper Christian.

[Times]

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]

[TVNewser]

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)

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.)

He claims, like the anti-change Rethuglican that he is, that the cover is not even a satire of The Obamas, but rather a comment on "the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama's—both Obamas'—past, and their politics." That sounds like the sort of "nuance" that a responsible editor would know never to attempt! Why can't you be more like Rolling Stone, David, and only feature angelic photos of Barry as Jesus Christ?

This is saying a particular thing at a particular time, when these imaginings and dark fantasies and misconceptions about Obama exist. And we're putting it all together in one image and holding a mirror up to it and showing it for it for the absurdity that it is.

We look forward to this new era of political cartooning, when images must reflect precisely what the creator means without use of exaggeration or satire. Maybe the Mallard Filmore guy should do their next issue?

So far perhaps the funniest unintended consequence of this irritating flap is that culture warrior conservatives are suddenly happily defending the goddamn New Yorker of all things!

We hope the Great New Yorker Joke-Explaining Tour lasts for the rest of this godforsaken month, as there's very little else happening in the news.

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]

You were not much younger than you are right now. As the Bush era crested, as the neocons' power reached nuclear levels, when female nipples and f-words and evil gay agendas ruled the news, the evangelical Right — led by the most virulent, spittle-flecked gaggle of mental throwbacks to ever stain the American newswires, Focus on the Family (Dr. James Dobson's clan) and the American Family Association and its nefarious leader, the Rev. Donald Wildmon — these groups controlled, for a brief, awful moment, the national dialogue. They were the temporary arbiters of taste, the warped conscience of a freaked-out culture. And lo, it was ugly.

Rejoice, won't you? For their time is over.

Did you know the AFA recently boycotted McDonald's? That's right, this once semi-powerful tub of right-wing brain-caulk recently declared a comestible fatwa against America's foremost purveyor of toxic foodstuffs because, apparently, some high-ranking McD's VP just joined the board of directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, which, to the AFA, somehow translates directly into free pink condoms and mind-controlling rainbow flags in every toxic God-fearing Happy Meal.

Did you read about that? No? Of course you didn't. Here is why: No one cared. Well, that's not quite true. McDonald's sort of cared, just enough to write up a nice letter of response to Wildmon stating, in essence, that the AFA is a bunch of troglodytic knuckle-draggers with the sociosexual awareness of a fungal spore, and they should crawl away right now before God spanks them even harder with the 2x4 of total irrelevance.

I might be exaggerating. What they actually said was: Thank you, AFA, for your hateful consideration, but we support our employees' right to join whichever socially responsible and positive groups they like. And thusly did McD's flick the AFA away like a tick from a dog. Isn't that amazing? [San Francisco Gate]

Last night, Manhattan Borough President and proud parrot-owner Scott Stringer made a surprise visit to the Gawker Media inner sanctum. The perma-Upper West Sider, who is said to be eyeing a run at citywide office, confessed affection for Gawker and old sister site Wonkette. Interested in the machinations of new media, Stringer regaled us with tales of how it used to be: when he worked for future Congressman Jerry Nadler in the '80s, Nadler's press releases went to old media types not by phone or fax or smoke signal, but by Stringer himself, who used to ride the subways around town all day to hand-deliver the pages to the city's newsdesks.

Huh. So... he thinks he will be the next mayor? And, even more ludicrous, he thinks the support of Gawker will somehow help? (We have our suspicious as to which Dem campaign consultants recommended this little visit.)

The photo of four rockets—the mark of a powerful nation:

The actual, undoctored photo: three missiles! Dude, so weak:

America owes a debt of gratitude to the New York Times for catching the fake—after it had already run on the top of its home page.

[All images above taken from The Lede]

Stephen Witt, a reporter from the New York Post-owned Courier-Life chain, seized the microphone to try his hand at stand-up comedy during the delay.

“What do you know about Brooklyn 99-cent stores?” asked Witt, who last made headlines for hugging Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner at a 2006 rally. “Have you ever been so broke that you had to put something on lay-away at a 99-cent store?”

Witt’s quip was met with boos...

“It was just awkward, and I feel kind of embarrassed for him,” said one woman, who said she saw Witt consuming alcohol before his artistic contribution to the evening.

And look, there's a clip!

[Brooklyn Paper]

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.

Karen Hughes "came to Washington with President George W. Bush as his communications director," but more recently she's famous for being a disastrous failure at the State Department, where she was assigned to manage a huge brand in the midst of a terrible crisis: the United States of America!

Hughes was named the "Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs," which means that basically her job was to make Muslim nations love the US of A. She was sort of a spectacular failure, as she doesn't understand really anything about the Islamic world and is really much better at manhandling American journalists than, uh, diplomacy. She made a video with Cal Ripken, Jr. once though!

Now, years later, everyone hates America more every day, and Hillary Clinton's public image is an even sadder and more vicious caricature of female ambition than it was in 1992, so hey, hire Mark Penn and Karen Hughes to make America love your dolphin-raping corporation again.

• The Real World season one, obviously. I mean, zeitgeisty to the extreme.
• He was a writer for Vibe magazine. All about pop culture things!
• He wrote a famous cover story about Tupac Shakur. You may have Tupac on one of your t-shirts!
• Headlining a Powell for Congress fundraiser tonight: Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. Beat that, bitch.
• He's the preferred candidate of AfroPunk skaters.
• "Mr. Powell’s campaign has advertised a mixtape they created featuring excerpts of his campaign speeches remixed on top of songs by Tupac, Talib Kweli, Mobb Deep and Kanye West."

Needless to say we're fuzzy on what Mr. Powell stands for politically, since we've already made our judgment in his favor based solely on his pop culture history. But he does support Barack Obama—the same guy that cool young people elsewhere support! Fuck you, Jesse Helms' ghost! We knew Kevin was in for big things way back when he was the most businesslike guy in the house:

Profiles of Smith from the Observer and New York magazine have hinted at his sexuality in the past, but they've both been reluctant to come right out and say he's gay. But the anchor's new profile on Cityfile sums it up thusly:

Smith has repeatedly dodged the question of his sexuality, but in 2005 he was outed in a column in the Washington Blade. Kevin Naff, the managing editor of the gay weekly, said that Smith "chatted me up in a New York City gay piano bar, bought me drinks, and invited me back to his place." He lives in a two-bedroom West Village loft that he purchased for $1.87 million in 2004. Fashion designer (and fellow gay) Michael Kors lives in the same building.

Fox News has, essentially, a ready-made conservative counterpart for Anderson Cooper just waiting to be promoted correctly. Having Smith as the face of the network could go a long way towards imbuing it with a slightly more open image—a hint of progressivism, with all the staid respectability that the middle American audience expects in its newsmen. And once Obama is elected and the backlash against the Bush years begins in earnest, Fox News will need someone less harsh than Bill O'Reilly to make peace with the national mood.

It is, in all seriousness, a fine idea. Fox News should give it some consideration.

[Huffpo, CityFile, Previously]

“I thought that Fox’s coverage during the primary was comprehensive and fair and evenhanded,” Mr. Wolfson said Monday in a telephone interview from Liverpool, England, where he was vacationing. “It’s a huge audience, and it is important to have a strong, progressive voice on the network.”

We recently declared that the indiest flack was widely reviled by the press it was his job to manage, but that was perhaps inaccurate. Wolfson—also voted "one of the least helpful spokesmen [The Economist] has ever encountered"—got on great with the traveling press corps. It was only when reporters from outside that bubble tried to pry anything useful from him that he clammed up.

But strenuous unpleasantness will fit in just fine on Fox, a place where Karl Rove comes off as charming and even-handed.

Now Harold Ickes, Mark Penn, and Terry McAuliffe will all join the staff of the Weekly Standard.

Why I want to be the next President of the United States.

I believe in the people of this country and in their desire to see us the smartest and the leading nation to the world when it comes to education, protecting our environment and natural resources.

I want to stand on the steps of the Capitol Building and yell into it "Hey, Get To Work You Lazy Do Nothings" every day till they finally get to serving those that put them into those offices. I want to raise some hell in every branch of our government, and I have a very loud voice, let me put it to work for you.

I guaranty I will fix every government agency within the fist 3 months of taking office and recover hundreds of millions of dollars they have been wasting and stealing from all of us. I'll push through a 35% raise for our teachers and change our public schools from 12 grades to 16, every child/person will get a 4 year degree through our public school system from now on.

I love to give orders, I hate to be given orders, that's why I left the Army "Signal Core" in 1982. I have worked in almost every field except Air Conditioning. I self taught myself computer programming for a project I was working on for protecting children on-line.

I have always been a leader never a follower, I enjoy budgeting and locating dollars that are being wasted and re-allocating them. I follow a principle of doing the job right the first time and never having to re-do it.

I strongly believe in ones rights to bear arms and agree those that use them to commit crimes deserve maximum sentences. I feel every state must have the same laws and the same punishments for the same type of crime, no more example punishments to make a point.

I feel all women should be able to decide to have a child aborted, but feel it would be better, to have someone pay their expenses, and adopt the child. Preserving life is one of gods commandments I'd like to see everyone think about it before aborting that child.

I have had 3 children aborted by women I dated. It does hurt. I have a son I haven't seen nor paid child support for in 17 years.

I love to fix things, lucky for me there are millions of things here that need fixing, I'm ready to get started on them now.

I want to let everyone in our government know this, be warned, im not one of the guys, I will investigate everyone and I will find all wrong doings for the American people and I will throw you out on your ass. We will have a new government that 100% serves the citizens of the United States of America with respect and dignity and those around the world that are abused and starving. We will again be the greatest country the world has ever known, but first, we have lots of fixing to do here and I will see all of it gets done now.

I've got the guts to run, do you have the guts to let me try to fix what needs done? Yes or No?

If you would like to know more about me give me a call and lets talk. I would love to have your vote for President.

Leonard F. Grundy

Early on, Ailes tried (unsuccessfully) to get two newspapers to retract negative coverage of him. In today's environment, the gambit might have succeeded. You have to admire his balls, considering his suggested correction:

When Ailes was helping former president George Bush prep for his debates, he slipped him a sure applause line: attack the liberal media messenger, Dan Rather:

• "He was mean, cheap, petty and unloved. He was the ugliest kind of bigot and a stain on America. Anybody who says different is a liar." -Ken Layne
• "But it would be dishonest to pretend that Jesse Helms was anything other than a caricature of a Southern bigot." -Nick Denton
• "Far too late for it to do anybody any good, Jesse Helms has died. He has done so on Independence Day, which, since he was born too late to own slaves and in too liberal an age to allow him to outlaw sedition, will forever be his only resemblance to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams." -Hendrik Hertzberg
• "To die on the Fourth of July, one can perhaps be forgiven for feeling, is or ought to be a privilege reserved for men of the stamp of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom expired on that day in 1826, 50 years after the promulgation of the declaration. One doesn't want the occasion sullied by the obsequies for a senile racist buffoon." -Christopher Hitchens
• "He both reflected and shaped, and helped legitimate and enshrine, a metastasizing array of virulent anti-democratic forces in American politics in the post World War II period." -Lisa Duggan, The Nation
• "I seem to recall Jim Hunt trying to make hay of Senator Jesse Helms' ties to Salvadoran death squad macher Roberto d'Aubuisson, and that didn't work out so well. 1968 is in the punters' minds as far away and irrelevant as El Salvador. Helms' operatives did better calling Hunt 'SISSY, PRISSY, GIRLISH AND EFFEMINATE.' If you're going to go with the classics, go with classics that work!" -Roy Edroso
• Today, we’re hearing through a “contact” at the Mayview Convalescent Center in Raleigh — where Helms died and spent his last rotten years — that the nursing home deliberately falsified the time of death, probably on orders from the Jesse Helms Center. If true, this proves that Jesse Helms actually went to Hell on the gay-lesbian-black Marxist July 3 holiday, “Juneteenth.” -Wonkette
• "This is one person I will not be sorry has left this life to be judged finally by the God above. He was a devisive, bigoted caveman who had no fotting in any century esp the one he lived in." -Commenter ToBeFree

No fotting indeed. See you in hell, Jesse!

I read somewhere that you and Hillary dated when she was still at Wellesley. To call it a date is an exaggeration. She and I went out to see Antonioni’s “Blow-Up.” The only thing I remember is that she wanted what seemed to me to be an extraordinary amount of butter on her popcorn.

Only an economist could go on a date and study trends in butter consumption. Isn’t that a kind of wonky thing to remember? Yes, it is. I recall the extra butter costing more.

Ugh, Robert: Timing. Save the unmemorable-butter-date-from-hell anecdote for, I don't know, when your former patron is maybe not at the low point of her political career. Something tells me this little movie excursion was not exactly a thrill ride for Clinton, either.

[Times]

The stifling corporation that serves as government in the year 2700 is a composite of McDonalds, Wal-Mart and Halliburton; the bloated humans in their floating barcaloungers represent the evolutionary destiny of a species sedated by automation, fast-food and electronic displays; and the call to save the planet could have come from Al Gore, had he the wit and computer graphics skills. Rich is not the only commentator to tease out Wall-E's political agenda: some conservatives have even called for a boycott of the movie and its merchandise.

Now it's entirely predictable that Frank Rich adopted a planet-saving robot as his fantasy presidential candidate; he loves a good pop-culture reference; and any flesh-and-blood politician, even one from central casting such as Barack Obama, can only disappoint 2008's fervent liberals. Nor are Pixar's own political leanings that surprising: the studio is run by former hippies and based in the ultra-liberal Bay Area; and the writer-director of Wall-E has a particularly worthy pedigree: his credits include the writing on Sam Mendes' anti-war drama, Jarhead.

But the success of Wall-E does still provide a useful barometer of the mood. One reason for the conservative disappointment with the movie is because Pixar is the cultural equivalent of the swing voter: despite its hippie culture, the studio has been attuned to shifting public attitudes; indeed, given the lead-time on Pixar projects, it's successfully anticipated them.

The studio's most political project before Wall-E was The Incredibles, a cartoon tale of a family of superheroes, who contend with frivolous lawsuits and the resentment of those without such talents; the 2004 movie is a not-so-disguised argument against enforced equality and political correctness, and was adopted by conservatives as a morality play of their own. This time, however, Pixar is voting Democrat.

The long-time Republican senator from North Carolina—who died today at the age of 86—disliked using the term "gay" to describe homosexuals because "there's nothing gay about them." The Hands ad (featured here) during Helms' 1990 re-election campaign played into the most basic of white fears of black political power and racial quotas. And the cranky politico took seeming pleasure in opposing every cause dear to the liberal heart, such as foreign aid or support for the arts.

Helms—who never secured more the 55% of the vote even in conservative North Carolina—foreshadowed the Republican political strategy of the last four cycles, ever mindful of the base and content to govern with the narrowest of coalitions. The only thing that can be said of the former senator is that he recognized race-baiting became less effective over time as older conservative voters died off, and the wedge-driving politics that he so symbolized has run its course.

The latest polls put Barack Obama—amazingly—only 5 points behind in North Carolina. An ad as crude and divisive as Hands—"You needed that job," the narrator tells a white man who's just received a rejection letter—won't play so well this time.

• Helms' courtly manner and mossy drawl barely masked a hard-edged conservatism that opposed civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art. [New York Times]

"No disrespect to my man Barack, but I [bleeped] with John McCain. He greeted me like a god," Jeezy, who has endorsed Barack Obama, tells Vibe magazine. "The fact that he acknowledged me was crazy. I said, 'I'm Young Jeezy, and it's rough out her