A few days ago the Southern Poverty Law Center called on CNN to fire Dobbs. In a letter to the cable news network, SPLC President Richard Cohen said that "respectable news organizations should not employ reporters willing to peddle racist conspiracy theories and false propaganda," so O'Reilly invited Cohen on his show to discuss the issue. After attacking Dobbs for peddling the widely dispelled conspiracy theory in the segment's opening, O'Reilly vigorously defended Dobbs for what he sees as merely "bloviating" to "stir the pot" on a hot-button issue to improve his crappy ratings, something O'Reilly has no ethical issues with, as we're all too well aware.

So to summarize: O'Reilly is disgusted with Dobbs for giving credibility to the insane Birther movement, but he has no issue with Dobbs flying the Birther freak flag on the air to spark controversy and enhance his ratings. Are you as confused as we are?

What's funny about this clip is that Cohen kind of kisses O'Reilly's ass in a "I know you'd never do such things for ratings Bill" sort of way, and we can't tell if his comments were laced with sarcasm or if he's just never watched O'Reilly's show before. You decide.

I was in the Class of 1958, two years behind Bernie, but in the same class as his wife, Ruth. She was my friend, or so our yearbook strongly suggests, although my memory of our friendship no longer speaks to me. I remember her only as really cute, an object of desire across a classroom or another. But in the yearbook she wrote a long inscription. It seems I teased her. It seems I kidded her. She forgave me all that and ended by writing that I would "meet Bernie at the prom — and I guarantee he will say hello."

Gross. Oh, but hey, can you get even worse, somehow, Richard? Yes, you can. He feels much pity for "the very rich."

My friend Ted has his New York City teacher's pension, while the very rich, who put all their retirement funds with Bernie, have been utterly wiped out. I feel sorry for them. I identify with them. They were not, as is sometimes written, greedy. The stock market was a mystery. It seemed to defy logic. They let Bernie deal with it. I would have done the same.

And, hah, this is the last line: "It turned out I knew Ruth. It turned out she never knew Bernie."

You are a fucking idiot for writing that, Richard Cohen. And look, you still have a column at The Washington Post, and Dan Froomkin doesn't! What a country!

(Dear Time Traveling Terrorists: your target is Far Rockaway High School. Please blow it up after Richard Feynman graduates.)

I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap.

Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story — that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.

But now, John McCain lies. And it's not like 2000, when John McCain lied about loving the confederate flag and then apologized for lying, because back then he'd wink to Richard Cohen every time he did it, so Rich knew it was just a thing he had to do, this lying.

Anyway, Rich, your column went over great with Joe Klein, who is pretty much just like you except he writes for Time.

So that's two useless moderate bearded columnists off the straight talk express! Who's next?

Wait, David Brooks? No, wait, he just doesn't like Sarah Palin anymore. Because she's not a comfortable entrenched establishment conservative like David Brooks, but rather a scary culture war populist idiot, like Bush.

And, of course, Andrew Sullivan—once a gay Catholic right-winger (well, honestly, still those things in his head) who wanted to kill all the Muslims and accused liberal journalists of being in league with the terrorists right after 9/11—never wastes an opportunity to point out that John McCain has lost his respect (we're sure that keeps the senator up at night).

Of course we're being unfair in only listing people we never liked. (JK Andrew, you've grown on us.) Ana Marie Cox likes McCain—for that openness and access that Rich Cohen pretends not to care about!—but she has been critical of his campaign, lately (though she scored a late-August interview with the candidate—just before the Palin selection!) And Jon Stewart had McCain on his Daily Show more often than any other guest. But during the RNC the show produced what is maybe the most damning and mean indictment of the man's entire biography we've ever seen.

To sum up: in 2000 John McCain learned that making friends with the media does not win elections, and this year he may yet learn that pissing them off has no consequences.

• Here come the layoffs at the Philadelphia Inquirer. [NYT]
  
• The Times might feel confident enough that everyone's forgotten the whole Jayson Blair thing to ditch the Public Editor position altogether. [NYO]
  
• Gerry Levin's "inner poet" turned out to be some dude who runs a spa. [NYP]
  
• That Allbritton online politics thing scores another defection; this time it's Ben Smith of the Daily News, who snared yesterday's scoop on the stolen Giuliani documents. [NYDN]
  
• Radar's John Cook, Jeff Bercovici get all Woodward and Bernstein on some dude who wrote a mean thing in Brit Hume's Wikipedia entry. [Radar]
  

• Diane Sawyer's not going anywhere. At least until June. [NYT]
  
• Liberty Media's John Malone looking to pick up some Cablevision assets. [NYP]
  
• Union representing WSJ reporters and editors takes out ad in NYT lambasting its own paper. [WWD]
  
• Did the Times use a source who had an interest in the direction of the story he commented on? We're shocked. [Brooklyn Vegan, first comment]
  
• We hope Jon Friedman isn't as quick to pull the plug on his loved ones as he is on Katie Couric. [MarketWatch]
  
• WaPo's Richard Cohen makes HuffPo's Rachel Sklar fear for her decayingg ovaries. [ETP]