What will they do? Guesses: start a "fashion" line or design handbags or become bartenders at our least favorite L.E.S. douchebag watering holes.

[Photo via Gothamist, where photog Billy Parker noted, "No one thought twice if you took their picture mid-conversation."]

He's full of himself—you have to be to pull those Sam Donaldson stunts with Ari Fleischer—but has never really demonstrated a great intellect. He's never proved himself as an interviewer, which leads us to believe he'll just pull the "the research team dug up a quote from you that slightly contradicts some other thing you said" card way too often. But he's tall!

His show was boring, but Gregory is still more famous and network tv-ready than Chuck Todd, the actually astute political analyst who became a minor MSNBC star during the election. It's broadcast chops, not journalistic ability or smarts, that actually qualify one for Meet the Press.

Also he does impressions. He's famous for his shitty impressions. Everyone in Washington with a reputation for being "funny," with the exception of Barney Frank, is a complete tool.

Here is a clip of David Gregory drunk on Imus (another sign of tooldom: doing Imus).

Wolff wrote a biography of Fox owner and tyrant Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch has cozied up a bit to Barack Obama and has been focusing, lately, on turning the Wall Street Journal into a serious competitor of the New York Times. So Fox's cartoonish liberal-bashing is a bit embarrassing to him, according to the book.

“It is not just Murdoch (and everybody else at News Corp.’s highest levels) who absolutely despises Bill O’Reilly, the bullying, mean-spirited, and hugely successful evening commentator,” Wolff wrote, “but [Fox News chief executive] Roger Ailes himself who loathes him. Success, however, has cemented everyone to each other."

“The embarrassment can no longer be missed,” Wolff wrote, in another section of the book. “He mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it. He barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly. And while it is not that he would give Fox up—because the money is the money; success trumps all—in the larger sense of who he is, he seems to want to hedge his bets.”

It's all because Murdoch's wife and children are limousine liberals now, and in this new Obama era, we are all out-of-touch cultural elites, aren't we? But O'Reilly, and Fox, still make money, so Murdoch will not be changing anything about them until they stop making money. He is a capitalist, not an ideologue.

Oh, but what was that about Chris Matthews? He is going to run for the Senate! Against maybe Arlen Specter, the ancient Republican?

FiveThirtyEight has been hearing for some time that Matthews is serious about running for the United States Senate, but it took a trip to Georgia among the Georgia-runoff-congregated and well-connected Obama organizer throng to confirm.

According to multiple sources, who confirmed the Tip O'Neill staffer-cum-MSNBC host has negotiated with veteran Obama staffers to enlist in his campaign, Chris Matthews is likely to run for United States Senate in Pennsylvania in 2010. Matthews, 62, would run as a Democrat. Arlen Specter, the aging Republican incumbent, will be 80 if he chooses to run for re-election.

It is Chris' life-long dream to be a Senator, and that is a sad dream, but still. If Specter retires, and his health suggests he might, the Democrats would be fools to hand an easy Democratic seat pickup to a liberal broadcaster with a long history of ignorant sexist comments, but, you know, they're the Democratic Party. They nominated Al Franken to run in Minnesota, didn't they?

The Us story, the AP notes, "does not address whether they obtained a marriage license or took part in a separate civil ceremony, which is required by Mexican law to make the union binding. A couple can register their marriage up to 10 days after a ceremony, but California does not recognize marriage ceremonies outside the United States."

Could it have even happened in under an hour, like Speidi claimed? "Americans who wish to get married in Mexico must first go through a process that takes about five days, according to Mexico's foreign relations department Web site. They must obtain a health certificate, including blood test results from a local doctor; and provide official translations of legal documents, such as birth certificates."

In a statement issued via Us (wtf?) the allegedly happy couple came pretty close to acknowledging that they hadn't done any of that, saying "like other elopements that happen outside the country, we'll take care of the legal details when we get home." Their publicist was all know-nothing about it, adding, " "If there was a wedding I wasn't invited ... Sorry!"

We're sure the meticulously-documented event had nothing whatsoever to do with the next season of The Hills—even though MTV also just happened to be there, filming their vacation. They'd never exploit such a loving, personal moment.

The DTV transition affects the public safety of the United States, so it’s imperative that all Americans come together and learn all we can about the DTV transition.

So Joe the Plumber, who is not a licensed plumber or skilled worker of any kind nor even particularly intelligent, will come to your house and fix your TV personally, in next week's exciting installment of "Joe the Plumber Is Not Invited on Cable Networks As Often These Days Theater."

In related news, Ashley Todd would like you to purchase a commemorative "backwards 'B'" silver-dollar coin.

Joe The Plumber’s Life Officially Becomes Off-Putting David Lynch Film [Wonkette]

"As a daddy, I'll say to him what I say to any daddy, you may not want your daughter to get into show business... It's probably a good thing [if they don't do it] also because these girls are going to be in a unique spotlight, and they really do need to walk with certainty and care. I can see many reasons why it would be fun for them to do the show, but I also see a couple other reasons… I don't know."

[US Weekly via Sterohyped]

Also joining the cast: Abby Elliott. Abby is 21, making her probably the youngest SNL regular since Anthony Michael Hall (we didn't bother to prove or source that, FYI). She's the daughter of comic genius Chris Elliott, who is, of course, the son of comic genius Bob Elliott. So she wasn't just hired because she's pretty.

(The news was broken, of course, on former HuffPoor Rachel Sklar's Twitter.)

Keith Olbermann became the voice of Bush's second term. After eking out a narrow victory and calling it a mandate, the President really outdid himself. The war went to hell, the lies that got us into the war were further aired out, the details of his various unconstitutional surveillance programs came to light, the ideological disdain for effective governance and the bubble of true believers led to the Katrina disaster, and America basically got a serious case of buyers' remorse. One guy on TV sounded as perpetually pissed off and outraged as you did, from 2003 onward: Keith Olbermann!

His newfound glee at casting moral judgment on the mendacity of the lunatics in charge was, you know, refreshing after a couple years of the newsmedia wandering in the post-9/11 desert of breathless Bush-worship. Everyone felt kinda bad for selling that stupid and pointless war, but no one quite wanted to be the first to go whole-hog anti-authority. But Olbermann's voice of the opposition was the best thing on TV, leading right up to the 2006 midterms, when America first wholly rejected the Republican party.

But now we've just had an election about Hope and Change, and the new guy in charge is not a fire-breathing pissed-off Howard Dean, but a calm and cool unifier promising to bring dispassionate rationality back to the White House. Meanwhile at MSNBC, Olbermann's charming protege is a Rhodes Scholar who's specifically pledged never to have more than one guest on at a time, because shouting and argument and cross-talk don't actually advance the discussion. Rachel Maddow's ratings are phenomenal, and every month there's a new fawning profile of her showcasing how... normal (and nice!) she is.

If Olbermann was the voice of the opposition, Maddow is the voice of the new liberals in charge. It won't necessarily diminish Olbermann's popularity and influence (or even his ratings), but he's not on top of the zeitgeist anymore. Let's pray for a great 2012 race to get him across that next contract renegotiation hump. Gingrich/Palin '12!

Keith does this "not voting is a symbolic stand" thing because he is obsessed with the idea that he is a Big Serious Important Old-Timey News Man. You know who else makes a big point of saying he is so non-partisan that he doesn't vote? Len Downie, the former executive editor of the Washington Post. Len, in the words of Michael Kinsley, "does not even allow himself the luxury of deciding whom he would vote for if he was into that sort of thing."

We'll freely admit that it is stupid and unfair to say "Keith Olbermann is a big fat liberal" just because he hates George W. Bush with great intensity. It is quite possible to intensely hate George W. Bush as a conservative, a moderate, a libertarian, an Anti-Federalist, a Whig, or a fascist. It is reductive and stupid to equate hatred of George W. Bush and the modern ruling Republican party with any political ideology beyond an affinity for competence and morality in government. And, you know, genuinely unbiased objectivity does sometimes mean saying "Jesus Christ this administration is terrible." That's not a political statement if it's true!

But, Keith, it does not make you Serious to say you don't vote. It doesn't change the fact that you would've voted for Obama. It doesn't actually fool anyone, either. None of those View ladies would have any of it! You disappointed Whoopi.

So we'll agree that we honestly have no idea what Keith Olbermann's political leanings are beyond hating George Bush if he'll stop pretending to be too Serious-Minded to participate in the vast voting conspiracy.

And hey, maybe we'll get a chance, in an Obama administration, to figure out what Keith Olbermann's politics actually are! Because he just signed on through Obama's re-election campaign, hosting Countdown on MSNBC through 2012. NBC even gave him primetime "essays" on the network news and he gets two specials a year on regular NBC. Man. NBC had to give him network gigs to keep him from taking his show and moving to another channel, supposedly, though there is not a channel left, on the TV, that Keith Olbermann has not already worked at. And he left nothing but bad blood at all of them.

The head of the Discovery cable empire David Zaslav stirred the Oprah pot when he announced on a conference call that Oprah was going to end her show in 2011 and focus primarily on building OWN. "This is her chapter two," he said.

Those comments forced Harpo to release a statement:

“While David Zaslav’s comments are true that Oprah’s current contract to produce ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ will expire in 2011, she has not made a final decision as to whether she will continue her show in syndication beyond that.”

So Oprah will either continue her talk show on cable, or end it, or both. It's unclear. But would she really abandon her show a year before Barack Obama needs to be reelected?

<a href="http://www.movies.mtv.com" target="_blank">Real World Brooklyn 'Trailer'</a>

Campbell is a fine interviewer who does admirably call bullshit when she hears it, but her show's self-congratulatory "keeping them honest" segments still invariably boil down to "both sides stretching the truth, as usual, what are you gonna go?" meaninglessness. And hey, she got some history wrong!

In attempting to explain why a single party controlling the legislature and the White House is bad, a terribly annoying bugaboo repeated only by media people and minority parties and not so feared by voters who vote for single party rule, Campbell explained that the last time this happened was in the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter. Hah. That's not true! Nor was it in the 90s, with Bill Clinton. It was, as Keith explains, in the 2000s, with the current President, Mr. Bush.

Keith doesn't explain that Campbell's point about all of those situations being disasters is actually borne out by the evidence, but whatever. Unified Democratic government also brought us Vietnam and Civil Rights, for those keeping score at home. Mixed bag, right?

CNN had the holograms. What was that? What was the point of that? NBC lost Tim Russert this year, and we missed his whiteboard. It was definitely preferable to Chuck Todd—who we like!—standing on the holodeck with magical 3D graphic map that kept slowly turning from side to side for no reason. John King and his stupid magic map still serve no actual purpose.

Meanwhile CNN refused to call any states too early, because of the 2004 debacle, even though no states were prematurely called in 2004, so to figure out that Obama won Pennsylvania and Ohio and hence the presidency (all before the polls closed on the West Coast!) you had to turn to MSNBC.

And finally, Wolf Blitzer needs to get off of TV. He's everything that's wrong with CNN—a complete inability or unwillingness to ever say anything, just mindless equivalence and hedging and cliche, because CNN is the "unbiased" network. Gah. We're with Jack Shafer on this: Blitzer's infuriating.

In 2012 we'll probably have to watch PBS. And then everyone loses.

But daytime and late-night shows have been an underrated factor in this campaign, and an undeniable advantage for Obama. Ellen DeGeneres, David Letterman and panelists on "The View" all confronted McCain, while Obama has basically joked and danced his way through such appearances, including a "Daily Show" stint last week in which Jon Stewart asked him about "the whole socialism/Marxist thing." If anyone doubts there is a liberal entertainment establishment, it has been vividly on display.

Yes, that is right. John McCain, who barbecued with Rachel Ray and did Leno and Letterman and who campaigned with The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck, is a victim of the liberal entertainment establishment. Poor Senator John McCain, who held the record for most Daily Show appearances ever, was victimized by mean questions on the talk shows he kept appearing on, over and over again, while Obama just shucked and jived—sorry, "joked and danced"—his way to victory, thanks to the liberal bias of Ellen, who was mean to John because he wants to make her marriage illegal.

On the day in which the story was McCain's media appearances, in a campaign that has hinged on those appearances before (he got grilled by Letterman because he ditched Letterman, remember), of course Howard is talking about how Obama got it easy on The View and McCain didn't (except for the first time he did The View, when he did get it easy). And oh, he was obviously not challenged on Leno, because Leno never challenges anyone.

But Ellen and Joy Behar and Dave were mean to John McCain, so the world is unfair.

(This is followed by an item about how there is a double standard because Sarah Palin is accused of hiding from the press even though recently she sat down with Brian Williams, Elizabeth Vargas, Jill Zuckman, and, snort, Sean Hannity [near-daily!]. She's also sat down with her traveling press corps "on several occasions." But mean Joe Biden is "hiding" from the press because he's only on tv multiple times every day, having done 211 interviews with local outlets, morning shows, the New York Times, and CBS, but not his traveling press corps. How is this a double standard? Well, there's a question mark in Kurtz's subhead so maybe he meant it's not a double standard, because to declare one when the evidence suggests an apparent single standard would of course be merely parroting a misleading GOP talking point and fair old Howard Kurtz would never do that.)

As with his rumored November 1 appearance on Saturday Night Live (see second item), it's hard to see what Obama has to gain from his Daily Show gig, only what he has to lose. On the bright side, Obama has done remarkably well at avoiding major slip-ups thus far, the main exception being his comments about "bitter" small-town voters at what he thought was a private reception in April.

One sure bet: The candidate will be significantly more reserved than he was on the Daily Show in August 2007. Can you imagine the general election frontrunner joking about invading a small nation, as he does in the excerpt above? Only in your nightmares/dreams.

Jon Stewart, meanwhile, has surely been disabused of the fantasy of getting rid of the red/blue divide.

Click the video at top to watch.

The pundits and TV shows can keep making fun of the next president once he's in office, and the national networks saw a relatively small percentage of their revenue come from election-related advertising.

The local stations will ramping up as aggressively as possible online, a process well under way, for example, at WNBC. When the 2010 and 2012 elections roll around, the smart money says candidates will not only be raising money online but spending it there, as well.

[Morgan] orders a green tea. “You lose when you booze, isn’t that what they say? I can have a drink if I want to. I just don’t feel like it.” I nod. “What do they call that? Oh, I’m functioning. I’m a func-tion-ing alcoholic.” Kenny offers a cautionary “Trey,” which Morgan ignores...
I ask him if people confuse him with his character, and if it might be annoying to be mistaken for an idiot. “He’s my alter ego, he’s not me,” says Morgan, pushing his green tea aside. (“That don’t look like tea.”)

Then there's this description of Morgan's blooming celebrity: "I feel like a young girl whose body is just developing. I’ve got some nice tits, a nice ass, a pretty face … everyone want to fuck me.”

Of course, the Tracy Jordan of 30 Rock isn't just crazy; he's calculatingly crazy. In one episode, the sitcom star draws a "tattoo" on his face to "show the world I'm still dangerous." Although he's had his share of genuine personal setbacks — a separation from his wife, drunk driving arrests — it seems a safe bet that Morgan does the same sort of calculus.

In this morning's Times it emerged that Maddow's new show doubled its predecessor's ratings "in a matter of days." Such gumption! It took the liberal pundit's mentor, Keith Olbermann, years to get to that point, and he probably never had to save up to fix a broken chimney. Maddow is also beating CNN's Larry King among 25-to-54-year olds. So the Times is calling on MSNBC to at least buy poor Maddow a TV set, already:

...Ms. Maddow insists that she has never watched either [Larry] King’s program or the 9 p.m. program on Fox News, “Hannity & Colmes...”
“I worry every day about the homogenizing forces at work in my professional life,” she said, adding that it can be difficult to preserve creativity within cable’s production process. It helps, she said, that she does not own a television at home.
Even so, Ms. Maddow said, she has finally committed to getting a set, primarily so that her companion can watch her program. With Ms. Maddow delivering MSNBC a record audience, it might seem that the least the network could do would be to deliver her a television.

Then again, Maddow is very superstitious, telling the Times, " A handkerchief can never be put in another pocket after it has been in one pocket." Ack, wait, actually maybe leave her living like a pauper! You're going to jinx her otherwise!

Since she left the Times she's been with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think thank, because she's given up entirely on getting anyone to like her or take her seriously anymore. Also she endorsed Barack Obama because why not? She probably believes in abortion and socialism and progressive taxation just as much as she believed that Iraq was a dangerous threat based on the most specious and misleading of evidence. For a while all the "serious" media liberals had to acknowledge that Bush was more "serious" about National Security than those peacenik hippie Nation-reading commies, remember? No, no one remembers, or cares, whatever.

Miller is of course either delusional or just doesn't give a shit:

However, going to Fox only reinforces the idea among left-wing critics that she’s been on the side of the Bush Administration. Miller contends that she’s a “political independent,” and said Fox wasn’t looking for any ideological perspective on national security.

“They didn’t ask me what I was going to say, or whether I was going to fit a mold,” Miller said. “I think they want me to be independent, and that’s what I am."

Yes, Judy, of course, they hired a disgraced national security correspondent because of her wonderful reputation for being right all the time, not because she was a neo-conservative cheerleader.

Feel free to email Judy all your good wishes!

October 13: "So i was dragged to Bloomingdale's by my girlfriend yesterday, and who was working on the main floor? Stella B. Zotis from Project Runway! I couldn't believe it. She was wearing the all black uniform the sales-floor girls wear, nametag and all. She wasn't spritzing anyone with perfume, but she might as well have.

October 10: "Saw Daniel V. of Project Runway fame not once but twice this evening (7:15 & 11:30), but both times working on the same project: dressing the windows for Virgin Megastore in Union Square. Does this mean he's out of the fashion design game?"

May we suggest a career in snarkblogging? That's what I did after accomplishing my very important degree in costume design.

I am a hobbyist bartender. I have a liquor cabinet. I research classic drinks from the golden age of American cocktails and I make them for me and Susan.

Then she names her favorite "obscure liquor." Rachel Maddow, rational and down-to-earth Lesbian who enjoys making alcoholic beverages, we salute you.

Image Via.
Related: Why Rachel Maddow Never Made It On Fox News [NYO]

PBS executives also asked Ms. Jones to make changes to the film, including adding the panel discussion. By the time that happened, the fall schedule was set, said John Wilson, the PBS senior vice president for programming. He called the film “ultimately an impressive work of journalism,” and said, “our goal was to have it in a good slot.” That the first date offered happened to be the day after the Bush administration is to leave power “absolutely is coincidental,” he said. “It was the date that offered itself up.”

Ha ha, the show was "ultimately" good journalism, after some real journalists cleaned up the biased dreck that producer Sherry Jones turned in, right John? If this is just another one of those internecine conflicts endemic to nonprofit journalism, it's sure doing a good job disguising itself as a genuine scandal.

The silver lining here is that WNET has independently placed the show on various PBS affiliates, reaching markets with close to 85 percent of U.S. viewers. Many of them will have the opportunity to watch this documentary before the election. Many, also, will be boning up on DVDs of Fox torture-porn serial 24 ahead of the new season that night, or watching one of those incredible Fox News specials, but at least the option will be there!

"The buy will push CBS comedy 'The New Adventures of Old Christine' to 8:30 p.m. and pre-empt 'Gary Unmarried.' NBC typically airs the hourlong 'Knight Rider' in the slot, and will likely throw in a comedy repeat at 8:30 p.m."

Thank you Senator Obama for preempting Gary Unmarried! Change you can believe in!

In response, Senator McCain is going to co-host an infomercial for the Flavor Wave Over Turbo, which will air at 5 a.m. the following morning on Lifetime.

McCain and Obama had their revenge in the end, showing Brokaw to be useless without his teleprompter. That minor embarrassment aside, CBS News' Bob Schieffer should impose similar discipline at the final debate next Wednesday. That would be an excellent way to get the White House press corps off on the right, confrontational note with the future subject of its coverage.

(Click the video at top to watch all the fireworks.)

This graph can be interpreted as a.) her Google trends, or b.) all of America getting it up for Tina.

I tell him about the SoyJoy deal. He’s troubled; he hadn’t realized that was an integration. (He also hadn’t realized it was a real brand.) But it’s the American Express podbusters that really set him off. “My wife and I get very angry. We invest in the reality of the show! And this is one of the ways they’re picking apart the idea of the narrative, keeping you from knowing if it’s a show or not.”

"...[TV executives] want to take the story apart so they can stuff it with as much revenue as they can. And ultimately what you get is a zombie, a stuffed thing—a non-show.”

...Television is a mass art, requiring compromise, pragmatism, he knows—but the line creators draw should not be about “How coolly can I do this? The most artful can be the most unethical.”

Whedon has a point, particularly when he says, elsewhere in the article, that shows like 30 Rock can only be clever about product placement — cheekily and gently mocking it — once or twice before the joke becomes stale and they have to resort to more cheesy, straight-up placements. Eventually, viewers will feel like the show is stooping. But that's easy for Whedon to say — he already has his fame and fortune. 30 Rock is still fighting for survival and most people will allow it just a little bit of selling out. They'd expect no less of Liz Lemon, in fact!

The night had split leadership with CBS winning the most viewers with Survivor: Gabon and the debate/analysis. But NBC took both the 18-49 demo and the 18-34 demo with its combination of My Name is Earl and the debate.

People still watch Survivor? Christ. Nation: doomed, as always.

See? The word "governor" worked wonders! Smooth, dignified Gov. Sarah Palin.

The lefties at Huffington Post and Crooks and Liars have seized upon the part where the Republican vice presidential nominee can't give examples of John McCain supporting financial regulation. "I'll try to find some and bring them to you," she tells Couric. The neocon New York Sun (not yet dead!) notes the part where Palin said we might be headed for another Great Depression, hardly the most reassuring leadership from the ticket that was recently talking about how strong America's economic "fundamentals" are. And she was also clearly flummoxed by a question about ongoing ties between McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis and a group that advocated for housing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Perhaps Palin should stick to interviews with Fox News shouting heads like Sean Hannity. It's not like she's ever needed the mainstream press for high approval ratings.

(video above)

[YouTube via Wonkette)

Letterman invited lefty MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann to fill for McCain and spent huge stretches of his broadcast laying into the candidate, saying he was acting "fishy" by not letting his running mate Sarah Palin take over the campaign.

It remains a mystery how this ended up on YouTube. Did someone at Letterman leak it? Why, and why not wait until after the broadcast airs? Do show producers fear CBS suits will quash the broadcast for its heavy political overtones? Or did they think they risked a ratings disaster without their A-list guest and were hoping to either effectively tease the McCain-less show or maximize revenge against the McCain camp?

Whether they capitalize on it financially or otherwise, Late Show producers have created some fascinating television. Watch the most incendiary two minutes and forty five seconds in the video above or click through for the full nine minute compilation on YouTube, via Cajun Boy.

The two shows "didn't know about each other, despite having all the same people interview and having the exact same theme." Allegedly the BBC used our post on the "Upper Class of 2008" as inspiration, and has contacted musician/beer heir Rory Guinness, Kelley, "jewellry designer" Summer Rej, Liam McMullen, Unruly Heir designer Joey Goodwin, and model/student/photog Liz Frazer.

Hmmm. If that's in fact true, it makes the show practically our fault. Sorry!