(Ads for Ritz Crackers, Men's Warehouse and Swiffer skipped to spare viewers)

The magazine that you get if you pay $4.95 for Palin's book is Newsmax, which is basically the Highlights of conservative news magazines. (Front page of the Newsmax website right now: "Sarah Palin Tells Sean Hannity: 'I Read Newsmax'".) Very convenient how the ad segues directly to a spot explaining how to contact Maddow so that everyone can call her up and yell at her for being a big fat hypocrite.

This would not be such a big deal if Maddow hadn't just yesterday given former McCain aide Nicole Wallace a platform to, basically, destroy Palin with words, then did her best tonight to make fun of Going Rogue with Kent "Loathsome" Jones. Not to mention the many other times Maddow has trashed Palin. Rightfully, of course! We criticize because we care.

(Or maybe that the ad was for all the conservative who watch Maddow's show for the same angry thrill we Libs get from watching Bill O'Reilly clips on YouTube?)

Wallace—a Bush-era attack dog whose career highs include helping orchestrate the John Kerry flip-flop smear—was the staffer the McCain camp charged with keeping track of Palin. As predicted, she bears much of Palin's Going Rogue wrath, second only to openly hostile McCain adviser Steve Schmidt. Though Sen. McCain personally asked staffers to keep media exposure to a minimum during Palin's media blitz, Wallace gave an on-the-record interview to The Rachel Maddow Show (though declined to go on the air). It's the middle portion of this clip, and it's a doozy:

First, Wallace deconstructs Palin's claim that Wallace pushed her into the Katie Couric interview as a favor to boost Couric's "low self-esteem":

The whole notion there was a conversation where I tried to cajole her into a conversation with Katie [Couric] is fiction. ... I am not someone who throws around the word 'self-esteem.' It is a fictional description. Katie Couric was selected because we did evening anchors.

Regarding Palin's claim on The Oprah Winfrey Show that no one prepped her for the interview because it was supposed to be a "lighthearted, fun, working mom speaking with working mom" thing:

We set up this interview on the day of the U.N. General Assembly, with a walk-and-talk in front of the U.N. It was never made as two 'working gals.' It's either rationalization or justification or fiction. That was supposed to highlight her foreign policy savvy [in the context of] the U.N. General Assembly. The picture is in front of the U.N. to highlight her expertise and readiness to be vice president—it wasn't about two 'working gals.'

Note that Palin didn't actually use the phrase "working gals." Rather, Wallace combines Palin's words with even dumber ones, heightening the sense that the Thrilla from Wasilla is totally off her rocker. This is a patented right-wing rhetorical tactic (think "death panels") and we should all use it more often. But back to the matter at hand:

What she gets wrong is this personalization that [Steve] Schmidt and I were these lone villains—and that took place entirely in her imagination. ... I think she fixated on me from very early on. She hated me from the beginning. I try not to take it personally, the fact that she wrote a book based on fabrications. She gave a brilliant convention speech—other interviews that inspired support. But this book is a bizarre fixation on things that everyone else has moved on from.

And that is the story of how neocon PR warlord Nicolle Wallace won the begrudging respect of MSNBC liberals. Looks like the real uniter was Sarah Palin, after all. That, and the fact that no one gives a shit about Katie Couric's feelings.

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.

Writer/performer Kent Jones (Who Wikipedia tells me works for something called "Air America") picks a good target to satirize. As everyone on the Internet has already noted, "Pie Spy" is a pretty funny name for a thing. And Palin? She put the "old chest" in "that old chestnut!"

It was at the "satirizing" part that everything went horribly, horribly wrong.

Consider the following sentences aimed at eliciting laughter. (You must never refer to them as "jokes"):

EXAMPLE 1

According to recently revealed financial records, during Palin's last agonizing months of lame-duck-itude as Alaska Governor, she started up a small marketing business called "Pie Spy". Just what are we talking about here, Governor? Lemon meringue? Jason Bourne? Some weird combination of the two!?*

*This is supposed to be funny because the name of Sarah Palin's business contains the word "Pie" and the word "Spy". These are two things that are not usually thought of as complementary. Also, "lame-duck-itude" is a made up word.

EXAMPLE 2

Is this some kind of complicated espionage network infiltrating international dessert cartels? After all, she can see Russia from her house!*

*This is supposed to be funny because, during the 2008 presidential campaign, Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house. You could not, and still cannot, see Russia from Sarah Palin's house.

EXAMPLE 3

According to documents filed w/ Alaska's Department of Commerce, Palin's business is described as involving services for the elderly and persons with disabilities. And so she called it "Pie Spy"!? MMMM-KAYYY!!!*

*This is supposed to be funny because "Pie spy" in no way suggests services for the elderly and persons with disabilities. An "edgier" joke would have referenced the fact that Sarah Palin's running mate was extremely old, and that she has a developmentally disabled son—both of whom could have benefited from Pie Spy's services.

EXAMPLE 4

There's an eerie silence around this whole "Pie Spy" situation. And as an American I want—no, I demand—to know the truth about Pie Spy. Before it explodes in our faces!*

*This is supposed to be funny because, kill me?

Here's the New York Post's gossip column item about Cooper going to the "best hotel in the world" in India:

Anderson Cooper has been consoling himself over falling ratings by living it up in Jaipur, India, at one of the world's most opulent hotels. The CNN star was spotted Tuesday with his muscular friend, Benjamin Maisani, an owner of East Village bar Eastern Bloc, at the Rambagh Palace, named the best hotel in the world by Conde Nast Traveler. Cooper's $3,200-a-night room features a four-poster mahogany bed and views of the gardens of the former Maharaja palace. Our source said, "Anderson's room has a large round bathtub. On the first night it was filled with bubbles and sprinkled with red rose petals." CNN declined to comment.

Saying Cooper is gay is no longer a scoop. It's not a scandal. Even the humor involved in all the clever winking and nodding is past its expiration date. With today's item Page Six may have exhausted all the ways to say "He's GAY GAY GAY!": the room only has one bed, Maisani's "muscular," and perhaps most blatantly, he owns Eastern Bloc. Every 'mo in New York knows Eastern Bloc is a gritty, dirty gay bar ("a true man meat bar") that often has boy-on-boy porn playing on its TVs. (The stencil over the DJ booth offers "Free Moustache Rides" and one outside once read "One Gay at a Time, Sweet Jesus.") All the patrons know Maisani, because he's big, and know he's dating Cooper. Word on the street is that Madonna's recent appearance there had less to do with her getting back to her East Village gay roots and more to do with the fact that she was with Cooper, who wanted to play "whose boy toy is hotter" with Madge.

Cooper's see-through closet is such a joke that it doesn't make sense to call him in the closet anymore. If he won't say it, we will: Anderson Cooper is officially out. There's no difference between him and Neil Patrick Harris. They both play it straight at their day jobs and then openly go about town with their boyfriends and do TV interviews about how much they love Kathy Griffin and The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

It's not like Cooper's in a club all of his own, either. He is part of an increasingly large crowd of notables who won't come out but have given up trying to hide that they are gay. Queen Latifah denied that she was going to marry her girlfriend, a girlfriend who she tries to pass off as her "trainer." Kevin Spacey got busted lying about being mugged in a London cruising park. Ricky Martin has stopped even trying to fight the gay rumors. Jodie Foster has never said she's a lesbian out loud, but she basically came out when she thanked her partner in an acceptance speech.

These gay-not-gay celebrities are different from the Hugh Jackmans, John Travoltas, Tom Cruises, and Kenny Chesneys, who are all constantly plagued with gay rumors that they strenuously try to deny or deflect. If they're gay, they're doing it in secret. Cooper and his set of cohorts live openly gay lives — and that's a good thing — but they refuse to acknowledge what the public already knows.

In Anderson Cooper's specific case, we sort of understand why he won't open his mouth and let the rainbows fly. All the guy has ever wanted to do was be an old-fashioned newsman and unfortunately him coming out would make him a part of the story. Every time he tried to cover something having to do with gay civil rights (or Madonna or Fire Island) plenty of people would claim that his reporting was biased because of his sexual orientation. It's not fair: Katie Couric doesn't have to worry when she covers pay inequality for women, and neither does Harry Smith when discussing new medicine that will eradicate baldness.

Coming out would open Cooper up to irrational accusations from those waiting to pounce on the "liberal media" just as quickly as A.C. pounces on his muscle man in an Indian hotel room. That sucks, but it's the way it currently is. How does it get changed? Well, by having some major national news figures come out and show that they can still get blown over in a hurricane or report live from a war zone without breaking into a anti-Prop 8 rant.

That's right, Anderson, it's going to take you to change it. Rachel Maddow has paved the way, but all the baby gays out there need you to man up and be our Jackie Robinson. The first step is the easiest, you just have to say what everyone already knows.

Top pic of Cooper and Maisani snapped in June by Pacific Coast News; pic of Eastern Bloc via Alice Bartlett's Flickr

As you may recall, back in May Keith Olbermann lashed out at Cityfile, Wonkette and Gawker for reporting that he'd angrily walked out on MSNBC after losing a Ben Affleck booking to Rachel Maddow. Olbermann claimed that the reports of his hissy-fit were greatly exaggerated and that he'd actually taken a few days off to mourn the death of his mother, which had occurred two weeks prior.

Now he's taking all kinds of heat from foe and friend alike over this whole Richard Wolffe situation, and on Monday he claimed that he was too busy in June and July fighting with Bill O'Reilly or something to pull Wolffe aside off camera for five minutes to ask a few questions about any potential conflicts of interest with the lobbying job he started in April. This led us to wonder, "Were Olbermann and his producers too bogged down dealing with other things' in April and May as well?" Well, tonight Olbermann offered up a familiar excuse to TVNewser in regards to why he didn't question Wolffe during the April/May time frame:

The bloggers are leaving one component out, unfairly so: In April, I knew vaguely that Richard Wolffe had gone to work for a non-news firm, and that's about the last I heard of it. It was entirely concurrent with my mother's fatal illness, and I turned it over entirely to my management team. My first awareness that this was more than just a non-news job, was this week.

If Jonathan Berr, whoever he is, does not like my prioritizing caring for my mother and dealing with her death, and then doing as many shows as I could, ahead of vetting the comments of our analysts and my management team, frankly, I feel sorry for him. Getting myself through those two months were, and are, more important than what is still being investigated about Richard.

Now, besides the obvious, there are a number of disturbing things about this statement, the first being Olbermann's dismissive "whoever he is" tone towards Jonathan Berr. Who is Jonathan Berr and what did he do to spark Olbermann's ire? Well, he's a writer for Daily Finance who happened to write a eminently reasonable piece critical of Olbermann's recent actions from the perspective of an Olbermann fan. The points he brought up and the questions he asked in his piece were not irrational or inflammatory in any way and deserve consideration. As such, the "whoever he is" condescension is way out of line, and frankly it's quite ugly, seeing as how Berr was nothing less than respectful in his Olbermann article.

Another disturbing thing about Olbermann's statement is the ease with which he seems willing to throw his staff under the bus for failing to do what he should have done in regards to a simple quizzing of Richard Wolffe. The title of the show is Countdown with Keith Olbermann, is it not? Does the old, tired Harry Truman adage "the buck stops here" not apply to cable news anchors whose names appear prominently in the titles of their shows?

Then there's this, an apparent blatant contradiction in the statement separated only by a few words — "In April, I knew vaguely that Richard Wolffe had gone to work for a non-news firm...My first awareness that this was more than just a non-news job, was this week." Um, say what? Which is it Keith? Please clarify.

Finally, I personally can't even begin to imagine the pain involved with losing a mother. My mom's mortality does cross my mind occasionally and the mere thought of it shakes me in places I never knew I was capable of being shaken, someplace deep down where the body meets the soul. But with that said, Olbermann was in the building and working after his mother's death, and if he was able to go on the air and host a show each night, how could he have not taken the time to question Wolffe's lobbying side gig? Again, how much more than a, "Richard, tell me about this new job of yours," would it have taken? And fuck, a simple Google search or two would've raised a number of red flags, but apparently even that would've been too much an effort.

The bottom line here, and everybody knows this, is that this is all a bunch of horseshit, and sadly it didn't have to be that way. If Olbermann would've just stepped up in the beginning and said something along of the lines of, "I know this looks bad, but I became too bogged down by other things, not to mention too trusting of another human being, and let this one slip by me...I'm truly sorry," this might have all gone away quietly (Notice that most of the heat he's been taking on this hasn't come from Fox News, but from Olbermann allies on the internet!). Instead, he's offered up nothing but lame excuses and angry diatribes all week, flailing about madly in the quicksand all the while, and frankly he's looked nothing less than pathetic in doing so.

Sifting through Buchanan's now infamous rant point by point, Maddow used her show's final segment last night to correct the avalanche of factual errors spewed out by Buchanan in that interview. It, Maddow's "corrections and clarifications," was a thing of beauty to watch, downright surgical in precision, even though it would have been all the more better if Maddow had booked "Uncle Pat" to sit in on the whole thing and look angry and miserable when he wasn't hurling hate speech laced with old man spittle. Oh well.

Asked by Maddow why it was that 108 out of the 110 United States Supreme Court justices have been white, Buchanan said the following:

I think white men were 100% of the people who wrote the constitution, 100% of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country basically built by white folks.

This whole clip is especially cringeworthy because we actually find Buchanan kind of endearing from time to time. He is not anything close to endearing here, and Maddow pretty much slices him up.

Wonkette founding editor, Air America Washington Correspondent, and Playboy.com contributing editor Cox is filling in for Rachel Maddow tonight on MSNBC. And she's been Tweeting about it! But then, yesterday, Michael Jackson dropped dead. And a tipster found Ms. Cox's reaction insufficiently reverent and possibly colored by self-interest!

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Thought this was kind of weird: @anamariecox was immediately indignant over the roadblock coverage of Michael Jackson's collapse/death. Within an hour or so of his dying she posted "Really, news media of the world? REALLY? Well at least the NYT has a liveblog! http://bit.ly/IgVQS What color do we turn our icons now?"

Haha, I guess. So what? Worse things are being said. Then she went on about it: "To be clear: death is tragic, Michael Jackson was a cultural icon. RIP But I find the blur of roadblock cable coverage less than edifying."

Uh, OK. Point made. Then this one explains it: "Headed to hotel from 30 Rock with no TelePrompTer practice or idea of how the show works but did score souvenir hoodie! #rightplacewrongtime"

I guess Rachel Maddow wasn't on and she didn't get to watch how the show goes down to practice for her guest host spot? THAT's why she's annoyed by MJ coverage? I mean, this isn't Jon & Kate we're talking about here. The guy drops dead and she's pissed that her rehearsal is cancelled? I found that shit less than edifying.

Sincerely, a reader

Ok, a reader, but there are a couple things going on here!

One if that if someone we didn't care that much about dropped dead the night before we were supposed to host a live cable news program for the very first time, and said death interrupted our one chance to watch a live broadcast of the show we were to host, we would be pretty fucking annoyed. We might not Twitter about it, but that is because we still don't get Twitter, and the only person who follows us anyway is Cox's husband Chris*, so no one would even notice if we did did Tweet about our annoyance.

Another is that dressing up that personal annoyance in the garb of a critique of cable news standards and priorities is pretty funny, yes.

But finally, "what color do we turn our icons now" is both pretty funny and also a very apt comment on the self-regard of Twitterers who think they have any hand in either breaking or affecting news of this magnitude. Because yesterday it was nothing but off-color jokes, useless retweets of links to "traditional" news sources, rambling personal tales of the first time a Tweeter heard Thriller, and lies about Jeff Goldblum. And that is what Twitter should be, basically, which is why getting all huffy about a journalist using her personal Twitter to crack little jokes and worry about her upcoming gig, which it seems like Twitter was meant for, is kinda goofy.

Good luck, AMC!

*That is our FULL DISCLOSURE, here.

Today Iranian forces evicted the family of Neda Agha-Soltan from their home. They also canceled Neda's scheduled funeral and refused to turn her body over to her family. Further, she was buried in an undisclosed location without the family's knowledge and the government instituted a ban on all mourning on her behalf. It's been also rumored that the Iranian government told Neda's family that she was murdered by a hitman hired by a journalist from the BBC so that he could make a documentary about her. Some of her family's neighbors spoke to the press.

"We are trembling," one neighbour said. "We are still afraid. We haven't had a peaceful time in the last days, let alone her family. Nobody was allowed to console her family, they were alone, they were under arrest and their daughter was just killed. I can't imagine how painful it was for them. Her friends came to console her family but the police didn't let them in and forced them to disperse and arrested some of them. Neda's family were not even given a quite moment to grieve."

The Iranian government stepped up their efforts to crack down on protesters, using guns, tear gas, clubs and, according to some reports on Twitter, axes, to snuff the opposition. The nation's leadership went so far as to cast anyone in disagreement with the results of the recent election as an enemy of the state.

Reports the New York Times:

Witnesses reported scenes of chaos and fear where riot police officers outnumbered demonstrators by about four to one. Many wore masks to conceal their identities. The Basijis stopped people to check their cellphones for video or pictures of the unrest.

"I saw one group of about 100 people who began chanting ‘Death to the dictator' on one of the side streets," said another witness who insisted on not being identified for fear of arrest. "The Basijis attacked them and beat them really bad." Unconfirmed reports of bloodshed and at least one death flooded the Internet.

Instead of heeding calls for moderation, the government has conducted one of the harshest crackdowns in its history. Dozens of former high-ranking officials have been jailed. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reported Wednesday that about 240 people, including 102 political figures, were in jail. The government has said that it arrested 627 more people since the protests broke out.

Also under close guard are the foreign media in Iran. Arrested today was a freelance reporter for the Washington Times, and all remaining foreign press credentials were revoked by the government. Meanwhile, many other journalists were still being held captive, while others have been forced to leave the country.

It appears as though the momentum for the protests has been curbed greatly by the iron fist of the Iranian government, while any pretense that Iran is a democracy has all but evaporated.

Here's a report from Rachel Maddow's show tonight filled with even more heartbreaking news, but also a slight glimmer of pride in knowing that American hacker geeks have been fighting a successful cyberwar with the Iranian government, shutting down many government websites.

According to Isikoff, there was a "secret meeting" held at the White House yesterday to discuss Obama's treatment of the whole torture issue. Attending the meeting were the leaders of various unnamed human rights and civil liberties groups, as well as many key Obama administration officials—-Eric Holder, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod—-which sort of indicated how serious the Obama people were taking it. The purpose of the meeting seems pretty clear—-Obama and company, according to Isikoff, reached out to the leaders of the various groups present and basically said, "Ok, what do we need to do to make you people happy so this will all go away." In fact, Isikoff quoted Obama as saying something along the lines of "(Attorney General) Holder is having to spend way too much time on this." The leaders of the groups present floated the idea that Obama should appoint some sort of "truth commission" to investigate everything fully, thereby taking the burden off of Holder and the Justice Department, but Obama shot that idea down, going on to say that he was "firmly against" any sort of investigatory committee. Another idea floated by the groups was for Obama to go after one key prosecution in the case (Dick Cheney perhaps?) in the hopes of obtaining "a trophy," a head for the troops to rally around, but Obama shot that idea down as well. At one point, one of the group leaders took a shot at Obama, saying that he was "allowing President Bush's policies to become his own." According to Isikoff, this pissed Obama off greatly, to the point where he was visibly shaken by the comment, "demonstrably not pleased" according to Maddow.

It should be noted that Maddow asked Isikoff how it was that he came to know the details of the "secret meeting" to which he responded, "it's called reporting." We love that guy.

During the banter in the show's final segment, Maddow launched into a story with "You know when I first got together with Susan..." her partner. And while it shouldn't be noteworthy for a cable anchor to discuss her crazy nightmares about her girlfriend's "40-year-old" cat walking around on its hind legs back when they first started dating, some people need help seeing gay people as regular folk, so it's nice to see.

But there is still a relationship in Maddow's life that she needs to come clean on: Her "pop culture" sidekick Kent Jones, who is precisely as funny as you would expect a former writer for Air America's Unfiltered to be. What do you owe him, Rachel? What does he have on you? What are you hiding?

Olbermann's boosterism was essential to Maddow getting her MSNBC gig; her regular fill-in role on Countdown basically served as a try-out. When Maddow launched, Olbermann offered a fulsome, heartfelt welcome to his new ideological soulmate and participated in lengthy throws between his show and hers to shepherd his audience to her. It was a master-apprentice relationship, with the magnanimous and successful Olbermann lending a hand to a bright new upstart. What could go wrong?

Well, Olbermann has a bit of an ego, doesn't he? As we noted earlier today, he has said it "fires on all cylinders," and described it as a "personality disorder" that can be useful in his business. So when young grasshopper beats your show in the ratings, and becomes a star in her own right, maybe that old competitive instinct that got you this far kicks in. Perhaps a friendly rivalry develops. Maybe you start to feel a little bit more secure about your status once Saturday Night Live deems you worthy of an impersonation by none other than Ben Affleck. Don't worry, Old Boy, you've still got it!

And then Ben Affleck goes on his publicity tour for State of Play, and of course he'll come by Countdown so he can talk about what it's like to impersonate you, right? He's yours. It just makes sense. Where else would he go? What? Rachel? You made Rachel. Surely she'd defer to your seniority in this special instance and back off. She won't? Well, you are the top dog here at MSNBC, and it's unfortunate that you have to pull rank, but if she won't back down you'll just have to go up the chain of command, then. What? Phil Griffin won't sort this out for you? Well...well... fine then!

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.So, as CityFile reported, Olbermann took a few days off. He denied, through a publicist, that the Affleck booking had anything to do with it, invoking the death of his beloved mother two weeks prior as the true reason for his unexpected absence—there were "sad logistics" to take care of. It's hard to begrudge a man some days off work in the wake of such a loss. But there is the matter of David Shuster's Twitter message during Olbermann's time-out, blaming it on "flu/allergy season." And then there is our own well-placed source, who confirms CityFile's account of the rancor over the Affleck booking. And then there is this photograph, which CityFile found on Olbermann's Major League Baseball blog, and which was taken on April 16, the day before Olbermann took time off work to attend to those logistics.

Watch those Olbermann-Maddow throws carefully over the coming days.

Olbermann—who has acknowledged a short fuse and an ego that fires "on all cylinders"—missed three days of work without explanation in late April. According to CityFile, the reason was that his protege Maddow nabbed Affleck and refused to hand him over:

According to a source at the network, Olbermann was livid when he learned that Rachel Maddow had booked Ben Affleck as a guest on her show. Olbermann, it turns out, had been interested in having Affleck on his show, too, and when he heard that Maddow's producers had secured the actor instead, he demanded that the interview be switched from Maddow's nine o'clock broadcast to his own an hour earlier.... Olbermann took the matter to senior management at MSNBC and NBC Universal and asked that they step in and "correct" the situation. That didn't happen, though, and Affleck went on Maddow's show as scheduled on Thursday, April 16. And Olbermann's three-day protest commenced the next day.

After Wonkette linked to CityFile's account, MSNBC spokeswoman Alana Russo sent the site a denial from Olbermann, who explained the absence by saying "that was my first opportunity to take even a long weekend to mourn my mother's death and deal with the many sad logistics subsequent to her sudden passing. The source of this story is a liar and those who spread it without seeking confirmation or refutation are beneath contempt." Olbermann's mother died on Saturday, April 4. He worked the following week, and most of the week after that.

While it seems odd for Olbermann to invoke his mother's death to explain an absence from work when he had shown up for nearly two weeks immediately after her passing, we don't dispute that the man was entitled to time off whenever it suited it him.

But one thing doesn't jibe: As CityFile pointed out, in April Olbermann's fill-in host David Shuster posted a message to Twitter, apparently in response to a curious fan, explaining that the absence was "nothing serious, but, it's flu/allergy season." So, which is it?

We asked Russo for an explanation, but she had no comment for the record.

Both Maddow and Thiel went to Stanford. They overlapped for a couple of years in the early '90s. Thiel, who had already gotten his undergraduate degree and was enrolled in law school, had started the Stanford Review, a conservative newspaper, to campaign against the college's move away from a curriculum which favored the great works of Western literature. Maddow was a progressive activist stomping around in combat boots and a shaved head. We hear that Thiel and Maddow had some kind of noisy on-campus altercation. Through a spokeswoman, Maddow says she doesn't remember a run-in with Thiel. Any Stanford grads care to enlighten us on what the two had to say to each other?

Thiel, who has suggested America would be better off if women had never gotten the vote, now calls his views on women's suffrage a "commonplace statistical observation." We think these two school chums are overdue for a reunion. They both now live in Manhattan. Isn't it time Thiel pops over to the studio for an interview on the Rachel Maddow Show? There's so much for them to catch up on!

(Maddow photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images; Thiel by davidorban)

Heroic television short-hair Rachel Maddow has been losing viewers, ever since the election! What the hell, America? Too busy watching Spike TV's Deadliest Warrior to care about public affairs? Cause that's what I'm doing. Deadliest Warrior.


Ha, the young internet idiots at 4Chan hacked Time.com's "100 Most Influential People" online poll and voted 4Chan's founder up to #1 and also, we quote, "the hackers apparently rearranged the top 21 names so that the first letter of their names-looking down the list-spelled out the phrase 'Marblecake Also the Game.'" Joke's on you, hackers. There is no way to make Time's list of Influential People any more bullshit than it already is.


More on today's Chicago Tribune layoffs, via Facebook updates:

10:45am [redeacted]: "Two people who sit at adjacent desks just got laid off. Good, good people. We're all waiting at our desks hoping not to be called next."
10:47am [redacted]: "A lot of tears..."
13 minutes ago [redacted]: "I was told to stop writing about this, because it was upsetting some people. OK, I'll stop. But this is bigger than work. This is about real people and real friends."

New-media-overtaking-old-media-symbolism-UGH.


Elsewhere in declining audiences: the Seattle P-I. They killed the print paper and went online-only, but now their online traffic is down 23% from a year ago. There's no good angle on that whatsoever.

As we've noted, CNN's Anderson Cooper and MSNBC's David Shuster and Rachel Maddow have been having been saying "teabagging" a lot—over and over and over again!—in reference to yesterday's attempt by Fox News and its slackjawed audience to re-enact Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy at festivals nationwide (think of it as their Rocky Horror Picture Show).

"What's with all this 'teabagging' business?" Fox News wondered. "They're saying that word an awful lot." After some investigating, Fox came to understand that CNN and MSNBC haven't been shooting straight—the word "teabag" carries with it subtle mockery when used by pointy-headed liberals conversant in the coded language of sexual perversity!

Teabagging, for those who don't live in a frat house, refers to a sexual act involving part of the male genitalia and a second person's face or mouth.

WHAT PART!?!?!?

"I've never seen anything like it," Bozell said. "The oral sex jokes on (CNN) and particularly MSNBC on teabagging ... they had them by the dozens. That's how insulting they were toward people who believe they're being taxed too highly."

Yes, a bunch of anchors employed a double entrende to mock a mindless farce. (Why not watch the video compilation we posted yesterday, at right, one more time?) But let's remember why it's funny. Simply picking a sexually suggestive phrase and using it to describe the tea parties is not, in and of itself, funny. What makes it funny is this: The reason people call it "teabagging" is that the idiots at Fox News started calling it "teabagging" themselves without understanding that they were using a word that, in another context, means gently sucking on somebody's testicles. Now that is funny, and Maddow pointed it out in her April 9 broadcast, with video of a Fox Newser saying, "teabag the fools in D.C.!"

But Fox does get one thing kind of right, in reference to Maddow's buddy act with Gawker Media alumna Ana Marie Cox:

If anyone thinks the orally charged remarks on mainstream cable were just a coincidence, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow's segments over the past week with guest, Air America's Ana Marie Cox, would dissolve all doubt. Their on-air gymnastics, dancing around the double entendre of the week, looked like live-action Beavis and Butthead.

They're both very pretty ladies! But Maddow does kind of have a Beavis Butthead thing going on, doesn't she?

AOL — remember that company? — did mess with the 30 Rock star, because it is staffed by worthless, non-journalistic guttersnipes, as far as Baldwin is concerned.

Baldwin, you see, wrote a perfectly innocent column last week about how he's a fan of liberal MSNBC commentators Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, but Olbermann "wastes too much time pissing on Bush" while Maddow's "writers are dreadful."

Then AOL.com had to go and say Baldwin "picked a fight" with the anchors.

Which is unfair, sure, but also par for the course on the AOL home page. Traffic-baiting the internet's lowest common denominator is what AOL has been doing since forever. It's the company's reason for being. That and collecting modem fees from people too unfortunate or technically inept to get broadband, already.

But Baldwin is very worked up. This AOL garbage is important! It illustrates Baldwin's number two journalism lesson: Journalism does not happen online, because there is too much filth.

The sine qua non to understanding the garbage barge of the internet is the AOL home page. The AOL home page, which makes Us Weekly look like Paris Match, wants its readers to focus on the latest unflattering photos of stars or their DUIs...

That's the Internet. Some great, serious, lofty thinking, one click away. The AOL home page, like a filthy dinner plate, just begging to be scraped and washed, another click away.

Alec Baldwin, of course, wrote this on the internet, on a site reporting the latest unflattering celebrity picture just a click away from his column, and carrying some high-profile amateur journalism just a click or two beyond that.

The perpetually, pleasingly piqued actor wasn't saying anything we didn't already know, but we still got something out of reading him nevertheless. Maybe there's a third journalism lesson in that.

With all the chuckling over the inadvertently appropriated term, it's starting to feel like "teabagging" is being, well, shoved down our throats. And who wants that? It's suffocating, really.

The humor, in the end, has ended up like a tea bag that steeped too long: All the flavors drained out and we're left with something rather limp, rather than the spicy libation we were hoping to gulp down.

You'll find a highlights reel above, featuring a ballsy take on the issue from Maddow and Daily Beast columnist Ana Marie Cox. You can get your full-length teabagging experience from the same place we obtained ours, Jason Linkins. (Thanks for that, Jason.)