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":

We've updated our guide with three more rumors about the Republican vice presidential candidate.

When we mused last week that this 2004 cover of Life was the closest we'd ever get to our dream of seeing Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin, we thought we were speaking practically. After all, Saturday Night Live already has at least two performers capable of the role (the Palin-resembling Casey Wilson and the Phelps-derobing Kristen Wiig), and Fey's hands are too tied as a full-time Baldwin wrangler for her to keep making cameo appearances at her old stomping grounds. Today, though, we stumbled on this Vulture interview with 24-year-old SNL scribe Simon Rich (son of NY Times political columnist Frank Rich), and while the writer is perfectly chatty about most matters, he clams up provocatively when asked about rumors that Fey might return to SNL for this Saturday's season premiere:

Isn't it bizarre how no one could shut up about Obama and how he'd get a "convention bounce" and then it was maybe not very big but then it suddenly got big, and everyone was all "Obama is ahead hooray!" And the RNC looked like a terrible stupid joke for a couple days, until Sarah Palin gave that well-regarded venomous speech of lies and America said "we like her!" (Though her negatives are high and she is polarizing!) And McCain gave his speech that everyone universally panned—except that it attracted a huge football-lead-in audience and was kind of explicitly geared to appeal not to raging party faithful types (despite pandering lines here and there) but to dumb undecideds who haven't paid attention until just this last week, when they are "supposed to." When will the McCain bounce happen? everyone asked. Your answer: today. Ok? So stop hyperventilating and turn off your iPhone electoral map application and maybe have another beer. Let's look at some of the analysis from "experts": As Slate's election scorecard puts it: "A post-convention bounce puts McCain ahead of Obama in a few national polls for the first time, prompting Pollster.com to shift its overall national trend from 'strong Obama' to 'lean Obama.'" Panic!! Five Thirty Eight says, yes, the RNC and Sarah Palin energized formerly wary right-wing Christian Republicans and now they're answering more pollsters and identifying more strongly with the party and the ticket and more likely to call themselves "likely voters." Right now, the race seems strictly polarized, right down the traditional, predictable lines, and it looks like Obama will try to win Kerry's states and hope for one more. He'll be aided by the economy, probably. And it's stupid reporting or analysis to obsess over each slight shift in the polls (outliers aside, each candidate's individual numbers have barely shifted from the mid-to-high-40s since the beginning of the summer), especially when you predicted those bounces and setbacks.

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]

The Post officially endorsed John McCain today, not surprisingly. Slightly more surprising: its description of Sarah Palin as "rock-solid." [NYP]

The man who brought us Barack Roll is back with a hilarious treat. So John McCain gave his big Republican nomination acceptance speech in front of a giant video screen. What could possibly go wrong with that? See it after the jump.

Though we noted a while back that Tina Fey as Liz Lemon and VP candidate Sarah Palin share more than a passing resemblance, we were quick to point out their dramatic differences on issues like gay marriage, the economy, and crappy exes. Our Liz Lemon is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, we insisted — until Good as You reminded us that in a self-flagellating monologue during season one of 30 Rock, Lemon admitted that though she might tell her friends she was supporting Barack Obama, she'd likely cast a secret vote for John McCain. Is Fey, then, that much-pursued Hillary voter who can be lured to John McCain by nothing more than a fellow set of horn-rimmed glasses? Perhaps that Life cover shoot was more prescient than we realized... [Good as You]

Now that the McCain/Palin ticket has usurped Barack Obama to become the official celebrity story of the day, actual celebrities are weighing in on Palin, and the reception is mixed. Following in the footsteps of Palin critics Lindsay Lohan and Albert Brooks, here's the latest roundup of stars going political: · Heart's Nancy Wilson has taken umbrage at the use of their band's song "Barracuda" to introduce Palin at the RNC (Palin earned the nickname "Barracuda" during her high school basketball days). "I think it's completely unfair to be so misrepresented," she said to EW. "I feel completely fucked over." · Diddy has much warmer feelings toward the vice presidential candidate, though they're expressed in equally blue terms. "You did your thing," he said on his Diddy Blog after watching Palin's RNC speech. "You gave a speech that pretty much shut me the fuck up."

Who's the Bigger Celebrity Now? The Hollywood Reporter sends word that John McCain's nomination acceptance speech broadcast from the GOP Convention was the most-watched acceptance address in history, surpassing Barack Obama's Aug. 28 speech by 500,000 viewers: 38.9 million to 38.4 million. The Republicans had more than wind in their sails, though; momentum from Sarah Palin's blockbuster appearance Wednesday night worked together with a lead-in from the NFL season opener, which mainlined more than 13 million viewers straight into McCain's convention-closing remarks on NBC. Fun fact: The speech outdrew George W. Bush's 2004 appearance by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. The GOP is a hit! Still! [THR Feed]

While watching the McCain speech last night, we suddenly noticed the big video screen background (which only looked cool when it was neat rippling water behind Rudy Giuliani) suddenly shifted to what looked like a greenscreen. Oh wow what a stupid and terrible fuckup, we thought. Because everyone remembers what happened last time! It turns out the fuckup was so, so much bigger and more hilarious: it was not a greeenscreen. It was a lawn in front of a mansion-looking building. Which was a middle school, called Walter Reed. Let's actually try to itemize the fuckups here:

Katie Couric was supposed to be a terrible overpaid diva whose terrible "soft" overhaul of the CBS evening news had dragged the network down to dead last in the ratings and whose entire career was on life support due to the poor return on investment the network was booking on her annual $15-22 million salary. But look, it turns out her flagging Q-rating has not completely robbed her of all talent and skill! Today's Times suggests this presidential campaign might rehabilitate her broken reputation. Because she gets "more interesting answers" from politicians. Like, holy shit! On Wednesday night, she interviewed Cindy McCain, and it turns out Cindy McCain does not know what Roe V. Wade is! No really, check the transcript:

• According to Nielsen, John McCain's acceptance speech at the RNC was watched by more people than Obama's speech last week. [TVWeek]

Robert Wood "Woody" Johnson IV, of the Johnson & Johnson Johnsons (and owner of the pitiable New York Jets), is also a big political power player. He had his own "hospitality suite" at the RNC this week! So because he is a billionaire political donor he is accused, sometimes, of trying to buy influence. That's nonsense! As he explains in the Times today, he is but a simple down-home constituent, just like you:

Maybe it should have been obvious that the celebrity weeklies were going to politicize as soon as Hillary Clinton and her supporters showed strong resistance, during the primary season, to acquiescing to Barack Obama, thus highlighting the importance of women voters in 2008. But the heightened political importance of the magazines, whose readers are overwhelmingly female, wasn't in anyone's face until this week, when Us Weekly made waves with its controversial "Babies, Lies & Scandal" Sarah Palin cover. The issue, unflattering to Palin, has so far resulted in 5,000-10,000 cancelled subscriptions, MSNBC.com's gossip column is reporting. (Though MSNBC's Courtney Hazlett is close to Us Weekly's rivals; and-see below-the magazine's Janice Min says the losses are overstated.)

Elitist New York media obsessives keep alerting us to the guy who cheered John McCain tonight at the Republican convention with a sign reading "THE Mavrick [sic]." So here's the money shot, liberals! This image was, of course, captured by the Bolshevik intelligentsia at MSNBC, probably through a camera personally operated by Rachel Maddow, since Keith Olbermann was in New York. Cut this patriot a break, linguistic totalitarians. He's probably a farmer or factory worker who could barely afford that finely tailored suit or the donations necessary to score good convention seats, much less a fancy college education. Besides, John McCain was tortured in Vietnam, so you can shut up and apologize for laughing at this now The End.

As a speaker, John McCain had no hope of pulling off a capstone convention speech like his Democratic rival Barack Obama. The Republican presidential nominee could not completely banish the minor verbal stumbles that sometimes mark his campaign speeches, and his party's internal security apparatus apparently could not banish the opposition protesters who infiltrated the convention hall and repeatedly interrupted the speech and made everyone nervous. And besides, McCain was never going to get the added energy of being surrounded by 70,000 fans in a giant stadium while being filmed by CNN's $100,000 hovercam. But McCain's lack of polish might as well have been by design. He was far from an unelectable, W-level bumbler, but rough enough that he can now keep calling himself the underdog, and continue framing Obama as a fancy arrogant elitist. He even manages to look slightly heroic — to some, at least — while doing so.

Who said Cindy McCain was going to be some kind of weight around her husband's neck in his campaign as the Republican nominee for president? Only fools, because McCain just opened for her husband at the Republican convention and totally killed. Some more pictures of the crazed audience for her address after the jump.

Why is Cindy McCain speaking so slowly and making everyone at the Republican Convention pull embarrassed faces right now? Probably because there are two minutes and God-knows-how-many time-outs and commercial breaks left on the NFL season opener, threatening to keep red-blooded, football-loving Republicans and right-leaning Democrats away from John McCain's climactic speech, just as was feared. Go long, Cindy, go long! [via Wonkette]

Elisabeth Hasselbeck flew into Minneapolis today to host a luncheon for the terrifyingly taut-faced First Lady candidate Cindy McCain, and though The View's resident conservative has hardly hid her feelings on the presidential election, she's also remained relatively mum on the subject of Michelle Obama — until now. The two women met for the first time when Obama guest-hosted The View in June, and Hasselbeck's catty comments may ensure that the visit was Michelle's last. Says the New York Times: