Katie Couric is the only evening news anchor who has not hosted a Democratic presidential debate in this election cycle, and there have been 21 debates, so that's kind of sad. What's sadder is that it looks like the CBS Evening News anchor might never get to host a debate, ever. First it was the writers strike that got in Couric's way, then Hillary Clinton rejected her first proposed date, April 19, because it was on the first day of Passover. Then Couric came up with a date that worked for Clinton, April 27, but now the Obama campaign says that won't work, probably because it's the Islamic day of elitism and Obama will be burning a flag in a madrassa to celebrate.

"'I grabbed her ass,' one young woman exclaimed to her friends after snapping a picture with her arm around the former first daughter."

"At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the 'activist base' of the Democratic Party- and MoveOn.org in particular-for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had 'flooded' state caucuses and 'intimidated' her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post. Clinton's remarks depart radically from the traditional position of presidential candidates, who in the past have celebrated high levels of turnout by party activists and partisans as a harbinger for their own party's success-regardless of who is the eventual nominee-in the general election showdown."

The Times notes that, in last night's Philadelphia debate, Hillary Clinton repeatedly went after Barack Obama, "assisted... by vigorous questioning by the two moderators from ABC News, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous." Crooks And Liars' Nicole Belle agreed the moderators were aggressive, but didn't think it was the smart kind of aggressive. So she and her colleagues put together a video consisting only of the "more egregious" questions, designed to show ABC it is "HURTING America." The least substantive question in the video, however, doesn't come from anyone at the network, but from a Pennsylvanian who asks why Obama isn't brave enough to wear a flag on his lapel. A real elitist would have lost it, right then. [Crooks & Liars]

John McCain went on lady show The View yesterday, and co-host Whoopi Goldberg suggested he call himself "Jack Mack" to appeal to the youth, which means anyone under 80 as far as the elderly Republic presidential candidate is concerned. In another reminder that he is an angry old man, McCain was scolded for not hugging all the hosts like Barack Obama. He then made an extended joke about being twitchy and nervous, which made everyone watching a little twitchy and nervous on his behalf. Later, he said some political things, but the best part was the hugging and twitching, so it's after the jump.

You don't need to see the caucus results; these aren't the results you're looking for... Move along. Despite losing the North Dakota caucuses in February, Senator Hillary Clinton demanded this week that the state Dems hand her their precious delegates. "Clinton made it clear to North Dakota Democrats last night that she believes there is no such thing as a pledged delegate and highlighted that stubborn streak in her appeal for delegates to switch from Obama to her when the Democratic national party holds its nominating convention this August."

Hillary Clinton opened her appearance on Jay Leno's Tonight Show with some humor: "I was worried I wasn't going to make it [onto the show] - I was pinned down by sniper fire at the Burbank airport." It's a funny line, more self-deprecating than her past material, but the audience totally saw the joke coming and it fizzled. Clips:

Sure, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post slammed Hillary Clinton in a front-page endorsement of her rival Barack Obama two months ago, but what has the News Corp. overlord done to obliterate the Democratic presidential candidate lately? He's rolled out daughter Elisabeth, for starters. The TV executive will host a fundraiser at her London home for Obama later this month. It's become quite the hot ticket: actress Gwyneth Paltrow will be there, along with former VP Al Gore's financier buddy. But Rupe is firing even more powerful guns at Hillary: Post headlines. Here's the one atop a Monday story about Hillary's false claim to have taken sniper fire during a 1996 trip to Bosnia:

Now that elections are mainly decided by Oprah and YouTube and now that the evening news is being slowly replaced with the Daily Show and its imitators, blacks are being allowed on the cable news channels along with Hispanics and women to explain exotic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to the old white dullards still watching people yell at each other on these networks. What an honor! The Times reports this morning how exciting the whole thing is, but also quotes a lot of people wondering when TV news will finally be "diverse" enough. Such a good question, because if the country has learned anything over the past seven years it's that racial diversity at the top of the power structure is a bulwark against mindless conformity and oppression! Anyway, let's sample the uniform opinions collected by the Times about diversity (hint: it's a good thing, and is all about race and gender):

"Valerie Benjamin, a human-resources manager for a consulting firm [in Pittsburgh], was driving to work recently in her red minivan with a Hillary bumper sticker when a man pulled up alongside and rolled down his window. 'You can be for Hillary all you want,' he shouted, 'but there is no way that thing is going to become president.'" You see, Senator Clinton inspires such a feverish rage in the minds of crotch-scratching knuckleheads that if she fails to become the Democratic nominee for President she will have set back the women's movement by decades. Run for cover!

This Craigslist ad looks like a casting call for a Barack Obama campaign commercial in Los Angeles, though of course it could easily be a ploy by pranksters or supporters of Obama's Democratic presidential opponent Hillary Clinton. The ad wants the whole rainbow of America, and is very specific about the composition of each stripe: "Middle Aged Hispanic Men (worker class/laborer look)... An Indian Female (From INDIA)... 3 black women, various shades... An Asian Female Thai or Philipino (darker)... (3) Caucasian girls, teen - 25." Well, this should certainly help further that substantive, stereotype-free racial discussion Obama called for! Image of the ad after the jump, and if you have any idea whether the poster is real or affiliated with Obama, we'd love to hear about it.

Lady talk show the View is going to have Barack Obama on tomorrow, and from the looks of things they really give the Democratic presidential candidate a grilling on the serious issues of the day. Kidding, of course! Actually they compare him to Brad Pitt and make him blush and the entire audience practically has an orgasm all at once, watch if you dare after the jump. Also, this so never would have happened if Rosie were still on the show.

It's no surprise that MSNBC is tilting to the political left; the cable news network admitted as much to the Times in the fall. But MSNBC is still figuring out how far to push its political bent into viewers' faces. If the network's coverage of a recent speech by Republican presidential candidate John McCain is anything to go by, it is edging toward becoming the Fox News of the left, as Fox itself feared. Saying he believes Iraq is a key Al Qaeda battleground, where of course America should fight an endless war forever, McCain told an MSNBC reporter, "General Petraeus and I and Osama bin Laden are in agreement," and the news network dug into the quote like the journalistic red meat that it was. See the headline at left for a flavor of how MSNBC covered the story. Video of McCain's treasonous comments is after the jump.

It can cost more than $30,000 per month to keep a reporter on the presidential campaign trail, so cash-strapped newspapers like USA Today, the Boston Globe and the Dallas Morning News are no longer on the road with the Clinton or Obama campaigns, at least not on a consistent basis. The changes have thinned out the chummy pack journalism depicted in Timothy Crouse's "Boys On The Bus," and that's probably for the best. Campaign trail stories can be told more cheaply using wire services, YouTube and cable news, while seasoned reporters can spend their time on stories they think are important rather than being held captive by agenda-setting campaign managers. The Morning News, for example, took a look at how hispanics in California and Texas were voting differently. The upshot is that the country is less likely to choose its next president on the basis of who people would rather have a beer with, as was the case with Bush. After the jump, Bush shows how charming he could be on the campaign bus in a very brief preview for Alexandra Pelosi's 2002 documentary, Journeys With George.

Remember how CNN and AP were running around trying to figure out where Barack Obama was having his secret Islamic Vacation Of Change/Terror? And then a six year old found him in the Virgin Islands while looking for Easter eggs and sent a picture to Fox News? Well it turns out the whole experience wasn't just a cute story but also a lifeline for mostly false idea of "Citizen Journalism," in which furries leave their basement to cover the war in Iraq or city council meetings or whatever, for no pay. Because, see, the little girl's family submitted their Barack scoop to Fox through a website called uReport. Also, they approached Obama in a pretty straightforward manner, instead of melodramatically spying on him from a distance and probably giggling like a bunch of teenaged girls, like CNN did. Maybe this really does change everything. After the jump, video of the girl's mom recounting the family's heart-pounding investigative Obama interview.

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and his team unearthed a video of Hillary Clinton casually strolling off a military transport plane after landing in Bosnia in 1996, the clearest proof yet against Clinton's prior claims her plane faced sniper fire during the landing. Said Cooper: "You'll notice the absence of any ducking — or any running — or any shooting for that matter... it was apparently safe enough for a little child to a read a poem to the senator on the tarmac." The silver-haired anchor advanced CBS News' earlier coverage not only with impressively-packaged background footage and quotes but also with that patented concerned-crinkly-face thing he does so well. Thank you for emoting on behalf of the entire country, Anderson, we appreciate it. Video after the jump.

For years, Barack Obama was simply an affable guy called "Barry." "When Sen. Barack Obama moved from using the name Barry to Barack, his formal name, it was part of his almost lifelong quest for identity and belonging-to figure out who he is, and how he fits into the larger American tapestry. Part black, part white, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, with family of different religious and spiritual backgrounds-seen by others in ways he didn't see himself-the young Barry was looking for solid ground. At Occidental College, he was feeling like he was at a 'dead end'... 'that somehow I needed to connect with something bigger than myself.'"

"Reporter John Goodall, who was assigned to the story, spoke by telephone with Hillary Wicai Viers, who is a communications director in U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson's staff. According to the reporter, when Viers answered the phone with 'This is Hillary,' he believed he was speaking with the Democratic presidential candidate, who had made several previous visits to the Mahoning Valley. The quotes from Viers were incorrectly attributed to Clinton." [Tribune Chronicle]

Former New Yorker editor Tina Brown may be projecting just a bit in her Newsweek dispatch from the Hillary Clinton campaign. A Clinton campaigner in Ohio told Brown that there had been an "outpouring" of female support for the Democratic presidential candidate because of how "she was being treated by the media... we saw this as an attack of misogyny that was trying to beat her down." Brown, 55, then took this quote and extrapolated it into an argument about how women over 50 in America today are invisible, just like blacks in America 60 years ago:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on the cover of Rolling Stone (left) looks like nothing so much as an angel, or perhaps God Himself, with beams of light coming down all around him, a hopeful blue sky in the background (here's a clearer cover shot). The magazine endorsed Obama not only implicitly but also explicitly, comparing him to Abraham Lincoln in the process. The effusive coverage is hardly a surprise, given that Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner had said he wanted to "help get a good" Democratic presidential candidate for "change" elected, and that Hillary Clinton represented business as usual. He also donated money to Obama. But Wenner's stumping has spread to other media, including cable news network CNN. Check out this clip, in which a credulous CNN anchor, interviewing the author of Rolling Stone's cover story, is just amazed at the way this presidential candidate who is so popular with the kids has ingeniously used "social networking" on "the internet:"