[Via Business Insider.]

Noonan thinks it is good that Obama is thinking! Noonan thinks it is bad that Obama is not asking the people who've been wrong about everything for years what they would do.

The president is not, apparently, holding serious discussions with the most informed and concerned Republicans from Capitol Hill and what used to be called the foreign-policy establishment, and this, if true, is bad.

Hah. Ha ha ha. The "foreign-policy establishment" is just made up of the hawkiest hawks in the world. The Republicans from Capitol Hill want us to nuke Iran and France.

The cliché that politics stops at the water's edge is a fiction worth preserving. It's a story that ought to be true and sometimes is true. There seems to be something in this president that resists really including the opposition.

His Army Secretary is a Republican! His Afghanistan commander was appointed a director of the Joint Staff by President Bush! The rest of the opposition is not serious. At all! The deny Obama's legitimacy, they seek only to destroy him, they are not interested in being "included" because they plan to campaign against whatever decision he makes, Peggy. (Unless the plan is endless war forever with everyone. They like that one.)

But! The important bit is that once JFK gave a good speech about the Cuban Missile Crisis—while his administration was in the midst of having no fucking clue what to do about it—and Obama should consider doing the same thing. But his speech should not be too good, because Americans are worried about the deficit.

Also Peggy used to like the TV show Dragnet, which was about a police officer who told ladies to man up and stop crying, and also he arrested hippies. That is what Obama should do, to show he is serious. The end.

Family Guy's jokes frequently rest on so-called "offensive" humor, and this was on full display during "Seth and Alex's Almost Live Review," which featured MacFarlane and Alex Bornstein (the voice of Lois) playing to a live audience in front of a big band. The musical numbers, sketches and karaoke-like live performances to Family Guy clips almost universally pushed the very hot buttons of race, class, gender and disability in ways that should guarantee Fox an inbox stuffed full with angry letters for the next few weeks. But "Seth and Alex's Almost Live Review" managed to do something Family Guy doesn't always accomplish: Be funny in an "offensive" way while avoiding the sense that to cause offense was an end in itself.

The best "offensive" jokes are those that comment on the very concept of being offended. They spoof the arcane rules of political correctness that dictate what certain people can say about other kinds of people, and how they can say it. The bit above is probably the purest form of this kind of humor: What could have been the worst sort of caricature was deftly turned into a meta-joke on viewers. The realization that Matlin's in on the joke prompts (at least in me) a sense of relief so strong that it makes you question what the hell you were doing laughing in the first place. The reveal is a judo move that uses our own highly-honed sense of political correctness against us, and, basically, is just really funny! Good work, Seth and Alex.

This bit from Family Guy, on the other hand? Meh.

The highlight is probably the unveiling of the conspiratorial internal organ chalkboard. All the notes—references to old and discredited texts, the Founding Fathers, transparently phony stabs at nonpartisanship, crying—are hit, though Stewart never quite reaches the operatic unhingedness of a genuine Beck performance. The glasses are a wonderful touch, though.

No, on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire—the daytime version!—DeLay will appear via "Skype" (they will not get him a town car to a proper studio, even!) as a mere lifeline, for some nobody contestant. The lifeline is called "Ask the Expert," so let's hope for Tom's sake that the contestants end up stuck on questions of pest extermination, and not, say, Texas election law.

Via NY Mag's Vulture:

I met this guy who was creating software where you could watch Mad Men and you could chat with your friend while you're watching it, and things would pop up, and facts would pop up, and I said, "You're a human battery. Turn the fucking thing off! You're not allowed to watch the show anymore. You're missing the idea of sitting in a dark place and having an experience. Are you just like sitting with your phone and you're kissing your girlfriend and saying, 'I'm kissing my girlfriend! This is so great, we're having sex!'" EXPERIENCE THINGS!"

Yes, like a television show where something actually happens. Or, you know, not watching TV.

There's more where that came from. EXPERIENCE IT!

[Photo via Mark J. Terrill/AP]

Finke offers one explanation from a source in the show...

"One of the great things about Mad Men is the tradition that Matt has established of offering higher-level opportunities to staff, writers and artists in all of the various departments. From the beginning, Matt has fought to get people approved by the studio which almost always lobbied for him to hire more experienced people instead."

"We think [Kater's] done a great job, particularly for someone whose career has progressed so quickly. Now, however, Matt has reluctantly decided that their relationship has reached its full potential. She'll be missed, but the series has consistently benefited from the influx of new writer talent, and there's absolutely no doubt that Kater will continue to have unprecedented success in her career as she spreads her wings. She leaves Mad Men with our love and respect and a well-deserved Emmy."

...that's clearly in Weiner's camp. Maybe this is the truth! Or maybe she might as well have placed an email from the show's flack in exchange for a better scoop later on. But the truth can't be this simple. Finke—who exercises a Machiavellian hand over the comments in her posts—left it to her commenters to speculate. And by speculate, we mean, speak for her. And I imagine someone at AMC is asking Finke why she's not deleting comments like she normally does on issues she wants to control.

Let's look at some of the more interesting theories:

• Matthew Weiner had a strictly unprofessional relationship with her, or as the commenter put it:

  *cough*LETTERMAN*cough*

  Well, Gordon did have a very quick rise through the rankings of Mad Men. Again: started as Weiner's assistant. Became a writers' assistant. Weiner then let her co-write the last season finale with him, and now, she's a staff writer for the third season. Or was, until she got fired. Staff writing jobs are not easy to come by, obviously. Sure, it's topical. And maybe it's worth noting that this is the first show Weiner's ever been a showrunner on. I somehow doubt this theory. If something inappropriate took place, why would he fire her? Probability: unlikely.
  
  

• Jealousy Issues. Another commenter writes:

  There was a really weird moment during the acceptance where Matt kind of 'snatched' the Emmy from her...The photo gets at it but I remember it being uncomfortable to watch. I always [sic] trhought they worked with these relatively inexperienced people on this show primarily for financial reasons. Allows them to put as much money as possible up on the screen.

  I'm not sure I buy the "inexperienced writers" line so much as the one above: that Mad Men hires writers with low quotes because they can afford to do so by reputation, and allocate the money elsewhere on the show. Weiner's a notorious control freak, as evidenced by the show, obviously. Hollywood loves a young, hot writer, and Gordon's cute and staffed on a hit show. Maybe this made Weiner uncomfortable. Or maybe Gordon's ego from the win outgrew Weiner's ability to micromanage, which could've been marginally. Even so, another commenter draws a comparison to Peggy and Don Draper's relationship, noting that this could give a certain scene from earlier in the season more significance...

  One just goes balls to the wall:

  Anyone who believes this horseshit is completely naïve. Matt Weiner is the lowest of the low in our business. He is a egomaniac and the likelihood is that he was incensed that he had to share credit and let alone an Emmy with her. A lowly former writer's assistant. As far as he is concerned, he is solely responsible for the success of this show and no other writer, producer, director, actor, key grip have done anything to contribute to the show's success. For Pete's sake, he didn't even let Kater Gordon say a word when they got up on stage. It was her moment as well but Weiner made it ALL about him.

  Though egomaniacs are kind of par for the course, no?
  
  

• And another one just thinks Matt was unloading unnecessary cargo:

  The only episode she wrote by herself was "The Fog" and it was terrible. Looks like Matt got too excited and promoted her too quickly…

Update: Finke posted from a writer who supposedly knows by Weiner and Gordon, who insists there was no "Letterman" play involved. "She totally got the show and deserved the break she got. There was NOTHING illicit in her relationship with Matt." 'Figured. But Finke has yet to posit any theories...

[Photo via Mark J. Terrill/AP]

Haha no that is just a joke about the last time he quit something, back when we all hoped he'd got to jail. No, former House Majority leader Tom DeLay is quitting the TV dancing show because he hurt his widdle foots.

Delay's partner, Cheryl Burke, said she urged Delay not to dance on Monday, but he would not be stopped.

Yes, well, right. Weirdly, DeLay insisted that he dance on "Latin Night." (BUILD A WALL!)

Skirt-chasing funnyman David Letterman's restricted office at his Midtown studio has all the trimmings for a bachelor on the prowl, including a fold-out couch and a kitchen, The Post has learned. The randy comic, who was the victim of an extortion attempt over his in-house dalliances, keeps the quarters private to all but a select few staffers, sources said.

Oh. You mean "an office." If David Letterman wanted to fuck in private, he could have the heat turned on in the Ed Sullivan Theater and bone on his desk while everyone else got locked out. This is stupid. How'd the Daily News work it?

The Hester quoted by TMZ made the stunning admission as a Letterman show source dished that he kept a secret bedroom above his set in the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway. "He doesn't have to come out," a staffer said. "He has a suite upstairs." An ex-"Late Show" staffer said Letterman kept a room insiders dubbed "the bunker" that was open only to his favorite young female underlings.

Again: it's normal for offices that revolve around working late keep these kinds of places for those at the top of the food chain. I'm sure Col Allen's got his Booze Den of Doggystyle somewhere in the News Corp building. Magazines, production houses, theaters: they all have offices like these, and often, people make up funny names for their bosses offices. So, this is kind of a non-story. More interesting is what the intern in question had to say about her fling with Dave:

"I was madly in love with him at the time," said Holly Hester. "I would have married him. He was hilarious." The NYU alum, who it appears went on to become a top Hollywood producer, told TMZ.com that the relationship started in the early '90s when Letterman called and asked her on a date to the movies.

A year-long, secret romance ensued, she said, until the funnyman called it off because of their age difference. Outside what is believed to be Hester's country home in Sebastopol, Calif. - in ritzy Sonoma County - a middle-aged man lashed out at a Daily News reporter last night. "Get the f—- out of here. We're being offered a lot of money for this s—-," he said.

That explains it. Wonder what the market's gonna look like by Tuesday. How many of these does Letterman have in hiding? I smell a book deal: Postcards From Yo Discarded Letterman Intern's gonna be a smash this holiday season.

His nickname was literally "The Hammer." He was a thuggish, corrupt former exterminator who ran the House of Representatives like it was an organized crime family.. He loved wars and tax cutting and gerrymandering and fucking over opponents. He is Maureen Dowd's dream man.

But there he is prancing like a pretty pony on television's Dancing With the Stars!

The Hammer, who in rehearsal admitted to feeling like "a complete goose" - and not simply because he had his golf shirt tucked into his sweat pants - is clinging to his Texas machismo even as he follows Cheryl's instruction to find his "feminine side."

"I'm being more feminine and a little prissy," he said, using a word that smacks of über-alpha "I am not gay even though I have on heels and sparkles and want a disco-ball trophy" overcompensation.

Look how torn she is! His sad protestations in defense of his threatened masculinity must be mocked, but we must admire his use of the "uber-alpha" word "prissy," which is the sort of word someone like Maureen Dowd might use to describe someone like John Edwards.

Well, let's just make fun of his stupid girly clothes one more time (also he winked at a gay!) and then finish up with some meaningless "wacky op-ed about an unexpected situation" boilerplate.

Once the Hammer tried to outfox Democrats. Now he's trying to outfox-trot Donny Osmond. Once he whipped Republicans relentlessly to keep their votes in line. Now he says he and his daughter have "a strategy to whip the vote" on "Dancing."

Once the Hammer accepted a million dollars from Russian oil executives in exchange for a vote. Now he accepts compliments from an effeminate British judge in exchange for many votes. Once he blamed the Columbine massacre on the teaching of evolution. Now he blames his poor dancing ability on the fact that he hurt his foot. Once he violated Texas law by funneling corporate money to state legislative races via the RNC. Now he is a sad old man on TV instead of in jail forever.

Maureen Dowd finished this column after furiously voting for DeLay literally thousands of times.

Because, you know, they will publish them! Or selections from them anyway. No one wants to transcribe all seven handwritten pages of crazy.

Yes, Peter Braunstein, Woman's Wear Daily writer turned lunatic fugitive turned suicidal inmate, loves Gossip Girl. Why wouldn't he?

"There's another incentive or two for staying in the game, namely, Season 3 of 'Gossip Girl,' " says the suicidal, stir-crazy sex fiend in a seven-page, handwritten letter to The Post.

"But still I ask myself: Sure, it's probably going to be great, but is 'Gossip Girl' in and of itself reason enough to stay alive? We'll see."

This fucking guy! Hand-writing Gossip Girl recaps from prison! It's like some overrated black comic novelist invented him for a novel about the dark soul of the young New York media scene. (Do people write those anymore?)

Could there be a more appropriate place for The Today Show to introduce their new hire than Cowboys Stadium, the citadel of hideous American excess, out in that vast expanse of glorious, cement kiln soot-laden sprawl midway between Dallas and Fort Worth? (Wikipedia notes that Arlington is "the largest city in the world without a fixed bus route system of mass transit." Everyone's carbon footprint is bigger in Texas!)

Jenna Bush, whatever, she is fine. She is, like most of the children of the ruling elite, a useless leech on society who's produced nothing or value to anyone, ever. And she was forced into an arranged marriage with a second-generation party hack after her allotted few years of hanging out with Gays and drinking too much. But on the whole, she is harmless. She certainly does not need or deserve a job as a journalist, but The Today Show itself has no use for journalism.

And here she is interviewing some precocious young public speaker, in a cutesy, meaningless feel-good segment. And, hah, she "plans to keep her part-time job as a sixth-grade reading resource teacher." You gotta keep busy!

Meanwhile the other one, not-Jenna, the one who went to Yale, she is doing god knows what with her time. At some point one of them will have to step up to the plate and become a Liz Cheney being of pure hackery, probably, but until then let us continue forgetting about them.

Obama did Leno last March, of course, which makes sense: Leno usually drew a larger, older audience, and old people are the ones who vote, and who are easily scared. And Jay's idea of "political" comedy is to make a joke about Bill Clinton putting things in Monica Lewinsky's vagina (in 2009) so there was no threat of a host actually having any probing or inconvenient questions. (Did anyone watch that clip of Jeremy Scahill and Chuck Todd arguing about Blackwater on Bill Maher? The weirdest part is that Leno is there, for some reason? And he is shocked to learn that "contractors" in war zones are actually mercenary soldiers! It's not really relevant to this post it was just weird to watch. Anyway, Jay learned something, that day!)

But now in late night, David Letterman's program reaches more people, and so it makes more sense to appear there than on Conan, where only the stoners will see him.

But why would Obama not do Leno again in prime time now, hmm?? Maybe he hates him as much as everyone else who's been unlucky enough to catch more than two minutes of any NBC programming over the last two months! Maybe he was just trying to watch some fucking football last Sunday night! Maybe he is infuriated at those "behind-the-scenes" ads that show Jay doing his "funny newspaper stories" routine in the writers' room for the writers, which makes no fucking sense. (Writers present material to the host, why the hell would they do it the other way around?)

Or maybe he just wants to stay on Dave's good side, after what happened to John McCain, a man Letterman used to practically worship, until the unpleasantness.

This basically encapsulates all of the insanity that's included with your standard episode of Tyra: dangerously peppy enthusiasm blended with Banks' self-delusion that people would burst into song on cue, for her, and get naked, for her, in Union Square. Okay, it's missing the batty, pompous punditry that Tyra puts into every show, but maybe it's there in the subtext. I haven't played it backwards yet.

More offensive, however, is the notion that people could burst into song in Union Square without having their path crossed by a wayward, mediocre bad skateboarder, some kind of obscure protest (both in form and cause), or without busting ass and tripping all over, as Union Square is a great place to do. Then again, in the Suburb-sive shifting of Union Square—which, once a downtown scene, will soon include a Friday's—it kind of fits right in. Have at it, Tyra:

Mad Men, the famous and brilliant television show about how it was weird and bad but also secretly really fucking awesome when dudes smoked and drank at work while treating women like shit (and everyone dressed better but there were no black people), was incessantly hyped by every wing of the East Coast Liberal Media Elite for weeks before its new season started, and the premiere drew 2.8 million viewers.

This will all change of course once Sarah Palin tells her fans to watch Mad Men. Someone send her some DVDs!

Heche started out seeming candid and kooky in a sort of charming way. She said her ex-husband Coleman Laffoon wants her to "watch him run around in his little white shorts, playing soccer." The highlight of the above clip comes at about minute 1:00, when Heche starts talking over Dave, making awesome witch-fingers, and explaining that her ex "wants to still hang out with me [...] because I'm so fantastic." She seems a little wacked out, but hearing her unrestrainedly bash Laffoon is a lot more fun than watching some publicist-polished actress cross her legs and simper. Things get a little weird, though, as she repeatedly makes insinuations about the state of Dave's marriage. But not as weird as this:

Sorry Homer, your mom thinks you suck at soccer. Of course, since she thinks soccer practice is called "rehearsal," she may not know a lot about it. More importantly, though, Heche seems to have taken leave of her senses a little bit (on her marriage: "It's ovah ... red Rovah!"). Given her public battle with mental illness, this is kind of unsettling to watch. Even if she isn't having some kind of episode here (and to be fair, it must be annoying to have bunch of strangers speculating about your mental health every time you go off on your ex), it seems pretty unnecessary for her to mention her child while she's insulting his father on national TV. And if I were Dave's wife, I'd be a little pissed about all of Heche's eye-rolling about marriage.

Her ex definitely isn't happy. He fired back to Us about her allegations that he's a "lazy ass":

After coming home from showing two different clients two different condominiums, I was disturbed to see Anne taking out her personal frustration on the father of her child on national television.

He also wrote on Facebook,

I wish Anne Heche could see that public bullying isn't good for the soul or positive for her child. It's mean.

We kind of agree — but it's still hard to look away.

Anne Heche's Ex "Disturbed" by Her Letterman Appearance [Us Weekly]

First of all: Fresca. Come on. It was LBJ's favorite soda! He was not a chocolate milk man.

Second of all: "24-year-old LA lawyer." Ugh.

And thirdly: we just failed the Millionaire audition last week.

In what is probably a violation of ABC's game show audition policies, our mother signed us up for a Millionaire audition against our knowledge, emailing us after receiving a confirmation from ABC.com and then shipping us a copy of The World Almanac 2009.

And because we do not like to disappoint out mother, we schlepped out to West 66th last Friday afternoon. And we stood outside of one of ABC's many buildings on that street, in the oppressive heat, with a couple dozen 50-year-old ladies from Westchester, cantankerous retired men from all over the tri-state area, a couple mooks in from Scotia, and three or four tattooed young folk participating either as a sop to mothers who think they've always wasted their prodigious talents or because it would be funny.

The ABC employees eventually ushered us into a classroom with an unmarked door leading directly to the street, where we learned how incredibly terrible old men are at going through metal detectors. They have literally hundreds of pockets, in their old man trousers and shirts and coats, and each one of those pockets is filled with assorted things they've collected during their 70+ years on this earth. They spend ten minutes emptying these pockets of their paper clips, LifeAlert pagers, money clips, Buick keys, buffalo nickels, bits of twine, pocket knives, and Nazi gold, and then they still set the alarm off, either because their hips are made of titanium or because they forgot they're keeping some tin for the war effort in their shirt pockets. It was hot, and we were slightly hungover, and standing outside waiting for these old men did not make us happy.

But it did give us some time to chat with the old ladies! They were a more fun-loving bunch, though none of them have had anything to do with all the hours in the day for 30 years now. Which is why all the old ladies have auditioned for Millionaire multiple times. And not just Millionaire! One lady told a story that began "well, when I was on Hollywood Squares..." and who knows if she meant Paul Lynde Hollywood Squares or Whoopi Goldberg Hollywood Squares or even Shadoe Stevens Squares.

Once we finally sat down the two fresh college grads organizing the audition waited out the old guys still at the metal detector by asking us if anyone had traveled far for the audition ("62nd street," said an old man) and then one of them got into a flirty argument with the mooks from Scotia (she was from Troy) and once it became dangerously like the first day of camp or maybe rehab the test finally began.

Here's how the audition works: you sign up, you are sent an application with lots of pre-interview questions about whether or not you're an ABC employee and how you would convey an interesting but not too out-there personality during a four-second conversation with Regis, and then you show up and take a multiple-choice test. Your score on the test determines whether or not you move on to a super-quick interview with a producer, and that interview determines whether you will end up in the contestant pool. Once you are in the pool, they can call you up to be on a syndicated taping tomorrow, or never.

The old ladies who've auditioned a hundred times warned us that the test was hard. We didn't believe them! We did well on the SATs and the ACTs. Taking multiple-choice tests is precisely what years of urban public schooling taught us to do! And it wasn't that hard, honestly. But we still sucked.

It's a 30 question multiple choice test and you have ten minutes to complete it. It was not that difficult. It was a smidgen of pop culture and simple math, and the rest was maybe Thursday Times crossword puzzle subject matter and difficulty. We only completely guessed on two questions, and gave educated guesses on maybe two more. But we failed. And then everyone who failed (at least 80% of the crowd) was very quickly hustled out of there.

We were never told what the passing grade actually is, but from now on, whenever we find ourselves knowing, without lifelines, the answer to every single damn question on Millionaire, and we watch some idiot contestant struggle, we will feel even worse. And we are a disappointment to our poor, long-suffering mother. At least Leitch got the chance to lose on actual TV.

The folks who think really hard about the machinations behind cable news — that'd include us — are wondering: Was Glenn Beck forced off the air this week by contrite Fox News executives in the wake of an advertiser boycott over his increasingly insane meltdowns? Or does Fox just want you to think that?

TVNewser reported today, citing "several sources inside" Fox News, that Glenn Beck was pulled off the air and sent on a forced, unscheduled vacation this week after executives became increasingly alarmed over the advertiser exodus from his show and wanted to "let some of the heat surrounding him die down." If true, that would be an almost unprecedented instance of the network backing down—rather than its preferred tactic of attacking viciously—in the face of criticism. Aside from the firing of E.D. Hill after her "terrorist fist jab" remark and an oblique apology after a graphic referred to Michelle Obama as "Obama's Babymama," it's hard to recall a case where the famously truculent network acknowledged criticism or reacted defensively.

Fortunately for fans of Fox's unrestrained dickishiness, it's not true: Not long after the TVNewser posted the item, Beck's personal publicist Matthew Hiltzik provided evidence to Politico that Beck's vacation was long-planned: An e-mail from an employee of his production company, dated July 14, saying, "All: Glenn will be off of radio & TV the week of August 17th, returning to air August 24th." Beck didn't start getting into serious trouble until July 28, when he said Barack Obama hates white people. So if it's authentic, the e-mail is fairly solid proof that Beck was planning to be out long before his latest psychotic episode began.

For what it's worth, a tipster tells us that she spotted Beck with his family and a bodyguard—so much for that "just us folks" image—leaving the Museum of Natural History today in Manhattan at about 12:30 p.m. So whether the vacation was planned or not, there was no travel involved.

So what gives? The strange thing about the TVNewser report was the response from Fox's flack: "A Fox News spokesperson denied our accounts and simply told us, 'Glenn Beck will back on Monday.'" That's awful weak stuff considering how easy it would have been to simply knock down the story from the start by, say, providing the e-mail proving that Beck's vacation was long-planned. And the fact that it was Beck's personal publicist, who's paid to look out for Beck's image and not Fox's, who eventually got that e-mail out there leads us to the following highly improbable-and-yet-irresistible conspiracy theory:

Fox deliberately planted the forced-vacation story, knowing it was false. The network generally has no interest in placating critics, but it is highly motivated to placate advertisers, who have moved their spots off Beck's show in droves. Beck's sudden absence from the air presented an opportunity to appear to be sensitive to criticism without actually doing anything: By spreading word that he was taken off the air, advertisers see that Fox has gotten the message. But by not actually taking Beck off the air, they don't have to deal with the blowback from Beck. That would explain the difference between the two flacks' responses. Fox's flack remained deliberately vague enough to keep the story alive, while Beck's flack provided the proof that would have killed it from the get-go.

If you think that's a preposterous theory, you're right. But you've also never worked with the Fox News' dedicated public relations team.