@ShankarSharanya: Driver in front of my cab, STOPPED & fired 5 gun shots at the White House.

@ShankarSharanya: I saw the shooting. 5 puffs of gunfire and saw the suspect drive away quickly on a lane that was closed.

Her claims, unsubstantiated, were retweeted by a local reporter and at least one local blog. Several people (including myself) pressed her for more information, corroboration. Perhaps too many people: she soon deleted her Twitter account and pulled down a blog post she’d written.

While the DC police were telling media that the shots were a local matter, a dispute between two cars, Mount Holyoke student Shankar Sharanya described what actually happened. Not until the next day did it become obvious that her version of the story was correct, after the police had pieced things together and the Secret Service had found a bullet hole in a window of the executive mansion.

So who broke the story? Sharanya? The reporters who retweeted her? No one?

Questions like this used to have an easy answer. Today, it’s much murkier.

Earlier this week, Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith wrote an article in which he noted that scoops, the traditional reserve currency of journalism, are becoming harder to identify in a massive Twitter flood of breaking news. He cites the example of a story he thought that his team broke, about Santorum lacking signatures to be on the ballot in Indiana. He soon discovered that a local radio station in Indiana had the story first, but very few people on Twitter – including BuzzFeed’s hyperattentive crew – noticed it.

With just two retweets, the story hadn’t spread.

And despite tweets from several of our fairly widely-followed political reporters’ accounts, our story — written and played as a scoop — flashed by the Twitter stream fast enough that, when Santorum was asked about the report later that afternoon, it felt like news again to many reporters and junkies.

Smith, when asked, gave the scoop to the radio station, WIBC, “indisputably.”

But who broke the story?

It helps to define our terms. As Trevor Gilbert noted at Pando Daily yesterday, the terms “scoop” and “breaking a story” can sometimes overlap. A scoop generally refers to one of two things: being the first to break news that will soon be ubiquitous or uncovering a story that no one else has seen.

In the BuzzFeed example, Smith is using that first definition, being first on a story. There’s benefit in such scoops, which is why, to Smith and others, it is important to give credit for scooping breaking news where due. Being first on a story yields bragging rights, but it also helps establish a brand as being a place to go for the latest information. In any media environment, that’s an important advantage; online, it translates into pageviews.

That’s not much different than the media world of a century ago, in which newspapers and other periodicals were the only institutions with the ability to disseminate information rapidly. But now, the competition for first unveiling a story is exponentially larger.

In 2009, Dave Winer wrote an essay about the Times’ profitability struggles titled, “Sources Go Direct.” In it, he explores idea that reporters had become an at-times unnecessary intermediary between story and consumer.

Like it or not, and some Times reporters appear not to like it — much of the value in the Times is captured by its sources. The reporters, when they’re doing their best work, are facilitating the flow of ideas and information from sources to readers. And don’t miss that the flow works the other way too, from readers back to sources. The newspapers have been complaining wildly about this, they say the bloggers get their ideas from news people. And who do you think the news people get their ideas from? And the truth is that a lot of the bloggers they don’t like are also sources.

Sources are also reporters.

Unlike a century ago, we can all have a public outlet, all have subscribers. The vocal power that was once conferred by buying ink by the barrel is now implicitly exhibited by follower counts and page views. Tools like Klout attempt to measure everyone’s impact on social media. That’s a tough task, subject to how one answers this question: what’s valuable behavior – to the producer, to the audience – in a social media world?

For a media outlet, it’s two-fold: surfacing and analyzing information.

Sky News this week announced its reporters were not to retweet other journalists or people on Twitter – any information, in short, that has not gone through their internal editorial process. What they’re saying, in other words, is that everyone on Twitter is a source, not a reporter. KIBC and Sharanya are equivalent voices in the crowd, unprocessed. Sky News considers the analysis aspect of news broken on social media more valuable than surfacing it.

The response from other media outlets was highly critical – surfacing information on social media, after all, is a lot of the intrinsic value of the medium. With Sky News is at one end of the spectrum, many media companies are at the other end, near Winer’s viewpoint: all sources are reporters of varying credibility. Media outlets who hold this view manage the wire: breaking news, sharing it, debunking in real-time.

Twitter is now what the streets of New York were in 1912: a roiling stew of information and conversation, some small percentage of which is newsworthy. In the social media community, KIBC’s unheard story was less of a story than Shankar Sharanya’s retweeted and analyzed one – despite the source of the information, independent of credibility. There must be a standard: if BuzzFeed had retweeted KIBC, consensus indicates that KIBC gets the scoop. But if they had retweeted Sharanya, does BuzzFeed?

If a story, no matter the source, doesn’t ripple through Twitter, if it’s a tiny unheard blip: has it been told?

If you break a story and no one hears it: do you deserve the scoop?

RELATED: Brad Stine Tells Fox and Friends: Political Correctness Made Americans Too Lazy To Work Tough Jobs

Stine’s routine seemed to GO OVER WELL with the audience. Certainly better than OTHER COMEDY ROUTINES AT CONSERVATIVE CONVENTIONS. You can watch the set below although YOU MIGHT WANT to turn down YOUR SPEAKERS. If the CAPS LOCK hasn’t clued YOU IN. There’s a lot of YELLING. A lot of YELLING.

Watch the video from CSPAN below:

It’s possible that Mr. Woolery thought I was pulling his leg, but in four years of covering CPAC, I don’t think I’ve been this excited to meet someone, not even Rachel Maddow (mainly because we were already acquainted online, but still). As a kid, I was a huge game show fanatic, and Chuck was the best, possessed of a true wit. Am I disappointed that he’s on the other team? Maybe a little, but maybe it’s some kind of epidemic with game show hosts; Pat Sajak is another well-known conservative.

Chuck graciously sat for an impromptu interview, in which he described the Reset Congress project, talked a little Universal Health Care, and tried like hell to think of one thing President Obama has done right. As for the current Republican presidential field, they will have to wait for the Woolery Bump. He’s not endorsing.

Here’s my interview with Chuck Woolery, followed by some brief notes and pictures from my first few hours at CPAC:

This is my fourth CPAC, so by now, it’s a lot like summer camp, re-connecting with people I haven’t seen since last year, and keeping an eye out for stray content. I’m used to it by now, but it is worth noting that despite my well-known liberal leanings, this conference has always been very welcoming to me.

The vibe this year is upbeat compared to last year, which is a bit of a surprise. Following closely on the heels of the 2010 midterms, CPAC 2011 had an ugly, decidedly non-triumphant feeling, yet now, with a chaotic presidential primary race, everyone’s looser and lighter.

Here’s a slideshow of some of the sights at CPAC 2012 so far:

Jennifer Rubin (1 of 10)

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Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post's Right Turn blog, hanging out in the CPAC Blogger's Lounge.

The campaign is called “Stop Colbert” and the Colbert in question isn’t the Comedy Central host but rather “Stephen Colbert” the character. On the campaign’s Facebook page and in a tongue in cheek video, Pelosi pretends to attack Colbert as a pro-Super PAC money hoarder, which is, of course, the fake position of the show’s satire. The video is even designed to emulate one of the parody Super PAC ads that the Report has been making in the past few months.

Here’s Pelosi’s jokey narration:

“Stephen Colbert used to be my friend. I even signed the poor baby’s cast when he hurt his hand. But since the day he started his Super PAC, taking secret money from special interests, he’s been out of control, even using his super PAC to attack my friend, Newt Gingrich. And if that weren’t enough, I hear he doesn’t even like kittens. Colbert must be stopped. I’m Nancy Pelosi and I support this ad because Americans deserve a better tomorrow today.”

It’s a smart choice from Pelosi. Honestly, Colbert and his show has done more in the last year to let Americans know about the negatives of Super PACs that, say, the Obama Administration could ever hope to (especially now). By positioning herself (we’re assuming from the slightly inferior production values on both the ad and Facebook page that Colbert’s actual team had nothing to do with this) as being both in on the joke and part of solution, Pelosi might be able to give the bill the Colbert bump it needs.

Still, just like Stephen Colbert will probably never actually run for office, there’s something a little uncomfortable to watching Pelosi try her hand as a comedian.

(h/t HuffPo)

In January, Mediate Founder Dan Abrams authored an editorial on Manning. We are re-printing it in its entirety.

For well over a year, many have feverishly raced to the defense of U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, accused of 22 criminal charges — including aiding the enemy — for leaking hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents (and video) to Wikileaks. Late last month, for the first time, we finally heard his side of the story during an evidentiary hearing to determine whether he should be court-martialed. Many of his supporters, often at the courthouse daily clad in t-shirts emblazoned with his picture, must have been disappointed that Manning’s own lawyer hardly portrayed him as the grand patriot those defenders have depicted.

RELATED: Julian Assange: Media Coverage of Bradley Manning’s Imprisonment is ‘Appalling’

Hailed as a hero by some for exposing what they claim are U.S. government misdeeds, as well as illegal and immoral conduct, he has websites like BradleyManning.org devoted to him and many prominent supporters — aside from, of course, Wikileaks editor Julian Assange. Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg stated flatly that he “was Bradley Manning” and that he was profoundly affected by Manning’s decision to leak. “I never thought,” he said of Manning, “for the rest of my life, I would ever hear anyone willing to do that, to risk their life, so that horrible, awful secrets could be known.” Manning himself can allegedly be counted among those promoting the lionization of his image, accused of having said about his own conduct: “This is possibly one of the more significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare.”

Unfortunately, that sort of principled position is far from what his own defense team suggests motivated Manning’s alleged perfidy. No, they appear to be pursuing the defense that he was a gay man in a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell military, struggling with gender identity issues, who never should have had access to the files in the first place. His attorney focused on Manning’s alter ego, Breanna Manning, and quoted an email from Manning where he said his “entire life feel(s) like a bad dream that won’t end. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what will happen to me. But at this point I feel like I am not here anymore.” That characterization suggests he was no hero; not a man standing for principle nor acting in the best interest of the country but, rather, a sad troubled soul worthy of sympathy. It is a defense which appears to concede that he leaked the documents but also abandons any pretense of righteousness in exchange for an apologia for his behavior. That is a trade Assange himself would likely detest since he complained to then New York Times Editor Bill Keller that a profile of Manning “psychologicalized” him while giving “short shrift” to his “political awakening.”

Sure, his lawyer also said the disclosures were relatively harmless. “The sky is not falling,” defense attorney David Coombs argued. He briefly invoked Martin Luther King on civil disobedience and cited the famous quote from Justice Louis Brandeis that “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” but the defense’s larger argument as to why he did it appears to be that Manning was a mentally disturbed individual who should have been stopped by his superiors. Essentially, the duty of stopping Manning from leaking the documents, goes this argument, would fall to superiors, because Manning was mentally incapable of stopping himself.

RELATED: Report: Bradley Manning Cleared To Leave Isolation Cell

That, however, does not make the case any easier for the prosecution. Proving that Manning had the intent to provide the information to enemies of the United States may be difficult, and that could even lead to a plea deal on the horizon. Nor would this minimize legitimate concerns raised about his overbearing and solitary prison conditions which appear to have been improved.

Furthermore, this was a pretty pro-forma hearing. The defense comes into it knowing they will “lose,” that the case will almost certainly move forward no matter what they do. So, his sympathizers might argue, the defense called only two witnesses knowing that there was no good reason to pull out all the stops at this point in the legal process (some of the defense’s proposed psychological witnesses were also not permitted to testify).

Fair enough. But when it comes to a broad judgment about the man and his actions, his lawyers have left us with two choices for now: loathsome, as the prosecution asserts, or pathetic. No one inside the courtroom, at least not yet, is really arguing that he was valiant, courageous or heroic.

I don’t support the suspension, but I do see how the tweets could be taken out of context and seemingly support gay bashing. I have disagreed with Martin before, actually a few times. We have grown used to respectfully disagreeing with one another, and that’s something our society could use more of. Let me say this: there is no excuse for advocating violence against anyone, particularly homosexuals, at any time. And it’s not surprising that Martin’s irreverent sense of humor and off-the-cuff style of tweeting could be easily taken out of context. He frequently jokes about violence, but that’s far from advocating it. To wit, Roland’s Cookout Rules, which detail how cookouts are “conducted at his house”: “If your kid gets out of line, check ‘em before I do. My house, my rules. Ass whippings are bountiful if they start disrespecting adults.”

Martin wasn’t advocating violence to gays any more than he was to children. But a cursory look at a random tweet plucked out of a long conversation can easily be misconstrued. And while one may not find him funny (after all, he’s not a professional comedian), that doesn’t mean his brand of comedy is offensive, or, worse, worthy of character assassination. Martin has consistently and fervently spoken out against sexism, racism, homophobia, and trashy reality TV shows that reinforce negative and demeaning stereotypes.

It wasn’t until Martin offered a second (and some say more sincere) apology that GLAAD did what they should have done in the first place: offered to meet with him. Why rely solely on tweets to determine whether a man should lose his job without first hearing him out? There was no reason for that.

GLAAD Doesn’t Practice What it Preaches

Look, I get it. GLAAD is fully focused on helping to rid our society of the type of homophobic, violent, and misogynistic remarks that have contributed to an environment where gay teens are cajoled, bullied, and are “three times more likely to be depressed than their heterosexual counterparts.” We should all commend them for their diligence in such matters. No child should have to live in fear, and no parent should raise a child thinking it’s okay to instill such fear in someone else.

So it’s unfortunate that some of those same violent and misogynistic remarks that GLAAD fights valiantly to scrub from networks big and small are sometimes welcomed by GLAAD — depending on whom the remarks are directed toward and who is saying them.

In April a blog by the name of JoeMyGod won GLAAD Media’s ‘outstanding blog’ award. Run by Joe Jervis, the blog is well-known for comparing conservatives to Nazis and having misogynistic comments littered in its comments with no hint of a moderator. Commenters rarely one-up Jervis himself, the epitome of civility:

“One thing about the kapo bootlickers at GOProud, we alway$ know where their prioritie$ lie,” Jarvis wrote in regard to GOProud’s support of the extension of the Bush tax cuts. The Daily Caller notes that “[d]uring World War II “Kapos” were concentration camp prisoners who worked inside the camps on behalf of the Nazis. Jarvis often tags articles about gay Conservatives with the word ‘kapo’….”

It’s unfortunate but understandable that GLAAD can’t rid these horrible words from our society. But the least they could do is choose to not honor someone who spouts them on a regular basis. That much I think they can accomplish.

H&M Wasn’t Courting Men

Never mind the fact that the David Beckham ad in question wasn’t directed toward men. Dream Hampton, a prolific journalist, noted that 83% of social media mentions regarding the ad were made by women. This wasn’t because men forgot to tweet that night. Research by a British retailer found something not too surprising: men traditionally buy their own underwear from age 19-23, from age 24 to 33 their underwear shopping decreases tremendously, and when they hit age 44 it’s nearly nonexistent. All this to say what an H&M marketing intern could tell you: H&M was going after female shoppers, plain and simple.

GLAAD is a Bully

Even Hollywood, typically very supportive of GLAAD, has begun to tire of their antics.

In October GLAAD began a “call to action” asking its members to petition Universal and director Ron Howard because at one point in the movie The Dilemma, Vince Vaughn’s character calls electric cars “gay.” Howard refused to pull the scene, responding: “I don’t strip my films of everything that I might personally find inappropriate. It is a slight moment in The Dilemma meant to demonstrate an aspect of our lead character’s personality, and we never expected it to represent our intentions or the point of view of the movie or those of us who made it.”

When Bruno, a satirical film about a flamboyant gay journalist, came out GLAAD’s senior director of media programs said, “Sacha Baron Cohen’s well-meaning attempt at satire is problematic in many places and outright offensive in others.” Meanwhile Elton John agreed to sing a part in the movie and Aaron Hicklin, editor of Out, a gay and lesbian lifestyle magazine, said of the film: “[it does] something hugely important, which is showing that people’s attitudes can turn on a dime when they realize you’re gay.”

See, GLAAD’s problem is that they have become a victim of their own success. Instead of focusing on how they can organically change minds and influence our culture to become more accepting of the LGBT community (a very worthy mission), they’re too busy overusing their influence to boycott, censor films, and have folks suspended and fired. What do these suspensions and firings accomplish? Who is benefited by such actions aside from GLAAD being able to claim another head on their Wall of Shame?

Just for the record, GLAAD, this rebuke isn’t based on your views; it’s based on your lack of principles.

In his latest video, O’Keefe operatives secretly tape Minnesota election workers explaining how they can register people like “Timothy Tebow” and “Thomas Brady” to vote by mail, without showing any ID, and how easy it is for someone to obtain an absentee ballot under false pretenses. If you can stand the idiotic smugness (heh, heh, Tim Tebow! Thomas Brady!), check it out, and pay attention to the questions O’Keefe’s operatives ask:

The premise of O’Keefe’s investigations into “voter fraud” is that it’s easy for someone to fraudulently register to vote, and consequently, to cast fraudulent votes. The idea is that the only way to preserve democracy is to enact strict voter ID laws that have the added benefit of disenfranchising millions of voters who tend to vote Democratic. The Brad Blog‘s Brad Friedman, who makes a habit of dismantling O’Keefe investigations, explains why, even if you accept everything O’Keefe’s video says as true, such laws wouldn’t help at all:

1) While one can indeed register to vote (in most places) without showing an ID via third party, what O’Keefe fails to mention in his video, is that the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 already requires those who do not register in person to provide ID when voting for the first time at the polling place. In other words, if “Thomas Brady” registers to vote via the registration forms received via O’Keefe’s video, he would be required, by federal law, to show an ID the first time he votes in person at the polling place. That is already federal law. O’Keefe must have forgotten to mention that in his latest “Voter Fraud Investigation” video.

2) To work around the above point in order to commit voter fraud, one could, after committing a felony by fraudulently filling out a voter registration form, go ahead and commit another felony by voting via absentee ballot without having to show an ID, as also discussed in the video (at least in states which allow easy, “no-excuse” access for that type of voting.) It would, indeed, be possible, in this way, to commit voter fraud, if one wished to risk the very high penalties for committing yet another felony. What O’Keefe fails to mention in his video, however, is that the polling place Photo ID restrictions that Republicans have been pushing for, and which this video is obviously meant to support, would do nothing to prevent this absentee voter fraud!

Friedman explains that he’s “currently on the road and don’t have enough time for his idiocy as is,” so I generously made time for this idiocy, and found out that even O’Keefe’s absentee scenario is false. According to Minnesota election law, anyone registering by mail must either provide a verifiable driver’s license/state ID number, or the last four digits of their Social Security number. If those items don’t match state records, or if the registrant checks that third box, they are sent a notice informing them that they have to register using the same requirements as in-person registration. Those requirements are:

(1) presenting a driver’s license or Minnesota identification card issued pursuant to section 171.07;
(2) presenting any document approved by the secretary of state as proper identification;
(3) presenting one of the following:
(i) a current valid student identification card from a postsecondary educational institution in Minnesota, if a list of students from that institution has been prepared under section 135A.17 and certified to the county auditor in the manner provided in rules of the secretary of state; or
(ii) a current student fee statement that contains the student’s valid address in the precinct together with a picture identification card; or
(4) having a voter who is registered to vote in the precinct, or who is an employee employed by and working in a residential facility in the precinct and vouching for a resident in the facility, sign an oath in the presence of the election judge vouching that the voter or employee personally knows that the individual is a resident of the precinct.

So, if O’Keefe wants to register Tim Tebow to vote in Minnesota by mail, he needs to either create a CIA-worthy document trail for him, featuring a valid, verifiable state ID number or Social Security number. Otherwise, fake Tim needs to show ID, or get another registered voter in that precinct to swear (and sign) an oath before an election judge, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, attesting to the identity of the bogus Tebow. That’s quite a bit different from O’Keefe’s claim of “without identification requirements of any kind.”

The truth is, submitting fake voter information is easy, but successfully registering fake people is incredibly difficult, and casting fake votes is even harder. Doing either of them enough times to affect the outcome of an election is a near-impossibility, and certainly not worth the penalty.

Passing a law that imposes a requirement that many of your opponent’s supporters don’t meet, however, is effective, and when you get people to believe garbage like this, downright simple. It’s easy to vote for other people to go get something that you already have.

RELATED: Breaking: Roland Martin Suspended By CNN For Offensive Super Bowl Tweets

The Twitter story, taking place on Super Bowl Sunday, has been recounted many times, but for the unacquainted: Martin tends to tweet teasing jokes about sports very often– whether it be his various sports feuds with Touré or his soccer jokes to Piers Morgan. Last Sunday, his tweets were inclined more toward the latter, and he made clear he objected to David Beckham, a soccer player, interrupting his Super Bowl with his underwear. Many, including GLAAD, took the tweets to be an attempt to incite violence against gay men who would find Beckham in his underwear an attractive image. Martin apologized and explained himself: he was actually mocking soccer fans during a football game, not homosexual males. The context of the tweet– one before it with the tag “#superbowl” about actually buying Beckham’s underwear line, and one after mocking Piers Morgan for liking soccer– seems to corroborate Martin’s point, debatable though it might be. After what it called “careful deliberation,” CNN announced today that they would be suspending Martin.

This sparked its own outraged response from many who remembered several offensive comments made by CNN contributors that resulted in no such punishment– most notably Erick Erickson and Dana Loesch, the former for, among other things, threatening to “pull a shotgun” on a census worker and the latter, among still other things, encouraging Marines to urinate on corpses, for America. Naturally, the fact that a comment using the word “ish” in a description of David Beckham appears to pale in comparison to them, resulting in many expressing confusion as to what CNN’s standards really are. Despite appearances, there is a method to the apparent madness of suspending Martin while letting other commentators, most notably the Tea Party wing of CNN (even if Erickson may dispute this) run amok.

This reaction was mostly on the left though; the right, rather than try to take down Martin’s colleagues, reacted with exasperation at the outrage towards Martin. Gay conservative group GOProud founder Christopher Barron defended Martin by noting that he, too, made fun of the same ad. Glenn Beck admitted his distaste for Martin’s comment in general while defending his right to make a joke. “Free Roland Martin!” writes the Daily Caller‘s Jim Treacher, imploring GLAAD to “relax” over Martin’s “stupid” tweets. Newsbusters’ Brent Bozell called the entire ordeal “hilarious” and found the tweets among Martin’s “least offensive.” John Nolte at Big Journalism makes clear that he disagrees ideologically with much of Martin’s opinions, but “the thought of trying to silence him is anathema to everything I believe in.”

RELATED: CNN’s Roland S. Martin Livetweets Dave Chappelle’s Strange Comedy Set

As a conservative, Nolte is right that silencing Martin for his tweets is anathema to conservative philosophy, though he argues this point on First Amendment grounds. But beyond the philosophical ideal of pure freedom of expression, the underlying double standard that regulates “elite” correspondents is a fabrication, in many ways, of what conservatives perceive as the “elite left.” The answer to why Martin is punished when Erickson is not is that they belong to two separate classes of pundits– “elite” and “non-elite.” Non-elites are not expected to speak or behave in any particular way. These are categories that conservative philosophy patently rejects, particularly post-neoconservative philosophy inspired by liberatarianism and Palinist populism in equal measure. Much of that rejection comes from a more hearty understanding of freedom of expression, but also from the perpetual feeling that they belong to a permanent second class of thinkers– thinkers that can get away with saying more outrageous comments at the expense of their reputations in the greater media.

This sort of mindset is a relic of the withering “Old Media” empire, and it is not new: the Dan Rathers of the world must have surely squirmed at the idea of Geraldo Rivera ever being taken seriously, the panic that must have swept Newsweek when some gift shop employee with an email list broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Even in the post-internet world, old media has done its best to maintain boundaries that no longer make sense. There are “journalists” and there are “bloggers;” “public intellectuals” and “muckrakers.”

And Martin is only the most recent in a string of apparent media “elites” punished for seeming human, while “non-elites” enjoy much more extensive freedoms. Slate columnist Dave Weigel left his perch at the Washington Post for privately employing the use of, among other epithets, the colorful Nixonian term “ratfucking.” Weigel belonged to a class of people not permitted to speak that way, and was nominally relocated to a class that could. The story is one of the few of its genre that ends well, with Weigel still the best of the hard-nosed reporters at the Washington Post Co. Martin’s story is still incomplete, but falls along similar lines, the difference being that he exposed his own silly language without the help of FishbowlDC.

RELATED: GLAAD Demands CNN Fire Roland Martin Over David Beckham Tweet

Conservatives are often quick to argue that the double-standard on what is acceptable in the public discourse is one of ideology. That Martin’s story so acutely defies that– particularly in light of the comments of some of his conservative colleagues– shows that many conservatives can see the game in action but have historically had a hard time identifying the players. In this sense, Martin has the wind at his back– and, perhaps with the support of the conservative media community, CNN may recant and keep a valued and original voice on the airwaves that may just come back with newly-acquired wisdom on where the true divides in media actually lie.

Basically, Bolling theorized that the only reason the Obama Administration has gotten into this birth control fight with religious groups is because it’s part of a secret plan to hurt Mitt Romney.

Wait, what? I’ll let him explain:

BOLLING: Can I just throw a conspiracy theory out here? Here’s what I thought. I was sitting at home this morning, I watched it. I saw [Santorum's] win. Then I listened to all the talking heads say, ‘Oh my gosh, Obama really screwed up here. This is a great opening for Conservatives and the Right.’ and it dawned on me-

BOB BECKEL: Screwed up on what?

BOLLING: Good point. Going after this Obamacare, making sure Catholic employers are required to provide sterilization and abortions and whatnot.

BECKEL: Alright.

BOLLING: So, it dawned on me, what if they were trying to derail this big Romney train that won Florida handily, that won Nevada handily. They go, ‘How are we gonna break up this train? How are we gonna break the Right up?’ And they did. They picked the very, very right side, partisan issue.

So, let me get this straight. President Obama’s staff got worried that Mitt Romney was doing so well that they made a deliberate decision to piss off our nation’s Catholics so that other Christians will also be pissed off and will want to get him out of office which will cause them to vote in the primary but, since they’re religious, they’ll vote for Rick Santorum instead of Romney which will hurt Romney’s momentum so that he won’t be able to beat Obama. Uh huh. Let that stew in your heads a bit.

After listening to the whole thing, Bob Beckel looked at Bolling and responded, “You know something, there was somebody on the grassy knoll in Dallas too.”

Andrea Tantaros, however, was much more accepting of the theory, positing that the Democrats want to talk about social issues like this Catholic thing until the election instead of other topics. That makes a whole lot of sense too. Clearly the Democrats are driving this conversation which is why they have their favorite media network devoting an entire segment to it on every show. You know what network I’m talking about; Fox News.

Perhaps in a helpful attempt to make Bolling’s theory seem more rational, Greg Gutfeld followed it up with a rambling, stream of consciousness analogy comparing Mitt Romney to Marsha Brady’s boyfriend in the episode of The Brady Bunch where she gets hit in the nose with a football.

Basically, this was a very confusing couple of minutes of television. And you can watch it all, courtesy of Fox News, below:

RELATED: Lawrence O’Donnell Targets Asian Actress In Hoekstra Ad, Calls For ‘Dirty Politics’ Boycott

And, so. Here’s this:

My co-worker Jon Bershad was watching this video with me, and he brought up another routine that has a very similar “point,” but was executed quite differently. In Improv Everywhere’s (recently re-released) “Meet A Black Person” sketch, the group set an actual, real-life Black Person™ up in Aspen, Colorado — a place, the video notes, that is but 0.44 percent black. He then proceeded to introduce himself to many white people enjoying a nice ski vacation.

Have a look:

Ha! And cringe! And more ha!

Now, I think Ackerman’s point here (and I’m sure you’ll happily and graciously let me know if you think I’m over-analyzing) is to do more than simply point out ignorance regarding Black History Month and famous black figures throughout history. This bit seems to focus on a wider-ranging ignorance and awkwardness that exists between two groups, as well as point out the manner in which people can sometimes live in a homogenized bubble with very little awareness of or interest in anything that exists outside of that. And that’s ripe for humor. Awesome concept; I’m on board. But. There are problems.

First, I’d like to ask Ackerman (whose work I’m, admittedly, not familiar with) if setting this up at a well-known Mormon school (called out by name in the video) is a deliberate choice. Is this supposed to be commentary on Mormons? Religious education? Religion in general? Conservatives?

And I’d also, you know, like to ask Ackerman about his use of blackface. The video notes that only three people said something about Ackerman not really being black, and that he finds this disturbing. But… why? Was this one of the video’s goals – to try and see whether (mostly) white BYU students would be able to read a dark person as being “not black”?

I guess I’m left with more questions than laughs.

What do you guys think, though? Was the video funny? What worked, what didn’t? And what, my dears, is your take on his use of blackface?

h/t Dave Ackerman, via BuzzFeed

“It can walk or whatever you call that,” CNN Newsroom anchor Brooke Baldwin quipped.

On CNN.com, Jennifer Rizzo describes the features of the, er — creature:

Designed to carry 400 pounds of equipment, travel up to 20 miles at a time, and move at speeds as fast as 10 mph, the LS3 is meant to fit into a Marine or Army unit in a “natural way,” the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said in a news release.

I call it nightmare fuel — and so does the rest of the Abrams Media office, who stopped what they were doing and let out a collective “what the what?” Instead of handling heavy payloads, perhaps we should sic it on Taliban fighters — because it would be super effective…and now, I need to start thinking happy thoughts.

Watch the segment — if you dare — via CNN below:

Joe Hildebrand

Joe Hildebrand began by tweeting “I just want to say I think it’s great that Sydney Airport is providing so many jobs for the mentally handicapped.”

This prompted a reasoned, articulate rebuke from columnist Stella Young, herself a disabled Australian. Her column was noteworthy in that it eschewed shaming, or demands for firing, in favor of a simple plea for empathy: (the whole thing is more than worth a read)

Like the countless people who make thoughtless jokes about disability, I don’t think Joe Hildebrand was conscious of the ableism inherent in his silly joke. But it was there. And the thing with speaking from a position of privilege is that you’re not often asked to think about how your language affects other people – and when you are, it seems everyone jumps up and down complaining about how the system is oppressing their freedom of speech, with little thought for those whom the speech routinely oppresses.

Much like the homosexual community has to deal with people (okay, mostly teenagers – the rest of us have finally cottoned on that it’s more than a little bit homophobic) referring to things that are a bit shit as ‘so gay’ in our post-ironic society. I find it hard to imagine Hildebrand referring to the staff at Sydney Airport as ‘so gay’ – so why is it still okay for disability to be treated as synonymous with subpar performance?

Hildebrand’s tweet is offensive because it uses disability as a shortcut to mean “crap”. And in doing so, he reveals a subtle and no doubt unconscious contempt for disabled people that is still rife in our culture. At best, it displays a blatant ignorance of the very real barriers faced by people with disability, some of which, ironically, are employment and air travel. At its worst, it assumes that jokes like these are okay – because they’re not about anyone important. Perhaps it’s assumed that people with intellectual disabilities won’t ‘get it’ anyway. That they can’t be hurt by a joke they don’t understand.

Young’s message appeared to have gotten through, as Hildebrand retweeted a link that described the piece as “passionate and articulate.”

Yeah, not so much. Hildebrand followed up that tweet with these:

Just want to say how sorry I am for using the words “mentally handicapped” in a tweet. That was really retarded of me.

Just want to say I’m sorry for offending so many people by using the word “retarded” in a tweet. That was really Irish of me.

Sorry I just offended so many people by using the term “Irish”. Just having a blonde moment.

Then, just to be sure everyone knew he was specifically spitting on Young’s rebuttal, he retweeted this:

@mostlyFilth @Joe_Hildebrand your series of faux pas today has been pretty gay.

If Hildebrand is anything like Rush Limbaugh, the courage he displays in the face of the mentally disabled, the wheelchair-bound, the Irish, and the gay ought to stand him in good stead with his audience.

This brand of “defiance” crops up quite a bit here, but the thing that people like Hildebrand or Rush Limbaugh fail to realize is that what they call “language policing” is really just an attempt to let people know when they’re being assholes, and affording them the opportunity to stop.

(h/t Kate Doak)

Martin, who spent Sunday evening live-Tweeting the game and several commercials, made a remark about an H&M commercial for David Beckham‘s line of men’s underwear. The ad, for those who missed it, features close-ups of the soccer player clad only in a pair of briefs.

“If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad,” Martin Tweeted, “smack the ish out of him!”

Martin insisted he was taking a jab at soccer fans, not the gay community. For your reference, here’s his original comment, including the Tweets that came directly before and after:

On Monday, Martin published a statement on the matter on his website:

Fam, let me address the issue that some in the LGBT community have raised regarding some of my Super Bowl tweets yesterday.

I made several cracks about soccer as I do all the time. I was not referring to sexuality directly or indirectly regarding the David Beckham ad, and I’m sorry folks took it otherwise.

It was meant to be a deliberately over the top and sarcastic crack about soccer; I do not advocate violence of any kind against anyone gay, or not. As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, anytime soccer comes up during football season it’s another chance for me to take a playful shot at soccer, nothing more.

At this time, the duration of Martin’s suspension is unknown.

Additional reporting by Alex Alvarez.

Wall Street, of which Mayor Bloomberg is a billionaire alum and continues to rely on for his tax base, should be thankful and conciliatory, not defiant and obtuse. Yet in response to Occupy Wall Street protests, we get this:

“Instead of vilifying our most successful businesses, we should be supporting them and encouraging them to remain in New York City,” expressed John Paulson, a billionaire hedge fund trader, in a press release that also described his “$28 billion, 120-person fund as an exemplar of the American Dream.”

That’s not the mark of a man who is in touch with the reality so many Americans are currently facing.

And even though Wall Street received one of the biggest bailouts in history from the current administration, they support Mitt Romney (a millionaire alum) by a 5-1 margin, while President Obama fuddles with a foreclosure crisis he can’t avert, and is hastening to approve a weak multi-billion dollar settlement with lenders over foreclosure abuses. If that weren’t enough, President Obama is suggesting that he is willing to waive certain requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley in order to motivate corporations to hire new workers. This defies logic for two reasons:

(1) Relaxing rules that were just passed by Congress to better regulate public companies will only lead to all stakeholders — businesses, consumers, and Congress itself — realizing there’s no commitment to regulatory change.

(2) Worker productivity, the measure of output of each worker, has been high for years as the economy struggled through a recession and businesses cut back on labor expenses. But it really couldn’t get much higher, because there are only so many hours each employee can work — the manufacturing sector saw, “the largest quarterly gain in hours worked since the fourth quarter of 2005,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Businesses are bound to start hiring once consumer demand returns to its regular levels. No amount of administration kowtowing or rule bending will change that. And increasing consumer demand starts with consumer confidence (which, by the way, has increased for five straight months, something the administration does deserve credit for), not allowing businesses to do as they please.

Ironically, at a time when there couldn’t be both better timing and a better platform in which to deliver an economic message with populist zeal, the administration has wasted its opportunities: Occupy Wall Street has brought income inequality to the forefront of politics for months; the GOP frontrunner, Mitt Romney, pays one of the lowest tax rates of any major presidential candidate in the last 25 years; the man who trails him, Newt Gingrich, wants to enact a tax plan that would have Romney paying a 0% rate on the far majority of his income (which is capital gains and is currently taxed at a 15% rate). Next thing you know, Gingrich would be suggesting the government pays millionaires to earn an income. As I noted in an article last month, most taxpayers don’t have that much capital gains — only 1.4% of taxpayers’ incomes mostly consist of them. So Newt’s plan is fully focused on the 1%. But what about the rest of us?

It’s past time that President Obama tell the American people what’s in it for them. Because the 1% is not looking to save him.

It is that penchant for unvarnished spleen that has earned Uygur the following he has, but has also led to some backlash among liberals. He doesn’t apologize for it, and frequently warns viewers that they’re going to get that unfiltered view, no matter the subject. For what it’s worth, I’d rather know what someone honestly thinks than not, but in this case, Cenk is jumping the gun a little bit, and goes too far, and in the wrong direction, in his criticism of the President.

Cenk cites polling data that shows overwhelming (58%) support for the Preventive Services Mandate among Catholics, with 52% supporting its application to religious employers like hospitals and schools. Another survey shows that 99% of reproductive-age women have used contraception, and 89% of fertile, sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant are currently practicing it. His conclusion is that this is an “enormously winning issue,” so “why on God’s green Earth” would the administration compromise?

Uygur played a clip from Tuesday’s Morning Joe, in which senior Obama adviser David Axelrod talks about such a compromise, and he’s right on target throughout 99% of the segment, concentrating on the need to extend the protections of the Preventive Services Mandate to all women, while respecting the “concerns” and “prerogatives” of religious organizations. The competing interests here are equal protection for millions of women, versus religious accommodation, not religious liberty. The First Amendment does not grant churches the right to impose their beliefs on employees who serve the general public.

Where Axelrod slips up is in saying that “we certainly don’t want to infringe on religious liberty,” which tacitly validates that disastrous, fallacious frame. There’s nothing wrong with accommodating the wishes of these organizations, as long as the rights of women aren’t also compromised. Conceding this “religious liberty” argument is the problem. It is this argument that makes this a losing issue for the President, and it is the administration’s failure to seize the framing of this issue as an equal protection argument from the outset that has led to this controversy.

Even greater than the administration’s failure, though, is the mainstream media’s, in the same regard. Even when they’re pushing back against it, the “religious liberty” frame is still the dominant reference point in this discussion, because squeaky religious wheels are getting all of the ink. If every mainstream newscast explained the mandate the way Cenk did at the beginning of this segment, and if the cable networks sought guests who are among the women being denied these services (surely, they exist), this thing would be playing out quite differently. Right now, it’s a reverse witch hunt, with religious leaders (and lots of their left-leaning followers) tying themselves to stakes of their own making.

The fact is, aside from Axelrod’s slip-up, the White House has consistently, if not aggressively, responded to this controversy with the appropriate set of priorities. As long as any eventual compromise recognizes those priorities, there’s nothing wrong with it. Unfortunately, there’s no compromise that will turn this into a win (the mainstream media has turned this into Obama vs. Church, rather than Church vs. Women), but if one can be reached, it’s the generous thing to do.

Here’s the clip, from Current TV:

I have followed the Court’s Citizens United decision particularly closely because my dad, Floyd Abrams, was one of the lawyers who argued it (for free, incidentally) in the Supreme Court, on behalf of Senator Mitch McConnell. Their challenge was to a part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that barred corporations and unions from engaging in what they argued was classic political speech — producing and showing a movie on television that criticized a candidate for President and spending money for ads that support or denounce that candidate. They prevailed in a divided 5-4 ruling. Subsequently, and not surprisingly, the ruling became one of the most controversial opinions of our day, with many on the left denouncing the ruling as a fundamental threat to our democracy.

Let me say at the outset that I don’t entirely agree with the position my dad took in the case. He sought and got a broad ruling striking down major parts of the statute. In my view, the Court could and should have decided the case on far narrower grounds, thereby avoiding the need to overturn some past Supreme Court rulings (On a personal note, I have also been amazed at the vitriol directed at my civil libertarian father from the left over his defense of a constitutional principle he firmly believes in. Defend a Nazi’s right to march? No problem. Defend the most repugnant members of our society’s right to speak? Absolutely. Defend a corporation’s right to engage in the political process? Inexcusable). But my personal view on the nuances of the ruling is beside the point. This is about what the ruling said and didn’t say, what it did and didn’t do. And about how so many in the media keep getting the ruling and its impact dead wrong.

There are two media myths and inventions that are most commonly cited.

Myth 1: The Court invalidated disclosure requirements in political advertising, thereby allowing donors to remain anonymous.

Wrong. The Court ruled just the opposite and upheld, by an 8-1 vote, the McCain-Feingold requirement of identifying donors.

Myth 2: That the Court’s ruling in Citizens United opened the door to wealthy individuals like Sheldon Adelson to pour millions of dollars into PACs.

Wrong again. The Citizens United ruling had NOTHING to do with the ability of individuals to spend their money to support candidates. That had been decided back in 1976, when the Supreme Court decided that the First Amendment protected the right of individuals to make unlimited independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates for federal office. In Citizens United, the Court ruled that corporations and unions were entitled to the same rights. It wasn’t that long ago, after all, that the Swift Boat ads, legally paid for by individuals, soiled John Kerry during the 2004 campaign.

But reading the New York Times, Washington Post and watching MSNBC in particular, it is hardly surprising that the public would be confused. On January 9, in a front-page piece on the influence of Newt Gingrich supporter Sheldon Adelson, the Times inaccurately reported that Adelson’s $5 million donation to a pro-Gingrich SuperPAC “underscores” how the Citizens United case, “has made it possible for a wealthy individual to influence an election.” On January 14th, a column by Gail Collins asserted that, “all these billionaires would not be so worrisome if the Supreme Court had not totally unleashed their donation-making power in the Citizens United case.” The opinion, in fact, did nothing of the sort. I don’t know if it’s sad or just troubling that the Times issued two corrections on the earlier piece, including the year Citizens United was decided, but none on its repeated and major error about the ruling itself.

The Washington Post has done no better. On January 11th, Dana Milbank, writing of Adelson’s $5 million donation to a pro-Gingrich SuperPAC, asserted that it was, “the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which made such unlimited contributions possible.” And on February 5th, E.J. Dionne Jr. blamed Citizens United for permitting, “the brute force of millionaires and billionaires … to have their way.”  The Post published a letter from Floyd Abrams today highlighting the error, but without a formal correction.

It seems this faulty analysis has worn off on MSNBC host Chris Matthews as well, since he, too, regularly misreports the case’s ruling. “Under this new court ruling, Citizens United, your opponent can run a terrible campaign and relentlessly destroy your reputation without putting your fingerprints on the ad,” Matthews said. “You don’t have to say, ‘I’m Mitt Romney and I paid for this ad.’ So now in Iowa, where the people don’t like negative campaigning, you can run the bombing campaign or destroy your opponent without having your face or voice associated with it. That’s what Newt wasn’t aware of. It’s his fault that conservatives like them have gone along with these court decisions, that have allowed big contributors, wealthy people to put unlimited amounts of money into negative campaigns without putting the name of their favorite candidate in the ad.”

This is a double dose of wrong, since the disclosure requirement in the law was upheld and the case had nothing to do with individuals. One might forgive Al Jazeera for getting it wrong and it’s not unusual to see partisan advocates misstate a ruling like this to further a political agenda, but the mainstream American media should have no excuse.

NBC’s Michael Isikoff seems to have become the network’s Citizens United “expert,” since he addresses it in so many of his appearances. According to Isikoff, “the ‘independent’ SuperPACs –thanks to last year’s Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case — can collect unlimited amounts from wealthy donors and directly from corporations. This gives them the latitude to potentially spend even more money than the presidential campaigns themselves, which are still constrained by official limits of $2,500 per donor.” It’s true that Citizens United changed the law with regard to corporate spending, but the opinion did not change the law on an individual’s ability to “spend even more money than the campaigns themselves.” Before and after Citizens United, individuals could give unlimited amounts to outside groups. On January 10th, leading up to the New Hampshire primary, Isikoff and Reverend Al Sharpton engaged in a conversation on MSNBC, in which both men demonstrated a misunderstanding about the ruling by repeatedly talking about the supposed impact on the ability of wealthy individuals to impact elections.

Last month, Isikoff enhanced Matthews’ misunderstanding of the opinion’s impact on disclosure:

Matthews: It seems to me, Michael Isikoff, that this is going to be message out
of Iowa, the power of these third party or SuperPACs, where you don’t have
to put the candidate’s name on it, you don’t put the names of the
contributors on it, the money is unlimited, and you can basically destroy
your opponent if you have got enough rich friends. Legal, right?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Absolutely, under the Supreme
Court ruling Citizens United last year.

So is there any argument at all to support their claims? Not on the case’s impact on disclosure requirements. But on the effect on individual donors, the strongest argument is a sort of psychological one articulated by law professor Rick Hasen, who concedes that, yes, it is true that individuals could donate unlimited amounts before Citizens United, (he points out that George Soros gave $23 million to help John Kerry), but because a “legal cloud” hung over what were referred to as 527′s, some might have been reluctant to dump huge sums into them. Well, that hardly serves as cover for the myriad of journalists and media figures claiming as a matter of fact that Citizens United opened the door for the Sheldon Adelsons of the world.

This case has led to some heated dinner conversations in the Abrams household, but in the media that debate often appears to be based on a ruling that never occurred. How many times have I heard people wonder aloud how Citizens United could have treated money as speech? It didn’t. It held, as NYU Professor Geoffrey Stone pointed out in the Huffington Post, that when the government regulates money, “because it is being used to enable free speech it necessarily raises a First Amendment issue.” Can a corporation really receive First Amendment protection? The New York Times Company, The National Broadcasting Company and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting among many others, sure think so.

You may disagree with the opinion, you may think that expanding the ability of corporations to fund campaign messaging is a true danger, or just, as I do, that outside money is a major concern for our democratic system. But that doesn’t change the fact that the political chattering set ought to be far more concerned and outraged by the indolence, indifference or just bias, that has led to the widespread misinformation by the media about what the court actually considered and ultimately ruled.

The main thrust of Olbermann’s commentary is that the resignation of Komen senior VP Karen Handel is not enough to restore the broken trust of women who support, and rely on, the charity to keep politics out of the fight against breast cancer. It’s a sentiment that has been echoed far and wide in the media. Handel and Co. have tried to portray the stunning backlash against the decision as bullying, but that’s a bit like Nelson Muntz crying when someone punches him back. Against the wishes of its supporters, the Komen board wielded their fundraising muscle to made a political statement. The impulse to protect Komen, because it has become so ubiquitous, so identified with its cause, too pink to fail, underscores the importance of restoring that trust.

Olbermann’s comparison of the right’s coordinated attacks on Planned Parenthood to McCarthy-style witch hunts is based on Komen’s original rationale (or pretext) for the defunding, the partisan congressional investigation launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL). More broadly, though, the right’s campaign against women’s health care probably has a better historical analog in the religious Inquisitions of the Middle Ages. Not content to target abortion rights, Republicans have widened their attack to include contraception, the vaccine for cervical cancer, and in this instance, breast cancer screening and prevention, all in service of imposing their own morality on women’s health care.

Where Olbermann crosses the line is in his presumptuous stewardship of Susan Komen’s memory, an inappropriate intrusion into another’s personal grief. “Mrs. Brinker has dishonored both her sister’s memory, and this essential cause,” he said, in an obvious and manipulative attempt to shame Ms. Brinker. Keith Olbermann, as far as I know, never met Susan Komen, and really has no claim to her memory.

This misstep does illustrate an important facet of this controversy, though. I never met Susan Komen, either, but as someone who cares deeply for a great number of people with breasts, that name does mean something to me. Until now, it has meant thousands of little pink yogurt tops, and pink towels at NFL games, and ribbons, and all things breast cancer awareness. As this controversy played out this week, though, it made me wonder, if that all goes away, what’s there to replace it? Some will find Keith Olbermann’s declaration that this “witch hunt” will “kill some women” overwrought, but for those whose only access to health care is often from Planned Parenthood, that’s a very real possibility.

A great arachno-American once said “With great power comes great responsibility,” and it is the stewardship of that responsibility, in her late sister’s name, that Nancy Brinker ought to think about before she decides to make it into a big, pink political football.

Here’s the clip, from Current TV:

RELATED: GLAAD Demands CNN Fire Roland Martin Over David Beckham Tweet

Martin has since argued that his tweets were actually insulting soccer, a claim Beck mocked. However, Beck said he had no idea whether or not Martin was actually a homophobe. However, he seemed to be very sure in his feelings on the CNN contributor’s intelligence.

“GLAAD, you should have been on this bandwagon a long time ago. There is a myriad of reasons for getting him fired from CNN. He is an idiot. I have to stand with him, unfortunately, and say that you don’t fire people for what they say in their personal life or what they believe. You fire them because they’re idiots.”

It should be noted that this was clearly not an objective assessment from Beck. He explained that he used to work with Martin during his time at CNN and alleged that the man had told more lies about him over the years than he can count. Like his response to Anthony Weiner’s misfortunes, Beck was obviously enjoying his time watching someone he thought had slighted him get in trouble. At one point, he joked that, if there should be anyone out there being homophobic, it’s a good thing it’s someone in an ascot.

Watch the clip from GBTV below. At the end, Beck also joins Bill O’Reilly in defending Ellen DeGeneres from anti-gay protesters.

(h/t HuffPo)

“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign companies – to spend without limit in our elections. Well, I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.”

Obama supporters have already started the requisite circling of the wagons, claiming that even though the President was against creation of Super PACs (which is true but makes this decision worse, not better), he has no choice since his GOP competition will be using Super PACs with impunity. That’s wrong on a few accounts:

(1) Long before the president put his blessing on SuperPacs, analysts estimated the Obama reelection machine would raise $1 billion — the highest total ever raised in campaign history, which beats the previous total of $750 million that Obama set in 2008. To put that in perspective, $750 million is more than the combined total that George W. Bush and John Kerry raised in 2004.

(2) It would be rare for an incumbent president to be out-raised financially. In fact, it’s very likely that it has never been done before. And it’s not likely to happen to President Obama — as of August 2011 he had done more fundraisers for himself, Democratic committees or candidates, than the five presidents who preceded him.

(3) President Obama has yet to start his reelection campaign in earnest yet has already raised over $125 million, more than double that of his closest competitor, Mitt Romney, and has $81 million in cash on hand, four times that of Mitt Romney.

Bending the Law?

Moreover, sitting cabinet officials will speak at Priorities USA engagements with one caveat: they won’t directly raise money. However, flying federal officials around on the taxpayers’ dime for political purposes is why the Hatch Act, which exists to prevent the use of federal tax dollars for campaigning purposes, was created. Already the administration has gotten very close to the line. The LA Times reviewed fundraisers (not affiliated with Priorities USA, but otherwise Democratic) where cabinet officials have appeared and found “[s]ome people who have attended recent fundraisers described situations that came close to the [legal] limit.” Let’s hope the Obama Administration, for their sake, is better at gauging where, exactly, that line is than the George W. Bush Administration — whom the Office of Special Counsel found violated the Hatch Act on numerous occasions and even had a campaign agenda dotted with appearances by cabinet members. To be clear, plenty of past administrations have grappled with the nuances of following the Hatch Act. The difference is none of those administrations had the ability to raise the kind of money President Obama is able to raise.

Which leads to the what President Obama could have afforded to do concerning Super PACs: vowed not to support or receive money from Super PACs. He could have denounced their use and continued (in earnest) to push for changes in election law that would have nullified the Citizens United decision. But he didn’t. And does one really think he’ll make it a priority to change it after the election? If so, how could Congress take him seriously? What effect will his hypocrisy have? Very little.

Sure, the GOP can lash out and say Obama has gone back on his word but that won’t mean much to an independent voter that looks askance at what the entire political system has become: pay for play. And progressives won’t take Obama to task — not when so much is at stake and the election is around the corner. So to President Obama it was a net win. Only principle lost. But it’s been losing for a long time anyway.

RELATED: Dana Perino Outraged That M.I.A., ‘Not Even An American,’ Performed At Super Bowl

Yep, only three hours later, Schultz had a run down on the big game and, after taking on Gisele Bundchen’s potty mouth and Rush Limbaugh’s NoseGate 2012, Schultz went after Perino and her channel:

“So, according to Dana Perino, you can`t deliver a message about world peace unless you`re an American. The super bowl set a new record for viewership, Fox News continues to set the record for the most
ridiculous things ever said on television.”

I didn’t get a chance to watch the entirety of The Ed Show last night but I hope Schultz didn’t say anything foolish himself. As we all know, that would have led to him being mocked by Sean Hannity who would have been mocked by Anderson Cooper who would have been mocked by Joe Scarborough who would have been mocked by Greg Gutfeld who would have been…

Watch the clip from MSNBC below:

Signs of trouble began in December, when Olbermann abandoned his glitch-prone set for an austere black background, and escalated a dispute with management about his participation in the network’s coverage of the Iowa caucuses. Now, in a lengthy feature, Newsweek‘s Rebecca Dana reports that Olbermann may be close to walking away, and scuttling former President-Elect Al Gore‘s plan to build a 24 hour cable news channel around him.

RELATED: Bill Press Hosts Current TV’s Florida Primary Coverage On Countdown

The report doesn’t add much flesh to the bones that have already been reported, and what flesh there is comes mostly from an unnamed source at the network, who confirms what most observers probably already concluded: that Gore and company are doing everything they can to keep their temperamental star happy. The source also paints a grim picture of Olbermann’s future at Current, and consequently, of Current’s future.

There’s nothing wrong with this kind of sourcing, mind you, but in Keith Olbermann’s case, it’s worth noting that even a perfectly honest and reliable source might succumb to some level of wishful thinking. Let’s face it, talented people can be difficult. Not all of them, mind you. Rachel Maddow has managed to step in and fill the franchise player role at MSNBC, while still being universally regarded as the Queen of Nice, and even that network’s polarizing Ed Schultz saves his firebreathing for the big show.

But some talented people can be difficult, and the people around them can react in one of two ways. They can either decide the talent is worth the difficulty, and manage it, or they can become resentful. When you’re the “complicated guy” in the cast of According To Jim, you probably won’t be around long, but when a network builds an entire programming strategy around you, they’re going to put up with a lot.

By all accounts, Keith Olbermann is more than worth it to the management of Current TV, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some unhappy campers a bit farther down the food chain. The host may, indeed, be bored or unhappy, but the question these reports of his departure never really get around to answering is, where is he supposed to go? Set aside the burning of bridges, now that he has become so closely identified with progressive politics, where else would he even fit now?

The media types that I’ve spoken with, though, all see an unhappy end for Olbermann and Current, so it’s possible that if he doesn’t remain there, he goes the Bobby Fischer route, just takes his money and vanishes. He might have the tortured soul for that, but talent-wise, even he’s got to know that he’s not the Bobby Fischer of cable news. Maybe he could ratchet the tortured soul setting down a bit. He’s at John Belushi, when he ought to be closer to Jim Belushi.

Unfortunately, all of this drama has eroded the fruits of that talent. His once-appealing wit has become increasingly bitter and petty, and has served to undercut the authority with which he was once able to speak. It’s tough to segue from a fingerbang joke into an impassioned soliloquy about civil liberties. Also, the black background was kinda cool for about a minute, but he really ought to bring the set back.

That Newsweek report does shed some light on the business side of Current (the good news: the network is great at drawing advertiser-attractive younger viewers; the bad news: they’re racing against time to renew carriage agreements with cable systems that expire over the next few years), and Current president David Bohrman revealed to Dana that the network is now trying to develop a morning show to compete with Morning Joe (hmmm, now who could they get to host that?).

All of this depends greatly on Keith Olbermann not just staying put, but getting his head back in the game.

O’Brien did a good job of challenging that false premise, but allowed guest Rep. Marcia Blackburn (R-TN) to slip in the lie that the mandate covers the “abortion pill.”

RELATED: Contraceptive Mandate Is Not About Religious Liberty, It’s About Female Liberty

Ms. O’Brien repeatedly pressed Rep. Blackburn to explain how the administration’s decision had anything to do with religious liberty. In responding, Rep. Blackburn inserted a popular lie about the mandate, one which the media has been slow to correct.

“It is about forcing employers to provide things that go against their religious beliefs,” Rep. Blackburn said. “And when you have individuals that go to church on Sunday and put money in the offering plate, they need to be assured that that money is not going to go and pay for contraception items, for abortion pills. And this mandate covers all FDA-approved medications.”

RELATED: This Week Host Lets George Will Lie About Contraceptive Mandate And ‘Abortion-Inducing Drugs’

The “abortion pill,” RU-486, is not covered by the mandate, of course, but Rep. Blackburn was likely trying to conflate emergency contraception with the abortion pill. They are not the same thing, so while some religions may promote that idea as an article of faith, it is a medical fact that they are not the same. Emergency contraception prevents pregnancy from occurring, and is for use long before a pregnancy is even possible.

O’Brien’s other guest, the ACLU’s Louise Melling, explained why the mandate does not infringe on religious liberty. “This respects religious liberty,” Melling said. “Churches don’t have to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their package. What this rule says is institutions like hospitals and charities and schools that open their doors to the public, serve primarily the public, don’t have a primary purpose of religion, have to offer the same insurance everybody else does. 98% of American women use contraception, including Catholics. This say it is you serve the public, you play by public rules.”

RELATED: Fox News Analyst Falsely States New Regs Require Religious Employers To Provide Abortions

The “religious liberty” argument has even gained traction among Democrats, partially because the Obama administration, and even people like Ms. Melling, have failed to make the simple, essential argument that this decision is about equal protection under the law for women. The Preventive Services Mandate itself is about achieving parity for women’s preventive health services with everyone else’s, and the decision about the “conscience exemption” is about extending that protection to women who work in institutions that serve the general public, religious or not.

While I disagree strongly with most of what he says about this, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough deserves a bit of credit for pointing out, this morning, that the Preventive Services Mandate doesn’t cover abortion services of any kind, and I’d even tend to agree that the administration did a poor job of rolling this out. By letting it just sort of pop out and lie there, shivering, the administration has allowed the measure’s critics to control the discussion, so that even when they do a good job of defending the decision, the best they can do is convince people they’re not infringing on religious liberty. There’s a bumper sticker.

RELATED: Dear Media: There’s No Such Thing As A ‘Morning-After Abortion Pill’

They should have announced this decision with a strong statement about equal protection, and about protecting women from having their employer’s religious beliefs imposed on them. Instead of answering questions like “Why should Catholic hospitals provide contraceptive coverage?” the media could, and should, be asking “Why should a woman be denied the same rights as others, just because she works at a Catholic hospital?”

Here’s the clip, from CNN’s Starting Point:

RELATED: Gipper Move: President Obama Won’t Unilaterally Disarm On SuperPACs

Here’s a section from the blog post:

“The President opposed the Citizens United decision. He understood that with the dramatic growth in opportunities to raise and spend unlimited special-interest money, we would see new strategies to hide it from public view. He continues to support a law to force full disclosure of all funding intended to influence our elections, a reform that was blocked in 2010 by a unanimous Republican filibuster in the U.S. Senate. And the President favors action—by constitutional amendment, if necessary—to place reasonable limits on all such spending.

But this cycle, our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands.

Over the last few months, Super PACs affiliated with Republican presidential candidates have spent more than $40 million on television and radio, almost all of it for negative ads.

…

With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm.

Therefore, the campaign has decided to do what we can, consistent with the law, to support Priorities USA in its effort to counter the weight of the GOP Super PAC.”

This morning on CNN, Obama supporter Russell Simmons defended the President’s “second Super PAC wrong to make a campaign finance reform right” approach.

Simmons was a guest on Starting Point and was discussing the designer clothes he’s produced for the President’s campaign. The Republicans have been trying to stop the sale of such items because they believe it’s possible that it breaks campaign finance rules. This only makes sense. Why shouldn’t we have a system so confusing that it’s totally legal for corporations to secretly funnel millions and millions of dollars into campaigns but people aren’t sure if you’re allowed to sell a tote bag?

Anyway, Simmons defended the Obama products and used that to go into broader topics:

“I think the president should use whatever resources he has within the law. But, you understand, the problem is the law. The problem is that we allow so much money in politics and there are so many people funding horrible- These super PACs have gotten out of control. It’s crystal clear, when you watch the Republican primary, that it’s only money that rules this democracy. And, until the laws are changed, the president should play by any rules available.”

Soledad O’Brien challenged him, saying that this is the “art of mutual destruction.” Simmons countered by comparing it to the fight over the tax cuts for the rich. He pointed out that he’s all for raising the taxes on the rich and that he’d like to pay higher taxes, but, until the rules are changed and every rich person is paying higher taxes, he’s not going to “write a blank check” by himself. Basically, he knows what’s right but he’s sure as heck not gonna be the first fool to try it.

That may sound like a depressing way of looking at things, but it’s necessary. Lets go back to Obama’s need to use a Super PAC. If the Republicans are ruining the sport of baseball by pumping their bodies with democracy ruining steroids, President Obama doesn’t have a chance of winning a game unless he grabs the needle too. Then, after he’s won the World Series, he can eliminate the performance enhancing drugs.

Sure, Super PACs make it so that anyone who isn’t a billionaire or a corporation has basically no say in our government, but we need to use them to destroy them. To use another, more Swiftian, analogy, lets say the presidency was decided by an eating contest but, instead of eating hot dogs, the food of choice was poor people’s babies. The Republicans have already eaten millions of babies. President Obama needs to pick up a fork soon, or he won’t be able to save our children in the future.

So chow down, President Obama! Chow down, Mitt Romney! And chow down, nation!

We can only fix our problems by embracing them. We can only become a good America again by becoming the best bad America we can be!

The President’s reelection campaign has been raising money at a record clip, but as campaign manager Jim Messina has been warning for months, recent FEC filings show that despite a hefty advantage over his Republican rivals’ campaigns, outside Republican groups have been pouring enough cash into the race to dwarf the campaigns’ spending. Republican SuperPACs have raised north of $90 million, while Democratic outside groups have only raised $19 million.

So, despite his previous objections to the influence of outside money in elections, President Obama has decided to encourage donors to give to Priorities USA, the SuperPAC started by former White House staffers Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney, and to make certain administration and campaign officials available to speak at Priorities fundraisers.

A spokesman for the RNC was predictably quick to criticize the decision:

The Republican National Committee sharply criticized the decision. A spokesman, Joe Pounder, declared: “Yet again, Barack Obama has proven he will literally do anything to win an election, including changing positions on the type of campaign spending he called nothing short of ‘a threat to our democracy.”

There are even some Democrats who are apparently “confused” by the move, but the President’s position hasn’t changed. Believing in a level playing field doesn’t mean you’re obligated to kneel on an uneven one. Just as late President Ronald Reagan refused to unilaterally disarm the United States even though he wanted to see nuclear weapons “banished from the face of this Earth,” President Obama has decided not to unilaterally disarm in the face of an ominous nuclear fundraising arsenal, despite his desire to wipe them out.

Ironically, the success or failure of this move sets up a sort of Catch 22 for the President. According to The New York Times, some Democratic fundraisers see the SuperPAC money gap as a function of Wall Street’s anger at the President’s attempts to rein them in, which could mean that even with his blessing, the 1% might continue to shovel their cash in only one direction:

But major donors to Mr. Obama said in interviews that they were not sure the Democratic super PAC’s lackluster fund-raising was due entirely to the president’s public misgivings about outside spending. One longtime, high-dollar Democratic fund-raiser said it was also partly a result of Wall Street’s anger at Mr. Obama’s statements and policies concerning bank regulation, some of which have sent former Obama donors and fund-raisers to the Republicans.

Whether you think President Obama has done enough to rein in Wall Street, he clearly has less to offer them than the Republicans do. The only thing he can offer them is the possibility that he might win. In the past, moneyed interests had to hedge their bets a little, but with the ability to spend without limit, there’s little incentive to do so.

RELATED: The Authenticity Hoax: M.I.A. vs. Lynne Hirschberg

Perino’s comments came during a discussion Greg Gutfeld began with a description of M.I.A. as an “okay singer who marries catchy hooks to adolescent agitprop,” or “Betty Boop reading Mao’s Little Red Book.” He went on to explain M.I.A.’s outspoken comments against wealth while marrying a wealthy heir, and concluded that, hey, “it beats the Black-Eyed Peas.” Bob Beckel suggested it was reasonable for the FCC to fine the network, though Eric Bolling noted that there really isn’t anything that the network could do to prevent something like that, as “it’s lip-synced… you can’t have a seven second delay.”

Perino then got her turn, and she argued that it was all-around terrible. It seemed to have been meant as an off-hand joke comment at first, and may have continued to be as she chided Madonna (who hasn’t exactly spoken with anything resembling an American accent for some time) for squandering an event co-headlined LMFAO, Cee-Lo Green, and Nicki Minaj by featuring a weird foreigner. But she pressed on with it long enough for her point to be at least somewhat serious, comparing the performance to the pre-game crooning of “America the Beautiful” by Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert (Wikipedia tells me these are country singers) and Kelly Clarkson‘s version of the national anthem (Clarkson must make up the America points™ from Perino she loses for supporting Ron Paul by winning a reality TV contest with the word “American” in it). “Why can’t we have some America in our football?” she demands, before the conversation turns to Patriot Tom Brady‘s wife… Brazilian Gisele Bundchen.

Surely there are plenty of problems with this argument on its face, if taken seriously, starting with the plain fact that there is so much to hate about M.I.A. that has nothing to do with her nationality! The fact that she takes herself entirely too seriously for someone that presses random buttons on a cheap 1980s Moog and calls it a “song;” her vocal and, as far as anyone can tell, complete ignorance of politics; cover art that looks like what appears on the screen when your Super Nintendo cartridge breaks mid-game. It is not an unpopular opinion in many circles to call her a hypocrite in her personal life; professionally, “Betty Boop reading Mao’s Little Red Book” is right on the money. Even pointing out that her calls to violence and references to terrorism are anti-American would be better than to call her plain unAmerican. That she wasn’t born in a certain part of the world or does not arbitrarily subscribe to a particular culture Perino upholds above all others in the context of football is a pretty bad place to start.

It’s bad because it assumes that where one is born has something to do with whether one is an American or not; it reduces American culture to an arbitrary act of nature and not a state of mind that millions of loyal Americans swear to uphold every day as they become U.S. citizens. It also ignores the history of the Super Bowl Halftime Show: one that has featured such cornerstones of American music as The Who, The Rolling Stones, U2, and Phil Collins, and has had themes such as “Salute to Caribbean” and “From Paris to Paris of America.” America the state of mind is large, it contains multitudes, and it is above all inclusive. Excluding foreigners from our biggest holidays isn’t exactly how America got to be the world’s last superpower.

Plus, Perino leaves a very salient question open by alienating MIA as the “non-American” portion of the Halftime Show: do you really want to highlight that America is to blame for LMFAO?

The discussion via Fox News below:

RELATED: The Tingle Is Back! Chris Matthews Excited To See Obama’s Cute, “Wonderful, Boyish Smile”

Matthews has not been shy to acknowledge his love of the President’s smile in the past, saying last year, “That smile! That cute smile we all love in that guy. That wonderful, boyish smile of his!”

Matthews’ advice just might sway the President to keep on brushing those pearly whites.

Watch Matthews compliment President Obama below:

(h/t Newsbusters)

The liberal blog Raw Story is accusing Fox and Friends of “inventing” a conspiracy around the jobs report, but that’s not true; Bolling simply neglected to credit the inventor of this silliness, Rep. Allen West (R-FL).

In a segment devoted to the President’s Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer, Bolling made sure to keep his accusation sufficiently vague. Speaking about the people who have left the workforce (who are never counted in the monthly unemployment figures, no matter who the president is), Bolling said “Are they playing around with the numbers? It’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s supposed to be nonpartisan. Hilda Solis heads the Department of Labor. Hilda Solis works directly for Obama…”

“Are you saying they’re cooking the books?” co-host Steve Doocy asked, helpfully.

“I’m saying there’s room for error. there’s a — when you’re talking about four million people, how do you know?” Bolling responded. He and Gretchen Carlson pointed out that the jobs figures are “estimates,” and that they “didn’t make four million phone calls.”

While it’s impossible to vouch for the entire F&F crew, there’s no doubt that Eric Bolling knows that every Secretary of Labor reports to every president, and that the unemployment figures are always based on a representative survey, and so on. He stopped short of actually accusing the administration, but imagine if, as a business reporter, someone asked Bolling if Company X was “cooking the books,” and he essentially replied “Well, you never know!”

But it was helpful of him to point out that there’s room for error, even if he didn’t then go on to reveal that in January’s jobs report, that room for error resulted in the November and December jobs numbers being revised upward by about 63,000 jobs. That’s in addition to the 243,000 jobs created in January.

The liberal blog Raw Story accused Fox And Friends of “inventing” the “cooking the books” conspiracy, but they were actually just shoveling another bat’s guano. When those encouraging jobs numbers first came out on Friday, Tea Party Rep. Allen West (R-FL) was quick to reach for the Reynolds Wrap:

There is something suspicious about the job numbers released today and it has me very concerned,” West wondered Friday. “Is this dramatic supposed decrease in black unemployment a result of job creation or is someone playing around with the census numbers??”

Complicating matters is the fact that the Bureau of Labor Statistics included an adjustment to the total population, based on the 2010 census, which has some conservatives crying foul. However, no one has produced a single shred of evidence to suggest that January’s jobs report was compiled using any unusual methods, or that this is anything but an apples-to-apples comparison. As Bolling stated, and January’s revisions underscore, the figures are always subject to change, but there is absolutely zero reason to think anyone “cooked” anything. It would be pretty silly of the Obama administration to underestimate November’s jobs gains by 60,000, then let those jobs get buried in January’s revision.

Here’s the clip, from Monday morning’s Fox and Friends:

The ad is for Stabenow’s rival, former congressman and current Senatorial candidate Pete Hoekstra. Hoekstra visited America Live Monday afternoon to address claims that his ad is inappropriate and plays on racially-charged stereotypes that, as one group put it, “encourage anti-Asian sentiment.”

“The only group of people that this ad is anti” Hoekstra said, “it’s anti-Debbie Stabenow, it’s anti-Barack Obama, the spending policies of the liberal left.”

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“You’ll notice that the ad,” he continued, “points to the opportunities that America’s dumb economic policies — deficit spending, trillion dollars of deficits, trillions and trillions of debt — it creates the opportunities for counties like China and others to take advantage of our weakness.”

Host Megyn Kelly brought up the fact that the young woman speaks broken English. (The actress, Kelly noted, is American and the ad’s dialogue was purposefully written in poor English.)

“Well, it’s not a stereotype at all,” Hoekstra responded. “This is a, you know, through the creative, this is a young woman in China who is speaking English. That’s quite an achievement.”

So, hey. Do you think that, if Hoekstra were able to spin any faster, he’d drill right through the Earth and actually end up in China?

A common pattern I’ve noticed whenever a person or institution is hit with charges of racism is the argument that something cannot be racist unless it displays hatred. But racism exists in many forms and, more often than not, these forms are subtle. This is the great achievement of racists: To promote a sense of inferiority or wrongness or potentially dangerous otherness that is so subtle as to be pervasive, built into the very way we speak and think about one another.

And that is the case with this ad.

Yes, it’s racist. No, you don’t have to be Mickey Rooney portraying a caricature of an East Asian man in Breakfast at Tiffany‘s to be racist, but you do have to remember that we’ve lived in a time when Mickey Rooney portrayed a caricature of an East Asian man in Breakfast at Tiffany‘s. I mean, this is a thing that happened! This was conceived, planned, and executed. Scores of people have gazed upon the finished product, either laughing or cringing or sighing or feel enraged. But it happened. It is the product of a culture that allowed this to exist.

And the same goes for this ad.

The young woman in the ad doesn’t simply happen to be Chinese. She’s not our Chinese pal, riding up to us on her bike to gossip about Michigan politics. She’s our enemy. She’s portrayed as smug, almost taunting us. “Thanks Debbie Spenditnow!” I mean, come on. This woman is awful. She’s annoying. She rubs us the wrong way. She’s glad we’re losing our grip on our economy. And that’s intentional. It’s intentional because we need an enemy to remind us why she shouldn’t vote for Hoekstra’s rival, and it’s easiest to create an enemy that caters to the deep-set, racially-charged fears already pervasive in American history and culture.

And what concerns me most about this isn’t that it’s incredibly lazy to use racist stereotypes in an effort to play upon voters’ fears. It’s not that this ad is insulting to Michigan voters because it operates on the assumption that fear and hatred, not reason or intelligence or thoughtfulness, are what ultimately drive a person to vote. What concerns me most is that this ad is the result of one of two conversations. Either 1) every single person working on this ad is so ignorant or so firmly ensconced in his or her own privilege that not one stopped to say, “Hey, isn’t there anything, you know. Kind of off about this?”, or 2) someone thought this — knew this — and decided it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that through this ad runs a current of ignorance, hatred and fear. It didn’t matter that not all Chinese people work in fields, or speak English well enough to discuss the U.S. current economic situation yet not quite well enough to be grammatically correct. It doesn’t matter that the Chinese are not “our enemy.”

I wouldn’t vote for Debbie Stabenow (sorry, Senator). But I certainly wouldn’t vote for a person who is perfectly comfortable running on a platform built on fear of “The Other.”

Have at Hoekstra’s explanation, via Fox News:

In the ad, a Chevy truck emerges from the rubble with driver and dog intact, to the strains of Looks Like We Made It. The duo meets up with three other Chevy pickup drivers, who share Twinkies and lament the fate of their Ford-owning friend, Dave:

Aside from some odd details (I was amused by the shot of a newspaper headline, a likely source of satisfaction from my colleagues in the beleaguered print media), my overall impression of the spot was that, aside from the obvious message about the trucks’ durability, Chevy seemed to be promising its customers a short post-apocalyptic life consisting of, at best, fruitless masturbation, a diet of frog’s legs and Twinkies, and hours of fun keeping that dog at bay when the Kibbles and Bits run out. If Ford were really smart, they’d respond with an ad showing Ford owners in an underground bunker, happily repopulating the planet.

Instead, they first tried to get GM to kill the ad, and to get NBC to yank the spot from the broadcast. Here’s the response from a GM spokesman:

“We stand by our claims in the commercial, that the Silverado is the most dependable, longest-lasting full-size pickup on the road,” said GM Global Chief Marketing Officer Joel Ewanick in a press release. “We can wait until the world ends, and if we need to, we will apologize. In the meantime, people who are really worried about the Mayan calendar coming true should buy a Silverado right away.”

You wouldn’t think it possible to challenge the claim that a product is better able to withstand the end of the world than another, but that’s what Ford is doing:

Chevrolet’s “longest lasting, most dependable” claim is, to the extent it is legitimate, based entirely on longevity (as measured by full-size pickup registrations from 1981 to July 2011). However, the commercial, from its use of “Looks Like We Made It” to its reference to Dave’s tragic demise, communicates something very different – that the Silverado is safer and more durable than any Ford pickup truck. These two messages are entirely unsupported. With respect to durability, research from R. L. Polk & Co. shows that Ford has considerably more trucks on the road with over 250,000 miles than does Chevrolet, thereby demonstrating that Ford’s trucks are more durable than those manufactured by Chevrolet. As to the issue of safety, the 2012 Ford F-150 is an IIHS Top Safety pick, whereas the 2012 Chevy Silverado is not – having received less than impressive results in the IIHS side impact, rear crash and rollover tests. In light of the foregoing, Chevrolet has no basis to imply that the Silverado is either safer or more durable than Ford’s pickup trucks, yet that false claim is precisely what is conveyed to the consumer.

As any post-apocalyptic survivor can tell you, side-impact performance is crucial. That’s where the inexorable rain of fire and ash always gets you.

All kidding aside, Ford has put all kidding aside here, and whipped out the legalese:

It is black letter advertising law that “expressly or implicitly disparaging claims can damage a product’s market share and, therefore, [] such claims [must be] truthful, accurate and narrowly drawn.” See The Procter & Gamble Co. (Swiffer Dusters), NAD Case #4226 (9/14/04). As noted above, Chevrolet’s claims are neither truthful nor accurate. Thus, Chevrolet has absolutely no basis to disparagingly imply that, in the event of a catastrophic event, Ford’s pickup trucks and their respective owners will be reduced to ashes.

I’m no advertising lawyer, so maybe I’m easily impressed by such chapter-and-verse. Time will tell if this actually goes anywhere, but if Chevy’s ad tells us anything, it’s that even if the courts don’t grant Ford any relief, it’s not the end of the world.

Of course, it didn’t. I went twice before Beeny shut the museum down and threw its entire contents on eBay. The first time I went, the museum was housed in a series of conjoined trailer homes, so cramped that the gift shop was located in a bowling alley a little bit down the highway. On my second visit, it had been moved to a small house, allowing a front room that sold souvenirs: generic cheap Elvis trinkets, a few mugs with lackadaisically applied Elvis stickers. And to the side, under glass, a copy of Elvis’ complete FBI file, some 600 pages, for sale at the discount price of a few thousand dollars.

To Mr. Beeny, the heft of that pile of documents implied value. This was before everyone had a printer; the stack was presumably a photocopy generated by the FBI in Washington, acquired by Mr. Beeny at no small effort. Or maybe it was a generation newer than that, run off at a Kinko’s. Point is: it was big, not everyone had it, and it contained information.

I was reminded of this today when reading Alexis Madrigal‘s great piece about his visit to a now-abandoned satellite receiver in central California. It’s a damp, aging region, well-stocked with giant trees, once home to a critical piece of the American space program. There, Madrigal runs into Eric Lancaster.

He’d told me that he had “some real documentation of Apollo trips. Notes, signatures, serious dated stuff.” Lancaster hinted that the documents might be very valuable, and they were certainly the kind of thing I was looking for. He hadn’t scanned anything and didn’t use the Internet, so we arranged a meeting and my fiancee and I drove to Cachagua….

Next to a small backpack, on top of a plastic chair, there was a stack of mildewed manila folders held together by rusting metal clips.

“I was thinking that we might be able to make a few bucks, maybe even sell these to you guys,” Lancaster said.

To Lancaster, the documents themselves had value. Ostensibly for their contents, but really the pieces of paper themselves. They were something tangible, a good for which currency could be exchanged. Those folders had been in his house since he’d picked them out of the detritus of the satellite receiver offices. They were a thing that meant something to someone – and now that someone, it seemed, was standing in front of him.

It’s not just newspapers that confer value on medium instead of message. While not as valuable as in pre-Gutenberg days, we still put a premium on the physical conveyance of words and ideas: gorgeous books (see: Franzen, Jonathan), slick magazines, important newspaper editions. Part of it is aesthetics, of course, but a larger part is that the physical item is a metaphor for its contents. A manila envelope handed to Woodward and Bernstein in a parking garage – that totem carries with it a depth of meaning and poetry. If Deep Throat could have avoided the meeting, could have sent the information to Julian Assange, he would have. But then what goes in the museum?

Elvis’ entire FBI file is now available online. The value of Beeny’s stack, if it has survived being in storage after its eBay sale, is whatever a recycler will take for it.

Except to Beeny.