One knowledgeable source told us: "Shareholders were calling up NBC and GE - a lot, maybe thousands. They were saying, 'What the [bleep] is wrong with these guys?' . . . Chris Matthews just got stuck in the middle of it all."

Supposedly GE chairman Jeff Immelt got involved, presumably in the decision to replace Olbermann and Matthews with David Gregory. NBC denies this, but Immelt personally decided to let go of shock jock/bigot Don Imus that last time Imus acted like a racist tool on NBC's dime, so maybe there's some truth in the idea.

There's an alternate theory: Olbermann and Matthews were pushed aside simply because their squabbling was an obvious mess, but NBC chief Jeff Zucker invented the story about shareholder pressure to link the name of Jeff Immelt — rather than his own — to the MSNBC mess.

The Post never comes out and says Matthews is on his way out at MSNBC, but one has to wonder about his future there, and about what his next move might be. CNN? ABC? Start an angry ex-anchors network with Dan Rather? Beg a slot on Ana Marie Cox's YouTube thing? Anything is possible!

Whatever happens, Fox will continue to obnoxiously gloat about all the liberals' misfortune, as the network did yesterday:

[Post]

I'm developing a purely anecdotal theory about Republican drunkenness: that it's related to ideology. The less ideological arrive back at the headquarters earlier in the evening, between midnight and 1 a.m. These are, in chronological order, the Romney and the Giuliani supporters. Both are East Coast, urban college grad, corporate types. They like to drink and reminisce about the Harvard-Yale game, but they also like to wake up early, shave and not smell like booze at committee meetings. The Giuliani people are secular and more openly lecherous. So they tend to drink a bit harder and stay out closer to 1 a.m. The Ron Paul people party past 1 a.m., but not much. And they shave but they don't showboat.

The ones who stay out the latest and come back the drunkest, I notice, are the Huckabee folks, the party's rural conservatives. They believe in Jesus, in the hard-bitten way of the true alcoholic. If they ever sober up, it'll be by the grace of the Lord; and if they intend to stay on the sauce and continue living, then they'll really need His loving kindness. If you intend to be drinking heavily until closing time — 4 a.m. in the Twin Cities during the RNC — you had better walk home with Jesus. I can't place true McCainites on the alcohol-ideology matrix. I think they were all asleep by 9:30 p.m.

Now, sure, this passage is so cliche-rife and unsubstantiated Curtis Sittenfeld might have written it over an oolong latte at Teany, but the fact remains that it was one of the few produced by last week's Convention coverage that really bothers to draw distinctions among the Republican convention goers at all. The guy didn't need to go through paramilitary training or whatever to make these observations, but generally that's the type of stunt it takes for freelancers to get assignments writing anything interesting anymore, and getting dumb jobs is a good way to remind journalists how disconnected the other journalists they normally drink with are from the drinking public.

The thing is, there are all sorts of rules and forms and time constraints in immersion journalism, and the writers willing to sacrifice the time and the "objectivity" to immerse themselves in that sort of persona are usually young, naive and apt to find boring, cliched observations actually interesting. But until more news organizations take a cue from Tyra and start sending their more experienced commentators out into the field in capacities where they are not recognized as representatives of the media elite, "Confessions of an RNC Security Guard" may be the best we got.

Related: From 2004 Hot Girls, Frisky Delegates: Diary of a strip club waitress [Village Voice]
Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person

In interviews, 10 current and former staff members said that long-simmering tensions between MSNBC and NBC reached a boiling point during the conventions. “MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict,” one senior staff member observed. “They’re living from fix to fix and swearing they’ll go into rehab the next week.”

...According to three staff members, Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal, and Steve Capus, president of NBC News, considered flying to the Republican convention in Minnesota last week to address the lingering tensions.

Olbermann, by the way, told the Washington Post he never really wanted to be an anchor in the first place:

"Phil and I have debated this set-up since late winter/early spring (with me saying, 'Are you sure this flies?' and him saying, 'Yes, but let's judge it event by event') and I think we both reached the same point during the RNC," Olbermann said by e-mail.

[Times, Washington Post]

"(Us publisher) Jann Wenner supports Obama, Wenner media decided to follow the buzz around Palin before her speech, and now subscribers feel like a vote has been cast on their behalf," says another magazine editor. “It’s going to be tough to bounce back from this one. Especially if the advertisers get involved. If they get nervous, that can hurt all of us.”

It's easy to imagine the other shoe dropping in this publishing psychodrama: Wenner rival Kent Brownridge, newly installed at Us competitor and celebrity-servile OK!, makes a play for access to Palin, a (sigh) rising political star whose Republican convention speech drew 37 million TV viewers, nearly as many as tuned in to watch Barack Obama. If that happens — Presto! You've got MSNBC (Us) and Fox News (OK!) recreated among the celebrity weeklies.

(I'm pretty sure someone else floated the Brownridge/Palin scenario elsewhere yesterday, but can't find the post anymore.)

More likely, Us Weekly wises up and backs off the risky business of political coverage. One of MSNBC's sources characterized the Palin cover — which allegedly had nothing to do with Wenner — as nothing so much as a miscalculation:

“When Us went to print Monday night, it looked like the ticket was falling apart," says one magazine editor. “They went to print thinking Palin was dead in the water, and their mistake was thinking everyone who reads Us is a Democrat, when they’re not. Readers are loyal, but the base of a political party is more loyal."

Update: a friend at Us Weekly looked up the numbers. "We got about 1,000 cancellations over the issue, but remarkably, about 1,000 bonus subscriptions from supporters which I was not expecting. Who knew there was a motivated left? It also drove the third highest day ever on our website in terms of visits. Basically...the whole thing mirrors the McCain-Obama race. The two sides see everything in completely different terms. So the impact is a wash at the moment, which is shocking."

McCain's aggressive promotion of drilling, even amid falling oil prices, also showed the "maverick" wasn't above the sort of pandering-to-the-base Obama more smoothly engaged in a week ago. He said Obama lacked "scars," supposedly the sort that come from partisan trench warfare but also a word chosen to remind everyone the younger Democrat was never in a Vietnamese prison camp.

But those who have not heard McCain's story of bravery in Vietnam repeated ad nauseam on the campaign trail will be touched by the effective retelling included, along with one of the swipes at Obama, in the clip above. And the candidate tied the story cleverly into his campaign for president, holding it up as an example of how he puts his country ahead of himself (and neatly sidestepping the question of how selfless McCain was in his personal life).

Then the Republican nominee had to go and basically say his humbleness is a sharp contrast to Obama, who thinks he's the Democratic Jesus, "anointed to personal greatness." We told you Obama would soon regret his high-minded pledge not to question the motives of his political opponents. Sigh.

It was just after the 1988 Republican convention ended. I was on the plane, as a speechwriter, that took Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, and the new vice presidential nominee, Dan Quayle, from New Orleans, the site of the convention, to Indiana. Sitting next to Mr. Quayle was the other senator from that state, Richard Lugar. As we chatted, I thought, "Why him and not him?" Why Mr. Quayle as the choice, and not the more experienced Mr. Lugar? I came to think, in following years, that some of the reason came down to what is now called The Narrative. The story the campaign wishes to tell about itself, and communicate to others. I don't like the idea of The Narrative. I think it is ... a barnyard epithet. And, oddly enough, it is something that Republicans are not very good at, because it's not where they live, it's not what they're about, it's too fancy. To the extent the McCain campaign was thinking in these terms, I don't like that either. I do like Mrs. Palin, because I like the things she espouses. And because, frankly, I met her once and liked her. I suspect, as I say further in here, that her candidacy will be either dramatically successful or a dramatically not; it won't be something in between.

But, bottom line, I am certainly sorry I blurted my barnyard ephithet...

There are more inexplicable wrinkles to the story in Noonan's full telling (link below), but the point is: Yes, she thinks Palin is a bullshit pick, and she doesn't mind doing a little bullshit rhetorical dance to try and placate her conservative benefactors without actually backing off her statement.

[WSJ]

McCain has refused, as recently as last week, to discuss his son Jimmy, 19, who has been deployed to Iraq at least once, or his son Jack, 21, who enrolled in the Naval Academy. His spokesman said earlier this year this is done "out of respect for the men and women who serve around Jimmy and for security reasons." Though the identity of Palin's son's specific unit has been made known, Palin speaks about him openly.

When McCain refused to talk about his son's service, here's what fellow Republicans said:

“It goes to the character of McCain that he typically does not exploit his familial connections,” said Jim Pitts, co-founder of Navigators, a Washington lobby shop. Pitts is a McCain supporter and fundraiser...

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has talked to McCain in private about Jimmy’s service. The two serve on the Armed Services panel, where McCain is the ranking member.

“I know that John McCain is very proud of his son’s service and he talked to me about it many times, but he is certainly not going to exploit it for political purposes,” Collins said.

“I did not have a problem, either, with my father talking about me when I was over there,” said Duncan Hunter Jr., who now is running for his retiring father’s seat. “Sen. McCain is higher-profile than my father was and it could put his son in jeopardy and in a spotlight where he does not need to be.”

McCain and other politicians with children in the military face difficult choices about what, if anything, to say in public about their kids. By all accounts, it is a tough call to make. Palin and her son have reached their own decision, and the Democrats, who have declared they will not delve into family matters, are unlikely to make anything of the change.

But the McCain ticket must also deal with the press, which has been fishing around in aspects of Paliln's personal life she is less keen to discuss. When news broke that Palin's 17-year-old unmarried daughter Bristol was pregnant, McCain's chief strategist told the press it was "a private family matter." The Wall Street Journal quoted an anonymous aide saying the issue was off-limits. As others have noted, that line will now be tough to sell.

"The National Enquirer's coverage of a vicious war within Sarah Palin's extended family includes several newsworthy revelations, including the resulting incredible charge of an affair plus details of family strife when the Governor's daughter revealed her pregnancy. Following our John Edwards' exclusives, our political reporting has obviously proven to be more detail-oriented than the McCain campaign's vetting process."

The McCain camp issued a full-throated denial and threatened to sue, though it's worth noting that Edwards at first outright denied the Enquirer's affair charges in late 2007.

The Enquirer promises a fuller report next week. Will the traditional press discuss the story in the meantime? Probably not. Though some publications seemed to regret their silence during the Enquirer's reporting on the Edwards affair, the tabloid had more evidence then on Edwards than it does now on Palin. Edwards was seen going into a hotel where his mistress was staying, and ran from reporters when he was confronted hours later as he tried to leave. And he failed to reiterate a real denial of the charges.

Hopefully some enterprising news outlets will at least attempt to investigate the Enquirer's allegations, however. Now's your chance to shine. Anchorage Daily News!

[Huffington Post]

While vice-presidential candidates traditionally act as the chief attackers of the opponents, Gov. Palin's speech [at the Republican convention] will focus on her personal narrative and legislative record, not on criticizing the Democratic ticket, said a senior McCain adviser...

The adviser said he would be shocked if she spoke about her daughter's pregnancy, noting that the campaign considers that issue off-limits.

...She has been cramming on Sen. McCain's positions in preparation for a debate against Sen. Biden, who has been involved in national and international affairs for over three decades.

So, just to recap: Palin is useless to McCain as an attack dog; useless in ending the love child scandal; and worse than useless in the debates because Joe Biden will probably eat her alive. There's even been speculation she might leave the ticket.

Meanwhile, the Journal adds, McCain aides are apparently fanning out in Alaska to tamp down any further scandals by somehow keeping all Palin associates from speaking with the press.

While she's going easy on the Democrats and saying nothing of substance about the one issue everyone now associates her with, Palin will apparently try to raise money through 16 events scheduled in swing states this month. Maybe she'd just be better off auctioning her daughter's baby pictures to one of the celebrity weeklies!

As you can see, the Beijing public relations strategy was brilliant: first, get the Olympics, then generate alarming rates of economic growth bulldozing and erecting structures and developing innumerable ambitious infrastructure projects in preparation for the thousands of journalists you are expecting for the Olympics, consuming such unprecedented amounts of energy in the process that oil prices rise more than tenfold between the year you land the bid and the year the Olympics actually happen, triggering fears of a recession in the overly developed countries whose living standards your artificially undervalued currency has been subsidizing, such that journalists feel obliged to attend the thing if only to write that last epic think piece on the Emerging Superpower before taking that buyout, while gas prices force the rest of the citizenry to sit at home and watch the Olympics. Hopefully over an ice-cold Coke Zero!

But in lieu of that, cool cars seem to do the trick. A lot better if you locate them in a city that is not totally depressing.