Brown’s election to the Senate seat vacated by the late Ted Kennedy was a pivotal moment for Republicans, as it broke the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and nearly scuttled President Obama’s health care reform bill. Since then, though, Brown has proven to be one of the few GOP members of Congress who could be described as, in any way, moderate, belying his brief status as a bogeyman for the left . He was aided in his quest for that seat by a Democratic candidate whose strategy might as well have consisted of correcting the spelling of the word “Sox” in and around Boston.

Now, Brown faces Elizabeth Warren, creator of the Consumer Protection Bureau and outspoken advocate for the middle class whose decimation of the “class warfare” construct has become a rallying point for populist anger at income inequality. Warren’s heroic status among progressives likely contributed to her $3.15 million take:

According to an email to supporters from Warren’s campaign, 96 percent of contributions were of $100 or less, with 11,000 donors coming from in-state.

If you do the math, that means that at least two-thirds of Warren’s small donors came from out-of-state, a testament to her reach as a national figure. According to one recent poll that showed Warren in a near dead-heat with Brown, 37% of Massachusetts voters said they had never heard of her. Raising $3 mil a month is sure to change that, assuming Warren can sustain that pace.

The national attention that this race has garnered recently due to a spat-let over Brown’s college modeling career could be a help. While the fallout cuts both ways, those supportive of Warren are more likely to be moved to write her a check than conservatives who view Brown as nothing more than a RINO (Republican In Name Only). Yes, a denunciation by NOW would ordinarily be a feather in the cap for a Republican, but Brown’s penchant for being reasonable far outweighs that.

Warren’s performance, coupled with Brown’s uphill fight to retain a Republican seat in a liberal state, have Hot Air‘s Allahpundit wondering if this race is worth the trouble for the GOP:

Exit question: How heavily should the RNC and NRSC back Brown if, as expected, this becomes a high-profile, high-spending race? He doesn’t have many fans left among the base and that money will be needed elsewhere.

If Warren continues this pace, and opens up a decent lead on Brown, the answer to that question could come sooner that he thinks.

Conservative blogs are interpreting this as an oppo research fishing expedition, but given the staggering resources at OFA’s disposal, it’s hard to imagine that this is anything other than a fundraising come-on.

It’s true that the email does contain a submission form for Perry gripes, and it does contain a disclaimer that allows the campaign the “the use and public display of my submission, name, city/state and other information,” which has led many to conclude that this is a hunt for negative campaign fodder. From The Dallas Morning News‘ Todd J. Gillman:

The Obama campaign team is asking Texans to share complaints about Gov. Rick Perry, and compiling the critiques for possible use in Perry-bashing ads and other material – a sure sign the president’s advisers are taking no chances.

…Nieto’s email says hundreds of Texans have already shared their dim views on Perry, directing critics to an online form where they can suggest their own favorite “failed policies” for which he should be held accountable.

Submitting a suggestion grants the Obama campaign perpetual rights to use the comments in any form of political advertising.

This is all true, and while compiling a Perry dossier is one possible object of the campaign, is it the primary goal?

Hot Air‘s Allahpundit sees this as a sign of…something:

I’m intrigued by the fact that they’re not content to rely on standard oppo research in this case but want man-on-the-street grumbling from Texas liberals instead. Is that because they’re deeply (and understandably) worried about voters being dazzled by Texas’s record on jobs and think that only “eyewitness testimony” from the locals disputing it will be effective? Or is it because Perry has a huge, obvious populist advantage over President Spock such that only fellow salt-of-the-earth southerners might be able to counter it?

I suppose it’s possible that there’s someone at OFA who thinks that sifting through thousands of comments from disgruntled Texans will yield some golden nugget that was missed by their expert researchers and the thousands of Cheeto-dusted liberal bloggers who scour the internets 24/7. Having covered many presidential campaigns, and the White House for the duration of the Obama administration, I can tell you that there is no organization more adept at oppo research than Obama’s. I guarantee you that if Rick Perry ever beaned a fifth-grade classmate with a Wiffle Ball, OFA has it on video from three different angles, and a copy of the school nurse’s report.

Whether or not the Texas email yields oppo gold, though, it will achieve the one thing that OFA does better than anything else: collecting donations. The Obama campaign thrives on the idea that everybody can make a difference, and for an Obama supporter, what could be more attractive than the possibility of being featured in a campaign ad? What’s more appealing than the notion that the campaign wants to hear what you have to say?

The Texans Against Perry submission form is about as likely to topple Perry as Tuesday’s earthquake. The real point of Nieto’s email is right at the bottom:

This campaign isn’t funded by Washington lobbyists or corporate interests. We rely on donations from people like you. You should donate today.

(h/t)

Appearing last night on Special Report with Bret Baier called Palin’s endorsement of O’Donnell “destructive and capricious.” This is appears to be where the rubber meets the road in the fight for the future of conservatives. Krauthammer’s thinking is that Mike Castle would be a shoo-in for Joe Biden’s former Senate seat in the November general election. In his words, a vote for O’Donnell would be “irresponsible” or the Republican agenda.

Predictably, Krauthammer’s salvo toward’s Paline (and Jim DeMint who also backed O’Donnell) raised many eyebrows in the right-of-center part of the opinion media Internet. It probably best leave it to Jon Stewart’s favorite blogger AllahPundit to explain the context and meaning of this comment as he did on Hot Air:

There’s nothing here that you haven’t heard before, but since “true conservatives” are in RINO-stomp mode towards Paul Mirengoff and John McCormack and Jim Geraghty and a bunch of other people who were conservatives in good standing as of, say, four days ago, let’s make sure the stealth liberal known as Charles Krauthammer takes his licks too. The only part of CK’s monologue that I disagree with is the “capricious” part: I’m sure Palin and DeMint made their endorsements with due deliberation, knowing how much it would please their base. (They certainly took long enough to pull the trigger.) And from a philosophical point of view, endorsing O’Donnell is a win/win/win for them. If O’Donnell beats Castle and then shocks Coons in November, they’ll get all the credit; if Castle pulls it out and sends O’Donnell packing, they can at least tell their base that they were on the side of the angels; if, as is most likely, O’Donnell beats Castle and then gets steamrolled by Coons, well, the beauty of “true conservatism” is that the highest priority is defeating RINOs, not Democrats. They won the important fight, and without Castle in the Senate, the GOP brand will remain pure and principled and therefore well positioned for the eventual “true conservative” takeover of Congress. Like the man said, better 30 Marco Rubios than 60 Arlen Specters.

As AllaPundit later explains, “This has been a clarifying moment in terms of showing how conservatives prioritize differently: Some demand a stand on principle even if it means Democratic control, some demand an end to Democratic control even if it means compromising sometimes on principle.” This nearly perfectly sums up the current challenges of embracing a newly energized base of voters who aren’t exactly thrilled (!) with the status quo. Perhaps the death of the Democratic party have been greatly exaggerated? Nah – they’re most likely toast come November.

Reuters on Monday rejected accusations of biased coverage, adding that it had reverted to the use of “the original set” of images, once the organization realized that the photographs it had published had been cropped.

A Reuters spokesman told Haaretz: “Reuters is committed to an accurate and impartial reporting. All images that pass over our wire follow a strict editorial evaluation and selection process.

“The images in question were made available in Istanbul in following normal editorial practice were prepared for dissemination which included cropping at the edges. When we realized that the dagger was inadvertently cropped from the images Reuters immediately moved to the original set as well.”

As AllahPundit points out this is not the first time Reuters has gotten into trouble, during the Second Lebanon War the agency admitted to altering one of its pictures depicting destruction in Beirut after an Israeli bombing.

Above photos, and more examples can be found here.

Hot Air is one of the biggest, most influential conservative sites on the Web and was launched on April 24, 2006, with Michelle Malkin as founder/CEO (though she remains editorially focused on her own blog MichelleMalkin.com and her own writing and television appearances.) Hot Air is managed on a day-to-day basis by editors Ed Morrissey and the mysterious AllahPundit, who are reported to be part of the deal in the sale of to Salem, and absolutely essential to the core value of Hot Air. We are told that, from a user’s perspective, Hot Air will remain the same despite the change in ownership.

Last Fall, Mediaite cited Hot Air as one the Top 25 most influential blogs on the Internet. This is what we had to say at the time:

As Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher, a personal friend of Morrissey’s, wrote in the preface of a recent interview with him, Morrissey “doesn’t jump on every right-wing meme that comes along, which makes the battles he does choose that much more resonant,” which is as true of his Hot Air stewardship as it was of his earlier work. At Captain’s Quarters, he made a name for himself mixing passion with nuance, dissecting what he saw as bad arguments with a scalpel. It didn’t hurt that he had a hand in taking down the Canadian government, thanks to a big scoop on a scandal plaguing the ruling Liberal Party that Canadian news outlets were gagged from reporting. All this while working full-time as a call center manager.

AllahPundit is a shadowier figure; in an era when most bloggers treat their names like precious branding manna, his insistence on keeping a pseudonym has an anachronistic, early 2000s feel to it. Like Morrissey, he made his name on a possibly election-tipping scandal — he was one of the small handful of conservative bloggers whose investigative work led CBS to repudiate a set of documents of uncertain authenticity that were critical of Bush’s National Guard service record. At Hot Air as before, he distinguishes himself from the often strident political blogosphere by maintaining a sense of humor and displaying a keen wit.

Salem Communication defines itself as a leading U.S. radio broadcaster, Internet content provider, and magazine and book publisher targeting audiences interested in Christian and family-themed content and conservative values. Perhaps their most relevant property to this transaction is Townhall.com which claims itself to be the #1 conservative website. The “About Us” section of its website claims “Townhall.com pulls together political commentary and analysis from over 100 leading columnists and opinion leaders, research from 100 partner organizations, conservative talk-radio and a community of millions of grassroots conservatives.”

Sources claim that are no plans to merge either operations or editorial efforts of Hot Air and Townhall, however it makes sense that one might begin to see much more cross-promotion between the two sites now that they are both part of the Salem family.

Online Editors of the Year: Harvey Levin/TMZ.com; Choire Sicha & Alex Balk/TheAwl.com

I am calling tie on online editor of the year this year between two extremely different sites for very different reasons. First Harvey Levin at TMZ.com. Despite a well-publicized misstep earlier this week when the site published what was supposed to be a picture of then-senator John F. Kennedy lounging on a yacht filled with naked women but turned out to be a re-worked version of a magazine spread (Levin mea culpa’d fairly quickly) the site has owned the big news stories of the year. Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, Rihanna and Chris Brown, and more recently (and sad but less media-shattering) Brittany Murphy. When they first broke the story of Jackson’s death back in June the mainstream press was slow to jump on it primarily because it was TMZ reporting. Less so with Tiger Woods. Now we have to assume people in newsrooms are probably being paid to figure out who TMZ is getting their info from. The ‘how’ is less a mystery: they frequently pay for tips. It may be considered a dirty practice in old-school journalism circles but it’s also one those same circles are edging towards, story by headline-making story. You know what else pays? Traffic. Something that is becoming more important as more old school news operations ease their way into the online world. Want to know what the future of journalism looks like, for the next little while at least? Harvey Levin has spent the last year showing us. He may spend the next year showing us what sports journalism is going to look like (we’re already part way there). Now if only he’d send a team to the Middle East we may not need to overhaul national security entirely.

On the flip side of the coin (different currency altogether?) is The Awl, which was launched earlier this year by Gawker alums Choire Sicha and Alex Balk . If you already read it, you probably read it a lot (it’s that kind of site) meaning you don’t need me to tell you about it. If you’re not a regular clicker, their ‘End of the 00′s‘ series, which has been running since last week and is comprised of submissions from well known (and less well-known in some circles) writers looking back on the decade from any number of standpoints, is a great place to begin. Point is, launching a website devoted to smart, sometimes long, not necessarily newsy, hit and miss SEO-y content is maybe not a business plan anyone with a working knowledge of what is currently working on the Internet money-wise would have recommended, but judging from the quick response of their readers to vote them up in our little poll they have a devoted readership and a site offering content that is tough to find elsewhere. Fingers crossed less tough this year. Now they just have to start making some money.

Runner-Up: A.J. Daulerio/Deadspin

What other website out there has the nerve and the ability and the power to take on a media conglomerate and ostensibly win? Because that’s what Deadspin managing editor A.J. Daulerio did when he spent a day publishing every tip he had every gotten about people working at ESPN after being mislead by the company into thinking a lead on Steve Phillips was cold before reading it shortly thereafter on the front page of the New York Post. Needles to say, Deadspin is a serious power player in the sports journalism field. And will likely be increasingly so as they are forced to up their game with the upcoming addition of TMZsports.com to the sports journalism pantheon.

Reader’s Choice: Ray Wert/Jalopnik

This is how much readers love Jalopnik: Ray Wert received 70 times the amount of votes in our poll than the number of people who actually clicked on the post! If building a voting bot for your favorite online editor is not love and devotion in the brave new media world, than really, what is? Of course, one imagines that a good chunk of those votes actually came directly from the same people responsible for the 27 million page views Jalopnik will get this month. People love cars! Especially when they are made fun and smart, and are talked, and written and Twittered about by knowledgeable people who understand how to turn that love into smart content and stellar traffic. (Also, sometimes boobs.) The future of media is niche, they say, and you need look no farther than Jalopnik for evidence of how that works at its best.

Related: Poll: Who Is The Top Online Editor Of 2009?

Below is a list of online editors who have manned the helm in 2009 and ushered in the brave new media world with the most success, vision — and yes, traffic. Some you will be familiar with; some might be new names. Either way, we are asking you, our loyal, smart, and attractive readers to share your thoughts on who had the biggest year in the Online Editor category (scroll down for poll):

Note: this poll spotlights editors working in the quick-draw, no-holds-barred realm of blogs: there will be top sites of 2009 poll later this week.

Harvey Levin, TMZ.com: Twelve months ago the Harvey Levin-run TMZ.com was the main online competition of media publications like the National Enquirer and People. These days, TMZ is the main competition of just about everyone. Yes, everyone. In six short months a “TMZ.com reports” reference has quickly morphed into the equivalent of what a network news breaking news report used to be. Back in June, the website was the first to report Michael Jackson‘s death — first by close to an hour due in part to the MSM’s reluctance to rely on the site as a respectable source. That is changing. The day after Thanksgiving, TMZ was also the first to report on Tiger Woods’ car crash into a fire hydrant at 2am — which, as we know, led to a much bigger crash, gawked at by the most respectable publications. It’s quite likely sports journalism — all journalism — will never be the same. On that note, maybe you’ve heard that TMZSports.com is launching next year.

Gabriel Snyder, Gawker: Since Snyder took over as managing editor of Gawker.com last November, the flagship of Nick Denton’s Gawker media empire, the site has moved to a 24-hour schedule and hired a full-time reporter, both of which have resulted in a measurably increased presence in the MSM, and measurably increased traffic online. And with the hiring of overnight blogger Azaria Jagger and the return of Gawker alum Doree Shafrir he’s even managed to (finally) put some women back on the masthead. In traffic terms, the site has doubled its uniques from around 1.8M a month to the current 3.5M, and its pageviews have increased 63% to just over 30M. Also, they may own the next decade and/or the last, depending.

AJ Daulerio, Deadspin: In can be argued, and has, that no one has changed the way sports is covered more than Deadspin (though Tiger Woods is giving them a run for their money). Under the editorialship of Daulerio, who took over for Will Leitch when the latter departed for New York mag last year, the site has broken a whole lot of rules, not the least of which was publishing every tip they’d ever received about ESPN employees after the network blew them off a story (only to leak it to the New York Post). Though Daulerio will have his hands full when TMZSports bursts on the scene.

Matt Drudge, The Drudge Report: The fact that Drudge is even on this list after so many years is testament to the man’s ability to sniff out a good headline and make it even better. It’s also a testament to the idea that website design isn’t everything (or anything!). Suffice it to say, the bare bones, right-leaning, one-page, mostly content-free website has the ability to shuffle hundreds of thousands of clinks through a single link in under and hour. If traffic is the coin of the new realm, Drudge is still king.

Ed Morrissey/Allah Pundit, Hot Air: Michelle Malkin may be the money behind Hot Air, but conservative bloggers Ed Morrissey and Allah Pundit are its strong, successful, always entertaining voice. The site, which clocks impressive enough traffic to inspire comparisons to Daily Kos, also boasts a variety of sometimes conflicting conservative views, which have only further aided in its must-read status.

Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish: After all this time, and all the new players on the field, Andrew Sullivan is still a powerhouse to be reckoned with. Says Politico’s Ben Smith (a veritable powerhouse in his own right): “He’s the most widely read political blogger in the country, easily, and played, I think, a more important role than people realize in creating the Obama narrative.” All true, and something that made his obsessiveness over the genealogy of Sarah Palin’s youngest child that much more disturbing. Not that that’s kept us, or anyone else, from reading.

Nikki Finke, DeadlineHollywood: The fact Finke just recently signed a rumored $15 million deal to move her addictively read blog to Mail.com seems almost secondary compared to the amount of power this woman wields over Hollywood (if you missed Tad Friend’s New Yorker profile of her, it’s worth your time). She is so feared by Hollywood titans that when Gawker put out a call for an updated picture of the blogger — with a $1000 bounty — they had no takers. She is the definition of someone who is not read by everyone, just everyone that matters (or wants to) in Hollywood.

Fred Mwangaguhunga, Media Take Out: The Drudge-styled site, founded and run by Mwangaguhunga, claims to be the “most visited urban website in the world.” And they may be right. The site, which covers black celebrity gossip, boasts an enormous readership and regularly breaks big stories. To wit: they called Lady Gaga’s decision to pull out of Kanye West’s tour a day before it was reported elsewhere, and — if this can be called a scoop — they were the first to run the infamous nude Rihanna pictures.

Ray Wert, Jalopnik: When Wert took over Gawker’s car blog in 2006 the site was averaging 2.2 million page views. This month they are on track for 27 million page views. You can do the math on that but the short version is traffic has increased a LOT. Who knew people loved cars so much (says a New Yorker)? Truth is plenty and under Wert the site has become a highly specialized trade blog, requiring an extended level of expertise from both its editor and writers. Also, Megan Fox slide shows don’t hurt (something we can also attest to).

Jessica Coen, Daily Intel: If only every magazine had demonstrated New York‘s foresight in getting into the blogosphere while the getting was good (ahem, Conde Nast) perhaps this ad downturn would not have been quite as devastating as it’s been. Meanwhile, Daily Intel, under the leadership of former Gawker alum Jessica Coen, continues to be a must-read in the media world, not to mention dominate the Gossip Girl beat.

Adam Ostrow, Mashable: You may or may not be aware that a lot of people read Mashable. As in 10 million monthly uniques. The site is a destination for just about everyone who’s interested in coverage of latest technologies, trends, as well as “individuals that are driving the current evolution of the Web.” As editor in chief of the site, Ostrow definitely counts among those individuals.

Choire Sicha/Alex Balk, TheAwl: Launched earlier this year by two of Gawker’s most popular alum, the site has attracted a loyal readership (and it must be said, great commenters) due to its mix of short, smart and bloggy and long, smart, and original. Read obsessively by savvy, in-the-know media, (some might argue too cool for school) Internety types, it might reasonably be described as the 2.0 answer to the (sadly) long-defunt Spy magazine. Let’s hope it doesn’t suffer a similar fate in the year to come. Smart and profitable are sadly a rare breed on the Internet these days.

Boehner’s money quote: “This bill is the greatest threat to freedom that I have seen in the 19 years I’ve been here in Washington.” Here are his remarks in full, which the producers of V would do well to work into their show:

Boehner wasn’t the only one at the rally to see dire consequences to health care reform, as Corn points out. Here’s what Gibbs had to say about Boehner’s proclamation:

Q Yesterday at the rally on Capitol Hill, Congressman Boehner said that he considers the health care bill to be “the greatest threat to freedom” he has ever seen. I just was wondering what your response is to that.

MR. GIBBS: I think we could take up the better part of our afternoons and probably significantly into the weekend thinking of other conflicts that we’ve seen or read about throughout the history of the world that might be a greater threat to freedom than what Congressman Boehner was discussing.

I will continue to say what I’ve said before. You hear — in this debate you hear analogies, you hear references to, you see pictures about and depictions of individuals that are truly stunning. And you hear it all the time. People — imagine five years ago somebody comparing health care reform to 9/11. Imagine just a few years ago had somebody walked around with images of Hitler. Hopefully we can get back to a discussion about the issues that are important in this country, that we can do without being personally disagreeable and set up comparisons to things that were so insidious in our history that anybody in any professional walk of life would be well advised to compare nothing to those atrocities.

Watch it here:

My first reaction to the line that’s getting all the attention, “People — imagine five years ago somebody comparing health care reform to 9/11. Imagine just a few years ago had somebody walked around with images of Hitler,” was to suppress a chuckle. As Hot Air’s Allahpundit and The Weekly Standard’s Mary Katherine Ham point out, people walking around with images of Hitler during the Bush years isn’t like conjuring a jet-propelled, laser-wielding unicorn. Furthermore, you only have to go back a few weeks to find a Democratic member of Congress invoking both 9/11 and the Holocaust.

Some might argue that the likes of Boehner’s statement, or Virginia Foxx’s, get extra absurdity points, and defend Grayson on the grounds that he, at least, was making the comparison to something that actually results in deaths. I think Gibbs’ summation is what people should be focusing on:

Hopefully we can get back to a discussion about the issues that are important in this country, that we can do without being personally disagreeable and set up comparisons to things that were so insidious in our history that anybody in any professional walk of life would be well advised to compare nothing to those atrocities.

I would point out that, although it would be hard to miss Bush-era Hitler comparisons, the media has changed since then. The 2008 campaign created a voracious 15-minute news cycle that demands fresh meat, so the bar for what gets reported is considerably lower now. The crazy quote that used to merit a breathless blog post now becomes fodder for endless panel discussion.

It’s become standard practice in partisan politics to respond to ridiculous quotes by saying, “Hey, they do it too,” but not “We should stop doing that.” Short memory notwithstanding, I think the takeaway from this response is that we should replace Godwin’s Law with Gibbs’ Dictum, and just stop doing it.

While The Onion is known for this kind of humor, the video does have a creepy vibe to it. In the past, they have found humor in such questionable subjects as 9/11, pedophilia, baby-shaking, and cancer. One video features Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson being put to sleep after breaking her leg, but the real point of that video was to lampoon the piety surrounding animal euthanasia, and the gymnast took it with good humor.

The Beck video takes aim at local news tragedy cliches, like when the victim’s mother says that it’s a terrible think to have your child outlived by Glenn Beck, but the main theme of the clip is that people hate Glenn Beck, and wish he would die. Hot Air’s Allahpundit fails to see the humor:

If you’re going to wish death on someone, own it. It’s like hitting a guy with a crowbar but wearing a funny hat while doing it to “lighten the mood” or whatever.

On the other hand, The Onion’s news videos are marked by absurdism, which could indicate that this video is mocking the absurd level of hatred directed at Beck, and by him.

One thing is for sure: the video has inspired real-life copycats, as news agencies are continually reporting the deaths of people other than Glenn Beck.

We contacted The Onion and Fox News, and they each declined to comment for this article.

Tell us what you think. Did The Onion’s video go too far?

But some of the most talented and influential bloggers still work under the radar. Whether they write for niche audiences or are simply less visible than their more mainstream counterparts, these men and women are the unsung heroes of the blogosphere, known to circles of insiders, but uncredited for the vaster influence they hold.

In this in-depth, magazine-length feature (6500 words!), Mediaite has assembled a list of 25 of the best underrated bloggers you need to know, drawing from a variety of backgrounds, and explained why they matter. You’d do well to learn — and bookmark, and RSS — the names you don’t know already. If they aren’t themselves household names in a few years, the odds are good that they will continue to smartly analyze the news, break stories, serve as role models for others, and put their stamps on the flow of information far beyond the Internet.

Below we’ve designated five themes and selected five up and coming or under-appreciated bloggers in each category, including:

Hidden Hands: The workhorses behind blue-chip sites with tremendous clout who often go unrecognized for their accomplishments as individuals.

Blogs Bloggers Read: Bloggers behind sites worshipped by insiders that mold the shape of the online conversation.

Niche Experts: These are the writers whose areas of focus may not garner them the biggest following, but in music, fashion, cars, business, and food, they’re as good as it gets.

Power Hitters: They may be big names already, but they are somehow still undersold considering the amount of work they put in and the amount of influence they wield.

Reinventors: Bloggers who, rather than resting on their well-deserved laurels for past accomplishments, have continued to innovate and reinvent their editorial presences on the web.

>>>NEXT: The first five top bloggers are the Hidden Hands…

(image via)

Reuters reports that “Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and John Malone‘s Liberty Media are interested in NBC Universal, according to a report by CNBC, citing sources,” although they add that analysts see News Corp. as a less likely bidder due to antitrust concerns. Well, clearly. But how genuine is their interest?

The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman, who has largely stuck to her story that Comcast is the only relevant bidder for NBC Uni despite strong criticism from some quarters of the Internet (i.e. Nikki Finke), was immediately dismissive of the rumors: “Nobody I know believes the latest round of sniffing around the edges of NBC-Universal by NewsCorp or Liberty Media,” she wrote, adding (Finke is sure to love this) that “What I am hearing from inside and around the deal is that indeed the Comcast deal to buy 51 percent of NBC-Universal is done in principle, but it will be several more weeks before anything official is announced.”

The LA Times‘s Joe Flint provides a helpful, insidery account of what could be going on:

For starters, when a company like General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal is in play, everyone comes by to take a peak [sic] inside. It’d be foolish not to do that. It’s like having an open house in your neighborhood. Don’t you want to see how your neighbor has the kitchen set up? That doesn’t mean they are all interested in buying the thing, of course.

[...]And if you are wondering why News Corp. doesn’t come out and just say it is not interested in NBC Universal (we won’t even get into the regulatory hurdles such a deal would face), it’s because if a company starts to comment on one thing, it will soon have to comment on everything — so it’s just easier not to comment, period.

So Murdoch can potentially get some free intelligence out of this, acting as an interested bidder. NBC and GE, for their part, add a layer to their smokescreen, allowing them to make their decision in peace. But based on available information, it sounds like the mother of all TV mergers — the logo of which might involve a terrifying fox/peacock hybrid, or possibly searchlights that morph into feathers — probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon.