Ha ha, you thought the endless nightmare battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was finally coming to a close, but Hillary just won Texas, Ohio and precious Rhode Island, gave a chipper speech and ordered aides to convene a special EMERGENCY conference call to slam Obama for doing crafty evil things to the proud caucusers of Texas, which means the seven weeks until the next important primary are going to eat your soul. Sure, there will be twee little elections in Mississippi and Wyoming to interrupt the arguing, but until Pennsylvania awards its 21 delegates on April 22, Clinton and Obama will mostly just be left torture everyone with endless bickering. What exactly will they yell at each other? Predictably, the Obama campaign said Clinton is going to throw all kinds of mud, while the Clinton campaign said it also thought Clinton would throw all kinds of mud:

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is winning in Ohio and tied with Barack Obama in Texas. She may yet live politically to fight another day, including in April and May contests in Pennsylvania, Oregon and North Carolina. But she'll have to placate a press corps no doubt traumatized and, perhaps, a touch hurt by her recent decision to set up their desks in the restroom of an Austin, Texas community center. As noted previously, the Wall Street Journal last night highlighted writers Tina Brown and Gail Sheehy's proximity to a set of urinals. Now Getty Images has a sad photo showing the campaign hacks' exact working conditions. Click on the pic at left for a larger version.

In an effort to rescue her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has been trying to butter up the press, including by pretending to like author and magazine writer Gail Sheehy, who aired Clinton's dirty laundry throughout the 1990s. Well, that ruse is up: Clinton last night installed the pack of reporters trailing her campaign in the men's room of an Austin community center. All the female reporters rushed to avoid the urinals, but former New Yorker editor Tina Brown, who is working on a biography of Clinton, lost out and ended up "gamely typing away close to a toilet," according the Wall Street Journal. And Sheehy? She leveraged the insult into the best sort of revenge, the kind played out in front of television cameras:

Aging movie star Jack Nicholson tried to put together a video endorsement of Hillary Clinton using clips from his old movies, but just ended up creating this weird creepy thing that doesn't really help the struggling Democratic presidential nominee. The idea was that Nicholson's characters would say things that, ripped from the original context, sound vaguely supportive of Hillary. But of course no one can forget the original context. In the endorsement video, Nicholson's character from "the Shining" says to a bartender, "things could be a whole lot better," which is supposed to be a nod to Clinton's platform of change. But in the movie, Nicholson then goes on terrifying kill-crazy rampage — not exactly the kind of guy you want delivering your political message. More creepy: Nicholson's Marine officer character from "A Few Good Men says in the endorsement video, "There is nothing on this earth sexier, believe me, gentlemen, than a woman you have to salute in the morning." Which is kind of fun and racy. But here's how that line continued in the movie: "Promote 'em all, I say, 'cause this is true: if you haven't gotten a blowjob from a superior officer, well, you're just letting the best in life pass you by." Full insane ad after the jump.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spent an entire day with a reporter for Us Weekly who asked "boxers or briefs" and other similarly pressing questions. The Times is kind of in a snit about it because when Us had Hillary Clinton in its pages, it was to have her make fun of her own worst outfits. Actually, the Hillary story was pretty fun compared with Obama's profile, where he comes across fairly vanilla, which is like a deadly sin in a celebrity magazine. Nevertheless, he does make fun of Stevie Wonder bumbling into things, which is kind of cool, and you'll never ever guess what his favorite TV show is:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote a Times op-ed in which he promised everyone he will not enter the presidential race, and everyone should cut this op-ed out of the newspaper and save it, like some kind of precious insurance policy. Apparently, after all of Bloomberg's friends abandoned his non-existent presidential campaign to support the infinitely more charismatic John McCain, he traveled from city to city like some kind of sad robot to bore everyone with "plain" talk about "common sense" solutions. The experienced convinced Bloomberg he is the perfect man to "steer the national conversation," which somehow he will accomplish by dropping out of the race (that he was never in) and banking the $1 billion he was (not) going to spend on presidential campaign ads. The nation has been deprived of a great and logical man. [NYT]

The last time we checked in with conservative Republican Mike Huckabee, he was sensibly skipping the big annual conservative donors conference to help Tyra Banks tape an episode of her stripper-friendly talk show. In the course of the show, the loser presidential candidate was of course converted into a gay-loving liberal, by Tyra Banks, in New York, and he's forgotten all about how he was going to persecute Mexican gay abortionists. Here's what he told Tyra Banks about why he loves the homosexual agenda:

This was in Pennsylvania, but until the convention it could happen anywhere. The moral: Watch out for twitchy Hillary Clinton supporters. The Republicans did something terrible to them a long time ago and now they FIGHT TO WIN: "Shurelds, an Obama supporter, told Ortiz that the Illinois senator was 'trashing' Clinton. Ortiz, a Clinton supporter, replied that 'Obama was not a realist'... Ortiz, pictured in the mug shot below, was charged with a felony aggravated assault count and two misdemeanors and jailed in lieu of $20,000 bail. Shurelds was flown to Hahnemann University Hospital, where he was admitted in critical condition." [Smoking Gun]

Do we really want to vote for the candidate who is the most popular with advertising industry types—the one they compliment as a person who "behaves like a well-defined brand?" Well, that candidate is Obama, so I guess the answer is yes for most of you Jesus-hating liberals [Ad Age]. The ad industry's luv for him has so far paid off in all those (free for Obama!) momentarily cute YouTube video mashups of the man interspersed with celebrities, music, or both (that's what ad people do on their free time to relax). But might this whole ad-love party be a backlash waiting to happen? Thoughts, to quote Alex Pareene, Obamafter therack jumpama.

For about 25 seconds in Wisconsin, Barack Obama spoke some lines pretty much identical to those spoken in 2006 by his friend Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts. The lines were about the power of words in speeches and documents, about how words have more power than they are often given credit for. Of course, now the Obama campaign is saying no one should care too much about these particular words, or whether Obama really wrote them, since everything is OK with Patrick. This is disingenuous, and some people are very worked up about it. But it's 25 seconds — a fraction of a fraction of a speech. Sounds a lot more like Adam Gopnik borrowing the concept of "verticality" from Mike Huckabee for one of his twee New Yorker pieces than, say, that one-day New York Press sex columnist who copied Dan Savage wholesale, or Kaavya Viswanathan at Harvard, repeatedly copying passages from real author Megan McCafferty for her debut novel. Compare the Obama and Patrick speeches for yourself, after the jump.

It should not have been a big deal when an academic journal at Stanford repeatedly suggested Michael Bloomberg would be a good education president, and it definitely should not have turned into an embarrassing little scandal. But a scandal is exactly what has ensued, because the mayor's sad inability to publicly acknowledge his misguided presidential ambition has left everyone terrified of offering him the slightest encouragement. The article included the ridiculous picture at left and said "many people think [Bloomberg] should be president" and that if he ran, "Americans might have a renewed opportunity to ponder the state of American education." In the chaotic aftermath of the Bloomberg-friendly piece, a journal board member resigned, the author acknowledged "we barely see a blip" in education after six years under Bloomberg and none of the three board members contacted by the Sun think Bloomberg should run for president. In other words, no one wants to be responsible for having encouraged him. [NY Sun]

Sometimes it takes a foreign-language newspaper to print the truth of which the mainstream U.S. media is so very afraid. [Manhattan Offender]

Sure, Republican Mike Huckabee says he still wants to be the President Of Stopping Gay Heathen Mexicans. But when the big conservative conference pitches its tent, and even liberal John "Juan" McCain braves booing and possible stoning to speak there, where is Huckabee? In Failuretown, that's where, attending a taping of the Tyra Banks show, which is a "talk" show where a stripper encourages everyone to strip. After the jump, MSNBC is shocked at Huckabee's decision, and Tyra strips.

While all the TV networks were concentrating on fluff Obama's eternal speech and Obama's teary admirer, one news source was doing actual reporting:

Barack Obama hit a wall with Latino and Asian voters last night, despite concerted efforts to court them and despite a surge of Obama support from whites. In California, his biggest loss of the night, white men overwhelmingly favored Obama over Clinton, according to exit polls, while Latinos voted against him 2:1 and Asians 3:1. In a state where Latinos and Asians were more than one-third of the voters, it was a tough blow, and one repeated in states like New Mexico and New York. It would be naive to blame minority-on-minority hate for all the Latino and Asian opposition to Barack Obama; after all, in California he ended up losing among whites, as well, thanks to strong Clinton support among women. But the stark political numbers make it much harder to deny the harsh reality and growing importance of anti-black racism among minorities, and should also be unsurprising to anyone who has closely followed American popular culture over the past two decades. Why we should have seen this coming, after the jump.

A young woman wept hysterical Tears of Change tonight during the endless speech of ecstasy by Barack Obama, the President of North Dakota, Utah and the Yukon Territory. Even crusty old Brit Hume at Fox News was touched, in the place where his soul used to be, and where he thought there was no hope. He saw, for the first time in forever, someone fervently "enchanted with" and "rhapsodic about" an American politician. Either that or a chance to make idealistic Democrats look crazy and emotional. Either way, it's true; the lady idolized Obama and really was losing her shit. After the jump, the footage as captured and enhanced by Gawker video bot Richard Blakeley .

"PAGO PAGO, American Samoa — Hillary Clinton has won the smallest contest of Super Tuesday, and she called the caucus to thank supporters." [Politico]

Hopefully you haven't voted yet, because Hillary Clinton just picked up a key endorsement from rapper 50 Cent, who notes that not only does he think "she could do a good job" but also that she won't go down in a hail of gunfire, killed by some redneck with an assault weapon. Bill O'Reilly sagely notes how far fetched this scenario is.

"A thick cloud of marijuana smoke wafted through the air then and throughout the concert, and some fans engaged in free-style dance as though magically transported from 1968." [Reuters]

Walking omnimedia content factory Kurt Andersen gives Anglos "another reason" to vote for Barack Obama: if you vote for Hillary Clinton instead, the media will "unfair[ly]" count your vote as racist and "perception will be reality" and you will be part of "a depressing morning-after metric rather than a hopeful one." And Kurt Andersen would know: he's got the radio show Studio 360, a column in New York magazine, two books under his belt and an editor at large gig at Random House. Oh, and a blog where he predictably advises you to make personal decisions based on how the media might spin them. [Kurt Andersen]