Remember when Democratic congressman Bob Etheridge went berserk on two kids who were harassing him on the streets of Washington, D.C.? And everyone was wondering who those kids were? And the GOP denied it? Guess what? It was the GOP.
The chairman of the Associated Press says he's "mad as hell" at people who don't pay for news. Is that why his newspaper is reportedly impossible to cancel?
As newspapers bleed print readers, the Los Angeles Daily News seems to have hit upon a circulation strategy that WORKS: make it super hard to stop delivery, then sic a collection agency on delinquent "subscribers."
Being repeatedly exposed as factually incorrect or as a hypocrite doesn't seem to have hurt Bill O'Reilly's ratings. But a few more descriptions of him as a creepy stalker might do the trick.
Did you know the Observer is subsidized by an illicit slush fund? It shamefully is, according to a lawsuit filed by the former president of one of the Kushner Companies. When developer Charles Kushner bought a $1.8 billion office tower, he routed $18 million back to himself as commission on the mortgage, then allegedly siphoned $5 million off that for son Jared's cash-bleeding weekly newspaper.
Andy Martin is the habitual politician and "researcher" who created the original smear of Barack Obama as a secret Muslim in a 2004 press release, begetting a mutating series of email forwards still coursing through the internet. Last week, he was featured in a Fox News special that, in the words of the Times, "allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government." But, hey, Martin isn't just worried about Obama and Islam, he's also deathly afraid of the Jews! The Times' Jim Ruttenberg dug into Martin's anti-Semitisim in this morning's paper after Martin tried to deny and brush off the issue last week:
So how the hell does John McCain pull this one out of the bag? Even the conservative commentators think the national economic crash has doomed him. Bill O'Reilly said Tuesday the Republican presidential nominee needed to do well at the debate or "say goodbye," and he didn't do well at all. Now comes Joe Scarborough on last night's Colbert Report saying "it's too late" for McCain because he can't win on tax cuts or a sexy VP or terrorist fearmongering or just general demagoguery when voters are scared of starving in the streets.
The forthcoming Bill Maher/Larry Charles satirical doc Religulous has been on Lionsgate's release calendar for what seems like forever; we remember seeing teaser posters for it at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, where it was recently announced as a world premiere this year. Confusing! But not as confusing as the revelation that you and yours can see the film this week in one of those increasingly en vogue "Oscar dump runs" in LA and New York. The tactic mirrors that of HBO, which last spring sneaked Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired into two theaters to qualify for Oscar consideration — except that Religulous actually has an Oct. 3 release date in the States. So what gives, and where can you see it? Find out after the jump.Academy rules dictate that documentaries must screen for at least one week in Los Angeles County and Manhattan before the qualifying deadline of August 31. Thus, if you're up for a schlep out to the Laemmle Claremont 5 or, in NYC, the Coliseum Quad in Washington Heights, you can be the among the first to see Maher and Charles torment the Christian Right and other supposed fanatics. The early run is especially unusual in the context of Toronto, where the "premiere" classification is generally sacrosanct for distributed films of this size and budget. But hey — it is just Claremont, and most observers seem to agree that major papers won't run reviews the way they did for Polanski, potentially undercutting the unveiling up North. That said, we're happy to air your opinions below if you've got the much shorter journey in you in the days ahead. We think we can wait for October.
Roger Stone is a self-aggrandizing imbecile whose reputation for political dirty tricks is obviously patently exaggerated. This much we know. But he maybe had something to do with the downfall of Eliot Spitzer! It's still totally unclear, which is how Stone probably likes it. It's hard to tell if he acts like a buffoon because it throws people off the scent or simply because he is a buffoon. The New Yorker sent Jeffrey Toobin to investigate, but all he really uncovered was that Stone is a gross old pervert.
This flier has reportedly been circulating throughout Puerto Rico, which holds its primaries on June 1. As you can see, it features a poorly Photoshopped version of Barack Obama dressed up as dreaded Dominican. There's no indication the Hillary Clinton campaign is actually connected to this flier. And really, why would she go to the trouble? The lesson: West Virginians and Puerto Ricans have more in common than they think. Click to enlarge. [via Ad Age] [UPDATE: A tipster points out that this flier is a spoof! It comes from the all-day-jokers at 23/6. There are some anti-Hillary ones too, so let's just say everyone everywhere is racist and sexist and leave it at that.]
Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's controversial former preacher, spent the weekend on media blitz, and the end result is that the press doesn't really like him. Except where before they were just harping on him because it was a great, easy story, now it's personal, because Wright expressed deep disdain for the entire journalistic class during each of last weekend's appearances. NOT DONE, REVEREND. You're supposed to be all penitent and you're expected to curtsy to whichever 60 Minutes dinosaur they unfreeze to drag out your meek apology. But Errol Louis in the Daily News—alarmed though he is that Wright acted at the Press Club "as if nobody in the room was learned enough to ask him a question"—did discover that Wright was actually invited to the Press Club by an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter. Barbara Reynolds voted for Clinton in Maryland, criticizes Obama on her blog, and "organized" the Wright event at the Press Club. Hah. Well, if Obama's "scary" black preacher actually dooms his candidacy, we'll happily join the "god damn America" bandwagon, but that will probably surprise no one. After the jump, the Daily Show's bit on Wright's weekend performance. Stewart's "I'm scared of the black man" routine gets less funny every time he employs it but the clips are decidedly enjoyable.
Roger Stone is not some shady Republican political operative who plants items about his enemies in the press secretly. No, he's a shady political operative that ensures that he gets credit for planting things about his enemies in the press! Stone's latest shady press leak coup: he gave info to columnist Robert Novak about questionable billing practices at the PR firm Burson-Marsteller. Now that Burson CEO Mark Penn has been booted as Hillary Clinton's campaign chief, Stone is being credited as a player! If he had a dollar for every "Roger Stone" Google Alert, he would be a fairly compensated man. [via Alex Balk]
