For some reason, people are not flocking to Halloween stores this year to go as Barack Obama or Michele Bachmann. How could that be?

Today, a flight attendant filed lawsuit against Gawker Media for a post (later retracted) that guessed that she may be the mistress of Arnold Schwarzenegger that fathered his illegitimate child. This afternoon on Fox News (a network that’s never had the best relationship with Gawker), the panelists of The Five had quite a bit to say about the website.

When the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal broke in May, many reporters tried to bring the story home for Americans by comparing it to Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s revelation that he’d fathered a love child. With DSK back in the news this week after new reports that he may be innocent after all, pundits are again drawing parallels to another case being discussed, that of Casey Anthony. “Combined with the seeming collapse of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, the shock showed a press quick to jump to conclusions, if not about actual guilt, then at least about guilty verdicts,” TIME‘s James Poniewozik said, upon the conclusion of the Anthony trial this week. What do these two stories really have in common with each other?

Earlier today the Supreme Court officially struck down a California ban on selling violent video games to minors, stating officially that “video games qualify for First Amendment protection.” The official vote was 7-2 against the ban, with Justices Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas dissenting.

The news of former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s extra-marital tryst – and the child born as a result of the affair – has brought up questions about how news outlets should handle reporting on the people who end up being “collateral damage” in gossip stories, and to what degree these individuals’ identities should be considered relevant and newsworthy.

The Daily, for instance, published a story today – titled “Conan Jr. the beer-barian” – about the boy’s MySpace profile, immediately inspiring questions like “Why?” and also “MySpace?” The post shows the boy as an aggressively normal American teen, albeit with one with an apparent aversion to spellcheck.

You can always count on TMZ to – if one may be permitted to weave a particularly unsavory metaphor right about now – lift the motel linoleum out from under a dead hooker’s decaying body to go after the juicier aspects of a headline-spewing story. The news organization’s founder, Harvey Levin, recently crafted a series of Tweets taking CNN to task for holding a hypocritical stance when it came to reporting the identity of the former housekeeper with whom Arnold Schwarzenegger had an extra-marital affair and, up until this month, a secret child. And Levin was able to do this not because TMZ has a strict ethical code revered by the media and public at large, but because, by staying true to its own unique code, TMZ has been able to own this story.

We have just a little over 24 hours left, if you believe Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping, owner of Family Radio. Camping’s theory is based on his own rather unique take on Biblical calendar interpretation, and while we’re still scratching our heads on the rationale of his math, we’re inclined to agree that humanity is fairly well screwed.

Sarah Palin is inching ever closer to announcing a presidential run. The former governor visited Greta Van Susteren tonight and teased she had “the fire in the belly” to do it, but that much of the criticism from the media was teetering close to too much for her and her family to bear. Van Susteren took the comment defensively as Palin challenged her to “lead” her colleagues away from the harsher reporting, to which Van Susteren replied, “don’t take the bait.”

Just last week, Glenn Beck joked about being physically ill after seeing Meghan McCain appear to be naked in a PSA. Instantly, the country erupted into outrage with even Beck’s friends distancing themselves from the comment. Yesterday, Beck repeated the same exact fake-vomit joke after looking at a picture of Mildred “Patty” Baena, the mother of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s child born out of wedlock. Beck’s radio co-hosts warned him against going down that road as he started making comments but he did it anyway. And, then, a funny thing happened…no one said a thing.

TMZ’s Harvey Levin has been taking CNN to task over Twitter this afternoon, drawing attention to the network’s changing stance on whether and when to name the housekeeper with whom former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had a child (known alternately as the “baby mama”). Levin, whose own news organization has been on the receiving end of criticism over issues with celebrities’ privacy, accused CNN of having no “moral compass” for changing their original take on the issue.

Paul Begala joined Don Imus this morning and commented on the recent troubles for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Newt Gingrich. Begala felt Schwarzenegger and his family deserved privacy, but was absolutely loving the media attention Newt received, and even offered to pay his filing fee to confirm that he would still run for President.

CNN reports this morning that the son fathered by Arnold Schwarzenegger with his housekeeper was born just days after wife Maria Shriver also gave birth to a son. The network cites records obtained Wednesday, including the birth certificate for the recently-revealed boy, whose father is listed as the man married at the time to the mother, Schwarzenegger family housekeeper Mildred Patricia Baena. CNN says the couple divorced less than three weeks after the birth.

The revelations have rocked Shriver and the couple’s children, along with friends of the family:

A funny thing about the way our current infotainment cable news culture is constructed is that the threads of every character in the narrative are interwoven in such a way that they must all necessarily intersect. Meaning: it was inevitable that, despite having nothing to do with each other, Sarah Palin would have to comment on Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s surprise lovechild.

The last time Glenn Beck hinted that the sight of a woman made him vomit uncontrollably he received a scolding from all sides. Well today Beck was at again after looking at the photos of Mildred “Patty” Baena, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mistress and the mother of their love child.

Media coverage of scandals involving sex is often fraught with common pitfalls, none more insidious than the nomenclature surrounding questions of consent. For those seeking to draw a bright line between former Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s just-revealed love child, and IMF chief  Dominique Strauss-Kahn‘s attempted rape case, yes, there is a huge difference, but Bill Maher‘s advice to “get a yes” before you “go after the household help” ignores the inherently coercive relationship between employee and employer.

Conan O’Brien unveiled “exclusive footage” of Arnold Schwarzenegger “meeting his love child” ten years ago on last night’s Conan. These, Arnold, are the hazards of ever having made a movie about a man becoming pregnant and giving birth to a child. At any rate, Conan served up the comedy, and it’s certainly worth a look.

In tonight’s “Rewrite” segment, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell turned his focus to… Donald Trump? He does understand that, at this point, discussing Trump as a political figure is akin to touting Silly Bandz as the hot new fashion trend, no?

O’Donnell kicked things off by saying he “doesn’t know” what Trump is like as a person.

Bill Maher appeared with Chris Matthews today and virtually no Republican was safe from Maher’s comedic insults. With plenty of ground to cover, Maher stuck around for two segments and took aim at everyone from Governor Lard (New Jersey Governor Chris Christie) to the Professor of Idiocy (Newt Gingrich).

The women of The View had a lot to say about the recent news that former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a child with a woman other than Maria Shriver, his wife of 25 years.

Schwarzenegger’s “love child” is the product of an affair he had ten years ago with a member of his household staff and is the impetus behind Shriver’s decision to separate from her husband.

With the big news this morning being the out of wedlock child that led to the dissolution of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver’s marriage, many have been waiting for some comment from the couple in volved. People Magazine has received a brief statement from Shriver.

The sordid story emerging from the collapsing relationship of Arnold Shwarzenegger and Maria Shriver has fueled a frenzy among media types for the first on-camera interview with the former first lady of California. TMZ is reporting Oprah Winfrey has the inside track. “Oprah met with Maria last week, trying to convince her to become a talk show host on Oprah’s OWN Network. We’ve also learned Maria is going to be a guest on Oprah’s final show.”

Last week news broke that Maria Shriver and former Califorina Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had announced they were splitting up after 25 years of marriage. The LA Times is reporting a new development that explains why the two are now ending their relationship: it seems that Schwarznegger has acknowledged that he had fathered a child with a staff member that worked for the family for 20 years.

California’s former first couple, Arnold Shwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, have announced their separation–releasing a statement Monday night that said the couple will live apart and “decide on the future of their relationship.”

The couple–introduced to each other by NBC’s Tom Brokaw–have been together 25 years and have four children. Those close to the family say they have been living somewhat separate lives in recent years, with Schwarzenegger focused on politics and Shriver devoted to charity work:

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to answer the questions of a Los Angeles television reporter, at one point saying “don’t ask me the same question, okay, because otherwise you’re boring the hell out of me.”

The reporter, KCAL-TV’s Dave Bryan, has been attempting to get Schwarzenegger to comment on his decision–on his last day in office–to reduce the prison sentence for the son of a former California Assembly Speaker.

What does a governor do after leaving office? Why, adopt a cool superhero costume and fight crime of course–complete with art by comic book legend Stan Lee and a “secret high-tech crime-fighting center under his house in Brentwood.” Of course.

Welcome to the world of The Governator, perhaps Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s coolest project since The Terminator. “The word Governator combined two worlds: the world of politics and the movie world. And [this cartoon] brings everything together. It combines the governor, the Terminator, the bodybuilding world, the True Lies,” Schwarzenegger told Entertainment Weekly, which features the comic book art on the magazine’s cover. “When I ran for governor back in 2003 and I started hearing people talking about ‘the Governator,’ I thought the word was so cool.”