Out of nowhere, the Miami Herald has dusted off and expanded upon one of Washington's oldest and juiciest political rumors: The one about a rising young beltway journalist and his gay affair with a powerful GOP congressman, and how the journalist shot himself in the head when his lover's political rival threatened to out them. According to the Herald, that rival may have been Newt Gingrich.

As we learned earlier, everyone wasn't happy with last night's memorial service for the victims of the Arizona shooting. And by "everyone," I mean Fox News. Tonight, Jon Stewart knocked down the network's ridiculous criticism of the event. Watch inside.

Huckleberry Hound face model Brit Hume was on Fox News today, criticizing Barack Obama for hating iPads. He was very confused. Doesn't Obama—with his websites and stuff—love technology? Then Hume's video feed cut out. Barack's techno revenge!

Remember when Brit Hume told Tiger Woods to become a Christian, then went on the O'Reilly factor to say he wasn't proselytizing but accidentally did some more proselytizing? Looks like he's totally given up on the 'not proselytizing' thing:

Sometimes it takes a wacky comedy show montage to remind you how completely ok casual racism still is on the TV. Last night's Daily Show featured this Glenn Beck classic, on how dirty and stupid Indians are.

• Christopher Walken makes dead chicken sit up, stuffs the Eiffel Tower up its ass, and serves it with pears to discerning cat. It's all very French. [Ezra Klein]

Brit Hume is exhausted. The flinty Fox anchor has always seemed short-fused and quietly seething (right?) but covering campaign '08 has drained all the joy out of his life. (As have the tensions in his marriage and his fling with Megyn Kendall?) A profile by useless Washington Post media something Howard Kurtz finds the original face of Fair and Balanced Fox openly disgusted with the empty gimmicks of the Republican National Convention: "Baby pictures of John McCain? What in the world are they doing? Oh, this is just atrocious." And: "I'm 65, for God's sake. I don't want to do all that stuff anymore." And "It's dispiriting. This is just partisan poison, and after a while you get tired of covering it." Jesus, he sounds like us. Remember when Fox was the terrifying propaganda organ of a far-right cult of personality? Now it's just the sad official network of embittered, impotent, cranky old white men. (In the event of a McCain victory, of course, it will become both.) [WP]

Brit Hume, who is sort of one of the least objectionable Fox News personalities while also embodying all the terrible and wrong things about that network (it's a corrective to liberal bias!!) (that's rich coming from a formerly "objective" reporter with plum gigs at the broadcast networks despite his open conservativism), is leaving the network. Sort of. He's quitting his job anchoring Special Report every night but he'll still be on the channel as a panelist on Fox News Sunday and whenever else he feels like appearing. It's not clear why he's quitting now, except that his contract is up. Also maybe Megyn Kendall broke his heart when she ended their affair and married some other dope in March. [NYT]

• Here come the layoffs at the Philadelphia Inquirer. [NYT]
  

This morning we asked you to help us identify the mystery journalist who had the effrontery to start his own website in the early days of the Internet. While the general consensus remains fixated on Andrew Sullivan, there are a few other ideas out there. We present them after the jump.