Following John McCain's tough appearance on The View last week, members of the McCain family are finally taking their gloves off. First, wife Cindy complained at a fundraiser that Whoopi & Co. had "picked our bones clean," and now potential First Daughter Meghan McCain has waded into the fray, spilling to Jay Leno the dirt she gathered on the View hostesses from her own, separate appearance. Surprised to find she liked Joy Behar, she instead targeted Barbara Walters, whose cruel, passive-aggressive rules about hugging left Meghan very confused. Not as confused as we were, though, when Meghan was asked what problem her mother had with The View, and she enigmatically answered, "I just think there's a lot of estrogen on that show." Meow? [The Tonight Show]

Though financial doom has pushed superstar vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin off the front page of the news for now, celebrities (who regard the economy as little more than a cute diversion for the poor) are still as gripped with Palin-mania as ever. Now, hot on the heels of stars like Matt Damon, Lindsay Lohan, and Brooke Hogan, it's Margaret Cho's turn to opine on the veep choice, and though she's spilled copious amounts of e-ink on her Myspace blog to lobby against the Republican ticket, today found the comedienne in a state of confused ardor:

When we solicited thoughts on VP candidate Sarah Palin from reality star Brooke Hogan, Brooke's naive response of "Who's that?" initially echoed in our hearts as a poignant reminder of the bygone, pre-Palin media era. You can imagine our confusion, then, when Hogan appeared on today's Howard Stern show and as the subject of the now-notorious Defamer video came up, she coolly denied that we'd ever asked her about Sarah Palin in the first place:Still, her tenuous grasp on the memory is understandable, as proven when Stern and Co. continue to quiz her about presidential candidates (asked Obama's first name, she carefully answers, "'Barack' or something?"), forcing an overwhelmed Hogan to cry out, "There's too many friggin' people in office!" Perhaps that would explain the blank she draws when asked the name of the current Vice President? The answer, dear Brooke, is "Dick Cheney," and it's as plain as the nose on your face (which, if you're not careful, Mr. Cheney will shoot off). [Howard Stern]

As everyone with a working internet connection and a pair of rabbit ears atop their TV set may have learned, beloved comedy legend Tina Fey deigned to return to Saturday Night Live this past weekend, playing vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin ("Who's that?") in a performance as accurate as it was sensitive and even-handed. Why, even Palin herself enjoyed the skit, as her spokesperson told CBS News. There's just one catch: Palin watched the whole thing on mute and never turned up the volume dial, which she then had fired. According to Star:

· Come to think of it, Conan O'Brien would make a suitable stand-in for an Irish Setter for all your dog-head-cleaning demonstrations. [Late Night] · Well, lookee what Gawker turned up: Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account, including her entire contact list, which she apparently tried to delete out of existence. On cue, the McCain camp are throwing a shit fit. We're just going to snack on some moosepuffs and watch it all play out from a safe distance. This is totally better than The Hills! [Gawker] · Looks like we're not the only ones jazzed about this development! [The Internet] · It's Ryan O'Neal's Father-Son Meth Bust Day mugshot. [TSG] · We prefer the more Anderson Cooperesque Ben Stiller, but it's really just a matter of taste. [Daily Mail]

Donate After Reading: Brad Pitt has famously said he won't marry Angelina Jolie until gay marriage is legalized all over the country, and now, he's putting his money where his mouth is. According to the LAT, Pitt has become the first A-list celebrity to make a major donation ($100,000) to the campaign to fight Proposition 8, which is designed to take away the same-sex marriage rights awarded to Californians this summer. In a statement, he said, "Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8." Your move, Babs! [LAT]

What a Gyp: So what did $2,500 get you at last night's wallet-draining Barbra Streisand concert for Barack Obama? Four songs — and not even her best, we hear, with Streisand going all conceptual during a quartet featuring, "When the Sun Comes Out," "Make Someone Happy," "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" and "Shining Hour." Meanwhile, for $26,000 more you could have shared rubber chicken and a playful slap from the candidate himself: "[T]his is not a game. This is not a reality show, no offense to any of you," Obama told an elite, amused gathering of 250 industry insiders. "This is not a sitcom." Expect a fair, even-handed and appropriately unfunny SNL riff on the matter this weekend. [Fox News]

Perhaps we spoke too soon emphasizing Tina Fey's status as our go-to Sarah Palin doppelganger, but we never really spotted an alternative that signaled the same hair-up, hockey-mom charm radiated by the Alaska governor. Until today, that is, and how's this for context: According to NBC's Web site, its fall miniseries/video game adaptation XIII "begins dramatically as the first female U.S. President is shot dead by a sniper during her Veteran's Day speech." It was a classy-enough touch to anticipate Hillary Clinton's candidacy, we suppose, but casting Mimi Kuzyk as doomed Palin-lookalike Sally Sheridan was just prescience gone spectacularly wrong. The enlarged photo follows the jump.And it gets better: Stephen Dorff stars as the amnesiac could-be assassin, with Val Kilmer appearing as the mercenary pursuing him. They started filming way back in April, when Bristol Palin was still unseeded and Mike Huckabee was the biggest thorn in McCain's side. The Peacock has all the luck these days! Anyway, for now, XIII is still on for an unspecified date later this fall — much later.

Saturday Night Live has a long, storied history of political satire, a reputation that was only burnished after this past Saturday's well-received Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin skit. The venerable comedy institution has been known to move the cultural dial with some of its depictions, whether it was the spring sketch that famously declared the media to be "in the tank" for Barack Obama or its 2000 impersonation of Al Gore as a "lockbox"-brandishing scold. Still, we're a bit puzzled by some of the quotes from an event held Monday at the Museum of the Moving Image, where Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler, and Lorne Michaels met to discuss their satirical process:

Madonna is always reliable for causing some sort of furor with her live performances, and so it went with her Sticky & Sweet Tour, in which a video-collage backdrop had aligned images of John McCain and Mike Huckabee with Adolph Hitler, Ayatollah Khamenei, Robert Mugabe, and Kim Jong Il; later on, Barack Obama appeared in a grouping which included the Dalai Lama, Al Gore, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and (cough) Michael Moore. Now you can watch the video that McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds called "outrageous, unacceptable and crudely divisive all at the same time," and judge for yourself, as a copy of the disco-agitprop has emerged on YouTube. Obviously, this was thrown together well before Sarah Palin was even a blip on the national radar; we can only imagine the kinds of fun Madonna could have throwing a cone-bra into the Palin impression ring, voguing her way through a choreographed moose-slaying accompanied by two shirtless and well-muscled background dancers representing Todd and Track. The video is after the jump:

Barack Obama may have California's electoral votes in the bank, but that doesn't mean he won't make a quick trip to the ATM en route to Election Day. In what's expected to be his last rally of Hollywood pals before Nov. 4, Obama will attend a pair of sold-out, back-to-back fundraisers tonight in Beverly Hills. First up: an intimate dinner for 250 at the Greystone Mansion, followed by a trip down the street to the customary Streisand Kiss-of-Death Variety Hour at the Beverly Wilshire. Total miles one-way: Three. Total windfall: Roughly $9 million — by one estimate, a single-day fundraising record for a presidential candidate. And celeb-culture darling Sarah Palin won't even be there! We break the evening down after the jump.For all its flak and flubs, the Palin phenomenon has managed to neutralize Obamania since her selection to the GOP ticket on Aug. 29. That much is obvious; the rest, not so much, with a panicked Hollywood dumping out its collective wallet between tonight's $28,500-per-plate Greystone dinner and the $2,500-per-ticket Streisand/DreamWorks fete (with special guest Ben Harper, no extra charge!). Politico's Jeffrey Ressner suggests this is some kind of benchmark, though a one-day record can't be substantiated unless all the checks clear at once. Or something. Just as long as they clear, right? And just as long as Obama and Co. listen, notes Variety, which informally surveyed industry backers who think their cash may yet (and/or should) buy some long-haul influence:

To many celebrities, civic engagement can wield an almost narcotic allure in an election year. And as hinted at earlier this month, few of Hollywood's addictive personalities are as susceptible to political jousting as that of Lindsay Lohan, who is quickly surpassing other pundits around the left as Sarah Palin's most vocal critic. It was bad enough that Palin would dare to exploit her daughter's pregnancy, Lindsay blogged a couple weeks ago; but now, with Palin having implacably assumed the national spotlight with six weeks to go before Election Day, a more general study is apparently in order — via MySpace, natch:

A while ago, not long after after Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus, NPR put forth a story asking, "Is America Post-Racial?" "Probably not," we thought to ourselves, "otherwise America's premiere sketch comedy show would actually have this famously black presidential candidate played by, y'know, a black guy and not Fred Armisen." Now, Saturday Night Live has reminded us of that musing once again, because TV Guide reports that instead of adding a black actress to its troupe to play Michelle Obama, the show would rather entice former cast member Maya Rudolph to return. An excerpt, with new details from Lorne Michaels on whether Tina Fey will play Sarah Palin, is after the jump:

In a perfect world, yesterday's conveniently bundled true confessions by both Anne Hathaway and her prison-bound ex Raffaello Follieri would have been enough to put the lurid burden of their doomed relationship behind all of us. But not only is our world spectacularly imperfect, it's also an election year. Thus, right on cue, the phenomena overlap today in the real-life twilight zone where celebrity-smearing, corruption-fighting pillar of GOP rectitude John McCain can now actually be seen boarding Raffello Follieri's rented yacht. The Nation explains — to the extent it (or anybody else) can:

No sooner did Barack Obama's PorcineLipstickGate scandal reared it head here moments ago than we had an epic acid flashback to a far worse drama that unfolded this year at Coachella: That of the "Obama Pig" set aloft and eventually untethered during Roger Waters's set. "That's my pig!" Waters shouted, watching its inflated girth and pro-Obama checkmark rise over the valley and drift out of sight. It was soon found and replaced anyway by another anti-gravity oinker, this one bearing its own Obama endorsement and contained to the Q2 Arena in London. And suddenly, the vortex of American politics slowed, stilled and became the crystalline rabbit hole we always knew it was. We'll stick to beer next time. [via Flickr/NachoFoto]

Mostly lost in the furor over the purity ring comments made by VMAs host Russell Brand were the even more scathing jabs he threw the Republicans' way during the telecast. Never afraid to be politically controversial (a formerly crack-addled Brand was fired from British MTV for showing up to work on September 12, 2001 dressed as Osama Bin Laden), the comedian called President Bush a "retarded cowboy" who "wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors," then dismissed the teen pregnancy of Sarah Palin's daughter as a "PR stunt." Now, Brand is telling the UK's Daily Telegraph that he had one even more outrageous Palin joke in that vein, but MTV wouldn't let him tell it:

Barbra/Bush AwkwardWatch: On the eve of her command performance at an Obama fundraiser at the Regent Beverly Wilshire, Barbra Streisand has learned she's been made a Kennedy Center Honoree, which involves a reception at the White House, then sitting in a balcony just inches away from President George W. Bush as she relives her life in variety show form. To make things even more awkward, ABC News also points out that this will come two months after "Streisand's stepson, Josh Brolin, hits theaters playing Bush in the Oliver Stone-directed biopic W." Oh, can't we set aside our petty differences just one night to bliss out to the underrated sex appeal of Marvin Hamlisch, people? [ABC News]

Though he's served as an effective political mouthpiece for both Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama, there's one woman in politics who Matt Damon refuses to get behind, and her name is Sarah Palin. In a new interview with the AP, Damon eviscerates the Republican VP candidate, calling her pick "absurd" and a "disaster," and comparing the idea that she could ascend to the presidency to a "really bad Disney movie."Most pressing to Damon, though, is whether Palin believes that dinosaurs actually walked the earth before man, or if their bones were simply littered as surprise gifts for Adam and Eve by a mischievous Supreme Being. Take notes, Charles Gibson! When will someone finally confront Sarah Palin and ask her why she fired all the dinosaurs in Alaska? UPDATE: Gawker overlord Nick Denton ran the numbers, and it turns out that Matt Damon's statement that "there is a 1 out of 3 chance, if not more, that McCain doesn't survive his first term" wasn't quite accurate. The chances are more like 15%. How you like them apples?

Hollywood's growing political skirmishes have savagely overtaxed our Defamer Decides '08 bureau over the last 24 hours, with the Oprah Winfrey/Sarah Palin fallout still flowing over the transom and even the formidable presence of Chuck Norris on Fox promoting his unique, Palin-proud brand of "black belt patriotism." Indeed, writes Anchorman/Step Brothers filmmaker (and occasional Huffington Post contributor) Adam McKay, the post-GOP Convention hangover is a potent one — or even potentially fatal, now that McCain has closed the gap on Obama. To which the saturnine scribe reacted with a deep gaze into his crystal ball and a reality check heard 'round the world: "We're Gonna Frickin' Lose This Thing":

Though it's only been a scant ten days since John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate, it's hard to find anyone on earth immune to the media onslaught that followed. Oh, for the halcyon days of mid-August, when our nation was more consumed with the abdominals of Michael Phelps than the baby-making, celebrity-stifling, Liz Lemon-resembling Palin name! To meet the rare creature who still knows nothing about the controversial candidate would be like staring into the windows of our pre-RNC innocence, and reader, we found such a transcendent experience on the carpet of the VMAs last night:Sure, Brooke Hogan's political ignorance may be easy to pillory (though her dark horse candidate would certainly win endorsements from the bulk of last night's Moonman-accepting crowd). After all, this is the same reality star who came under fire for her belief that female menstruation should be an instant DQ for the presidency (so get cracking on that change of life, ladies!). Still, after the events of the past ten days, we can't help but see in Brooke the sort of happy optimism that remains unchanged by frightening new political polls. Sometimes, after reading about the new person Palin had fired or the books she wanted banned from the public library, all we want to do is don a low-cut dress, toss our hair from side to side, and shimmy, shimmy down the red carpet until political doom is just a bad dream on a channel far, far away from VH1. [MTV]