Are you one of the 48% of Americans who is "hearing too much about Barack Obama"? Then you certainly won't like this Sunday's Times Magazine story by professional Democratic Party Underminer Matt Bai. It's about how Barack Obama represents the End of Black Politics, because he's a black person who white people don't feel threatened by. In the story, Bai harangues Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter about why he didn't endorse the black guy and then feels guilty about it, interviews Newark mayor Cory Booker about childhood experiences with racism and then feels guilty about that, and finally says that President Obama will actually be a secret step BACK for black people because he won't be able to get away with helping black people as much as a white candidate might. Get it? [NYT]

What would President Obama do about Monty, the Lovable Montauk Monster? Based on his divisive and bitter answer to a simple query about Martians and their hunger for our Earth women, it would depend on whether or not Monty's a Democrat. [Wonkette]

Governor Tim Kaine, who has funny eyebrows, will probably be Barack Obama's pick for Vice President. Fun facts about him: he's utterly boring and also believes "that a marriage is between one man and one woman." Also he might not be VP because he's only been governor of Virginia for a couple years and the Lieutenant Governor is a Republican. [The Corner]

This video of John McCain acting like a petulant teenage girl toward a Wall Street Journal reporter is hilarious (best part: Lindsay Graham's "mee-OW" look at the end). And also telling! (TGIF, guys, we'll get through this.) John McCain's always been a favorite of the press, because of his insane availability. (Read Ana Marie Cox in Radar to learn more!) (Alex, call me!) He's affable and genuinely likes reporters. But we've reached a funny moment in their relationship. Because the media is in the tank for Obama. They love him! They cover him all day and all night and ignore McCain. But! The Obama campaign is totally, ridiculously press unfriendly. They're tight with information and generally try to control the message as much as Bush's people did. That's right, in his dealings with the press, Obama resembles President Bush! Some of the Obama faithful see this as a good thing. The media is the enemy. They distort and lie! No one trusts or likes anyone anymore, at all. So McCain is buddy-buddy with all his reporters but is now waging inept war on the media for ignoring him. Obama's beloved by the television people but is pissing off Adam Nagourney. So basically you can bitch about how the media keep painting McCain as a independent lovable American MAVERICK and they all play down his gaffes because they like him, or you can complain that the media are not even bothering to hide their gross man-crush on Barack Obama while ignoring his opponent and both are absolutely correct. So have at it, guys! R.I.P. observable reality!

Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty just might be our next Vice President! If McCain pulls this thing off. Which would be, wow. Pawlenty holds all the advantages as a running mate of a Charlie Crist—young, inoffensive, kinda popular, governor of a potential swing state—without the "probably gay" thing. He's just possibly gay. Now let's lay out the problems!

Barack Obama's advance staff confused everyone when they told journalists not to wear green during their trip to the Middle East. Obama's staff claimed green is the color of Hamas, which is actually isn't really. Though it is the color of Islam in general. So Obama is distancing himself from all the Muslims in the world, which should help dispel those rumors about him being a fist-bumping terrorist by seeming like he's trying way, way too hard, almost like a man with something to hide. Or maybe some staffer just did a shit job of research and thought that was a helpful and clever suggestion. Journos are also prohibited from wearing nail polish and tank tops and from actually asking the candidate any questions, as Andrea Mitchell bitches about in this attached Hardball clip. Chris Matthews is so thrilled that Barack Obama can shoot a basket (he is also shocked that there are so many black people in the military!), but Mitchell seems to think pretend interviews organized by the military are maybe a bad thing? She's not wearing green, though. Don't you hate how biased everyone is?

Click to viewThe presidency ages a man. (And hypothetically it would a woman, but we'll never know!) Remember when there was color in Bill Clinton's and George W. Bush's hair? Barely? After two terms in the Oval Office, both men looked twenty years older. This despite the fact that Bush gets 12 hours of sleep a night and Clinton received regular tail! But what will happen to Barack Obama or John McCain? Obama does too many drugs to sleep and old people like McCain just doze off in front of the tv each night for a couple unsatisfying hours. So we had intern Anna Peele work a little photoshop wizardry to age Obama and McCain and help us figure out exactly which terrifying visage we'll be forced to look upon in 2012. Scary results below!

Recently, we explained how to make fun of Barack Obama. We thought that would be the end of it! But no, you people-you animals-have more questions, so many more questions. Questions we're obligated to answer. Don't thank us, we're just doing our job. Below: snappy answers to stupid questions about Barack Obama.

We haven't yet reached the part of the campaign when people accuse Barack Obama of being a Hollywood Liberal or what-have-you and insinuate that he spends far too much time hanging out with godless celebrities, but this year we look forward to it. Because old man John McCain has been a friend of the limousine liberal set for so long! Remember when Arianna Huffington revealed that he told her he didn't vote for George Bush? What she was actually revealing was that John McCain was at a dinner party in Los Angeles with Arianna Huffington. The party was hosted by Candace Bergen. West Wing stars Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff were there. Since then, McCain's moved hard to the right, and been abandoned by his Hollywood friends. His oddball daughter, though, just had a lovely date with noted Apocalypse harbinger Heidi Montag!

Poor Maureen Dowd doesn't know how to make fun of Barack Obama. It's actually pretty easy! Everyone misses Bill Clinton because he enjoyed extramarital sex with interns and oddly unattractive women, he had a southern accent, and he was kind of chubby. Everyone will miss George W. Bush because he's stupid. Those traits are so, so easy to mock! But the problem is jokes about those traits were and are and always have been terrible. Have another Big Mac, Bubba! Then put a cigar in someone's vagina! Hey George Bush you look like a chimp! And, like a chimp, your grasp of complex concepts like grammar is often lacking! Jesus. Stop already. Obama's a godsend, because he lacks those easy buttons. So everyone has to be more creative with their humor. Allow us to help you!

Hah. Newsweek's Jonathan Alter is upset about that New Yorker cover. Because he knows the power of images and of repeating smears, even for satirical or debunking purposes. Which is why, after he derides the cover, he then presents a list of every anti-Obama smear he can think of, all listed in bold text. Whoops! To help reverse the damage this column will cause, we present here another pro-Obama photoshop. In this one he is athletic and virile!

New Yorker editor David Remnick went on The Situation Room today to answer to Wolf Blitzer about his magazine's ridiculous Obama cover. "There are gonna be a lot of people who aren't going to be sophisticated New Yorker readers," Wolf asserted, "who are going to look at this cover" and assume it is an accurate portrayal of reality. Remnick—typical hate-monger!—says this is condescending. In the attached clip, watch Wolf claim that the cover could've appeared on "a neo-Nazi magazine." Context is meaningless! No one gets anything anymore! Remnick says some crazy thing about being Colbert in Print, but no one gets jokes without studio audiences to explain what is supposed to be funny. (After the jump, in a calmer setting, New Yorker political writer Hendrick Hertzberg holds up the cover and grins. He almost giggles!)

This is the problem with being an editor or publisher or writer or cartoonist or even blogger and having some small lingering trace of a sense of irony-sometimes you accidentally assume that the Vast and Mysterious "Audience" shares that subversive French sense. Thankfully, after what will presumably be a full week of Outrage and Demands for Apologies, David Remnick and his New Yorker will never make that mistake again. As you might've seen, the cover of that influential publication this week shows Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim, and he is Terrorist Fist-Bumping his aggrieved wife as a flag burns in the Oval Office. This obvious and heavy-handed satire has enraged Democrats and liberal media critics because now they are pretty sure this nation of child-like imbeciles will believe it to be an un-retouched photograph from the FUTURE. New Yorker editor David Remnick defended the cover to the Huffington Post. Did you know that sometimes that magazine makes "jokes"?

So while we're on the subject of Radar and who owns them and what they won't cover, let's all read this fun story about the Jesse Jackson family from last February's New Republic! It's about Barack Obama the Jackson kids. First: the younger Jacksons like Barry Obama a lot more than Jesse Sr. This has been amply demonstrated recently. But the Obama family and the Jackson family are totally intertwined! Let's learn about that, shall we?

Oh hey look everyone, Jesse Jackson said terrible things about Barack Obama while a microphone was on, and now, oddly, Fox News has this tape! Sean Hannity talked about it on the radio today, and Bill O'Reilly will be playing the tape tonight, on his show. OMG they are creaming themselves. Drudge already has the apology and no one has heard the tape yet! Reportedly, the Reverend is upset that Obama "talks down to black people on matters of faith," and then, more colorfully, he says he wants to rip Obama's nuts off. Maybe? "Hannity would not say 'nuts,' but based on his description (portion of the male anatomy beginning with an 'n') I believe that's the word he was going for." So this is basically great news for everyone!

Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, and his daughters Malia Ann and Sasha all sat down for an adorable interview with Access Hollywood. They are sitting in, perhaps, some sort of backlot western town set. Someone named Maria Menounos is being all Access Hollywood-y at them. But still, in the 30s seconds of interview available so far, we have to admit that we don't hate Barack Obama's kids. They're making fun of his ratty old clothes, all sitcom-like! This celeb media offensive seems to be paying off. Maybe Michelle should become a Best Week Ever talking head or something next? Hooray for no substance! Clip after the jump.

Yesterday, the plane carrying presidential candidate Barack Obama was forced to make an unscheduled landing in St. Louis. The plane, an MD-80, experience pitch problems after an emergency slide in the tail cone inadvertently deployed in the tail cone. Which we have never ever heard of happening before. We're not saying it was sabotage but, you know, we just saw this:

How, we ask you, could someone named "T. Boone Pickens" possibly be bad? T. Boone is, as you have probably guessed, a Texas billionaire. An oil billionaire! But he does not spend his billions on running moonshine or buying the world's largest cement pond. No, instead Pickens-who will be played by Charles Durning for the remainder of this post-funds slanderous attack campaigns against Democratic political candidates. The campaigns feature lies so ridiculous that the only people who regularly take them seriously work at every cable news station and many newspapers.

U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama appeared on the Fox Business Channel yesterday, apparently trying to reach the four depressed masturbators who make up the Fox Business audience. The blonde the modeling agency sent in to interview Obama decided to "have a little fun" with Barry by playing a word-association game. Yes, a word-association game! Hooray for journalism! Hooray for democracy! It's kind of the worst possible way for Obama to be interviewed because, yes, he's into 'the nuance thing.' So watch for yourself and cringe along at home.

Rocker/blogger Carrie Brownstein on the Vice Presidential selection process: "And once we determine the results, that McCain is, um, Liz Phair and therefore his running mate should be.....RZA, then all we have to do is decide what politician out there is most like RZA. After that we let John McCain's people know." Go vote in the poll! [NPR]