"Tony Snow, who worked at the Fox News Channel for 10 years before serving as the Bush administration’s chief spokesman for 17 months, is moving to CNN to be a political contributor." [Times]

CNN.com introduced a new feature today that allows you to buy t-shirts featuring some of their more outrageous headlines. Of course, even their most outrageous headlines are no match for the ones various bloggers and commenters are creating using their easily-hacked t-shirt store URLs. So let's have a contest! Knock up one that's funny—not purely offensive, please—and whichever one tickles our fancy the most wins a prize. If we're able too! Examples to get you started here and in the comments here. Enter in the comments below with a link and, if you can manage, an image of the shirt. Quick, before they fix it! The prize? We'll buy you the t-shirt you created! (If we can.) Standard contest rules apply.

Is CNN for real? The headlines on its website — "Minced onions force emergency landing" — cause some to wonder if its Atlanta-based producers aren't having a jape at the expense of news junkies. Now, an expansion into selling T-shirts confirms that CNN is laughing at us, not with us. Capitalizing on the trend of mass-personalized e-commerce, CNN.Shirt lets readers pick any recent headline and put it on a T-shirt. As blogger Andy Baio notes, the feature is easily manipulated, allowing users to construct any story they want and get it printed. But why bother making up the news when CNN shows just how much stranger truth is than fiction?

Oh god we've been playing into their hands all this time. We rib CNN for their terrible tabloid-style headlines, but we had no idea how profoundly unembarrassed they are about their naked attempts at cheap traffic grabbing. Now, you see, you can click on a little icon next to selected CNN.com headlines and buy those headlines on a t-shirt. Seriously. The internet has caved in on itself! Only certain headlines merit the shirt treatment—so, like, the "weird fish" one, but not the "20 bodies found floating near Bahamas" one. It's still in Beta though! So you can quite easily mock up CNN headline t-shirts that say anything you like. Like the ones we've attached after the jump. Make your own!

CNN reporter Richard Quest, who was busted in Central Park with methamphetamine in his pocket, a rope tied around his genitals and a dildo in his boot, wasn't the only TV news personality arrested and embarrassed for alleged sexual kinks this weekend. Eric Watson (pictured) of NBC17 in Raleigh, North Carolina was taken into custody on charges he spied on a woman who was showering at home. The reporter belongs to the same gym as the woman, and it sounds like he drove the TV station's van to her house. A witness said he worked hard to peep, according to the News & Observer:

Using the trash can drug meth makes a person mighty paranoid. So it was probably fear of having his genitals stolen that moved CNN talker Brian Quest (who is British) to attach them to his neck with a rope sometime before he was busted for possession in Central Park Friday night. But that still doesn't explain the dildo he had stuffed in his boot like a Derringer.

Richard Quest, the most unpleasant "funny" on-air CNN correspondent EVER, was arrested this morning (like last night "this morning") outside Central Park for violating park curfew. As they arrested him he said to the cops, presumably with his trademark "hilariously" over-emphasized British accent, "I have meth in my pocket." Not the best line maybe? Quest, host of CNN Business Traveler, is openly gay, btw, which is maybe why he was hanging around the park at 3:40 a.m. with meth in his pocket. CNN had no comment. (After the jump, a truly odd clip of Quest interviewing Ritchie Blackmore.) [NYT]

CNN has been taken down in parts of China, and reports are suggesting that hackers who may have the support of the Chinese government are responsible. The attacks have come after many Chinese feel that the news network's reports seemed biased in favor of pro-Tibet sentiment. While a simple DDOS attack on CNN's servers is fairly unremarkable, boasts by Chinese hackers that "no Web site is one hundred percent safe" got me thinking. Maybe the reason that Google and other Valley companies are cooperating with the Chinese government isn't just because they're greedy, but also because they're scared. After all, helping to censor and track down dissidents doesn't generate bad press stateside the way that, say, a security breach exposing the private, personal data of millions of Americans might. (Photo by heinousjay)

Shanghaiist is reporting that CNN.com seems to be unreachable in China, or at least in Shanghai. "Nobody we've asked seems to be able to access CNN.com right now," the blog reports. The Chinese government is still criticizing comments by CNN's Jack Cafferty that ended with Cafferty saying, in response to a question about China's communist regime, "I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years." Chinese officials argue that Cafferty was talking about the people of China, not just the government. In that case, it's easy to see how they'd feel insulted. Blocking the internet like some kind of goon is not something your average Chinese person engages in. That sort of work is a privilege. You earn it. Video of Cafferty's remarks after the jump. UPDATE: The problem also affects Hong Kong and may be the result of attacks by "nationalistic Chinese hackers" rather than the Great Firewall.

Not that the CNN anchor is gay or anything that might gross out midwestern TV viewers. But, if he were, this is what his hypothetical latino boyfriend might look like. The gossipmongers at L.A. Rag Mag claim they were introduced to the silver-haired TV presenter's ex, J.D. Ordonez, at a gay mafia party in Hollywood. The 22-year-old is not merely the shallow party boy his shirtless Myspace photos would suggest. Ordonez is a marine mammal trainer: he communes with dolphins, as well as closeted news anchors. (Click thumb for close-up.)

Anderson Cooper has staked out a position on media personalities having sex with vast numbers of overseas soldiers: Staunchly in favor! On air, the CNN anchor always seems to be saying or asking a little more than good sense would dictate, and then getting all blushy about it, and the same thing seems to have happened in Cooper's interview with Outside magazine. Here's how Cooper answered the innocent question "Do Americans have an exaggerated sense of danger about the Third World?":

For years, like half of Gawker's posts were just screencaps of CNN headlines. They don't even need jokes, they're so terrible. But what they do need, even if we didn't know it, are ugly hand-drawn illustrations.

Here, finally, is a video clip of Julia Allison's Sunday appearance on Howard Kurtz's CNN media extravaganza, Reliable Sources. I'm not somebody who can detect human emotion, but doesn't it look like Howie has a crush on her? You can really see it in his eyes. Click to watch the instantly classic clip, which includes Julia's request that all you haters "go for it!"

The last-place news operation of CBS could outsource some work to CNN, the Times is reporting, keeping the most visible personalities like anchor Katie Couric while using feeds or even crews from its cable-news partner. Right now the deal is still at the talking stage and similar discussions have fallen through before, in 2002 between ABC and CNN and in 1998 again between CBS and CNN. But CBS News' fortunes are now rapidly declining, with evening viewership down 13 percent, versus a 5 percent decline at all network evening news shows.

Anderson Cooper made the cover of Out Magazine last year-well, a mask bearing his image, at any rate. Aaron Hicklin's Power issue was making the point that the CNN anchor was widely known in media circles to be gay, but avoided any public acknowledgment of his sexuality. The magazine, which ranks Cooper the third most powerful gay in America, tested the silver-haired TV journalist again this year, asking whether he'd pose for the cover. "Thanks for thinking of Anderson for this issue but we are going to pass," responded his publicist. (After the jump, last year's cover.)

In our hearts, we're all kind of low-grade Anderson Cooper stalkers, but the the top prize may go to a woman who showed up to Cooper's New York apartment Friday with six pieces of luggage, ready to move in. The CNN anchor was having his place renovated at the time, so maybe the stalker thought the construction crews would just let her through, but instead they called Anderson who, naturally, found it "kind of creepy." Cooper explains everything to Regis And Kelly after the jump, and we provide some computer wallpaper of America's secret pretend boyfriend to keep your obsession on a low simmer.

Amid the jailing of Times reporter Barry Bearak, news organizations are rightfully getting scared shitless about covering the nation of Zimbabwe, where elections are believed to not be going well for the ruling government. So CNN took the unprecedented step of concealing its reporter's identity. The BBC blurred the face of its reporter. Huge credit to the networks for filing from a country where they are formally banned; apparently people in the streets are "absolutely thirsty for information" and get most of it from foreign outlets. CNN's anonymous report:

Break out the picket signs, the corporate scabs, and the Woody Guthrie songs, because it's time for all the proletarians in the Time Warner building to unite for a good old-fashioned boycott! Of the exclusive, employee-only Park Cafe! According to a righteously angry email being passed among CNN employees on the 7th floor, "on April 1 (Next Tuesday) prices are going up, frequent diner cards are being eliminated and the place will now close an hour earlier at 2:30p every day. If ever a situation called for a BOYCOTT... THIS IS IT!" By god, I can almost hear Samuel Gompers and Big Bill Haywood clawing their way out of their graves to rush to these employees' assistance! So what are the workers fighting to protect? An inside tipster describes the Park Cafe's democratic atmosphere:

There's nothing wrong, obviously, with saying "cotton-pickin'" when you are, say, Yosemite Sam. But "one cotton-pickin' minute," while best avoided, is still less of a faux-pas than saying how you're sick of "cotton-pickin'" black people telling you how you can and cannot talk about race, which is more or less what baby-headed CNN anchor Lou Dobbs said on the air the other day. The occasion? Condoleezza Rice said something rather mild about how the United States has a racial "birth defect" on account of how the nation was founded on the backs of African slave labor and it took a while to get all that sorted out. But Dobbs is sick of people telling him to stop being so racist! "We've got to be able to talk about it," he sputters in the attached clip, "and I can guarantee you this, not a single one of these cotton—just ridiculous politicians should be the moderator on the issue of race." Good thing you caught yourself there, Lou! Thankfully, the CNN transcript omits the almost-gaffe completely, so it's like it never happened! Except for that YouTube clip we've embedded below.

CNN did a segment on the rise of "the famous-for-nothing celebrity," and turned of course to one of the top experts in the field, Star editor-at-large Julia Allison. Julia sounded a little alarmed about the whole trend toward vapid media personalities. "There is nowhere to go but down," she said. Then: "Kim Kardashian and Heidi Montag are extremely good at makeup and wearing dresses and at posing" — and at nothing else, implicitly. It would be easy to mock Allison, whose time at giveaway newspaper AM New York and whose smile-for-the-cameras gig at Star hardly justify her own reality show. But after scouring the blogs of would-be fameballs like Mary Rambin and Emily Brill during a three-week Allison drought, it would be disingenuous to call Julia anything other than a master of the topic on which she speaks. You made being famous-for-nothing look so easy, Jules! Watch Allison project a little in the video after the jump.