It’s a title you would expect to refer to something written on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, but the good folks at The Daily Beast have won the gold on outrageously, offensively false opinion pieces with this gem from Gina Piccalo, who suggests that the 1980s are a completely forgettable decade in the history of modern cinema. (more...)

You'd expect James Carville to be the one that would use Karl Rove's new memoir as an excuse to remind everyone of a time he won an obscure, near-impossible political campaign, but it's his lifelong sidekick Paul Begala who is doing the honors this time around. Begala published his very best attempt at a fair review of Courage and Consequence at The Daily Beast today and, unsurprisingly, it's a little biased. (more...)

After releasing a pretty inclusive list of the Top 25 Right-Wing Journalists in America, Daily Beast columnist Tunku Varadarajan took on the other half of the aisle, putting together a list of the most powerful and influential American liberals. In many ways, The Top 25 Left-Wing Journalists list is much more eclectic than it's conservative counterpart, and includes a much larger number of personalities that toe the line between entertainers/commentators and journalists-- many, in fact, that are solidly in the entertainment or commentary camp. (more...)

The evil pace of the Internet is apparently driving writers to plagiarize. Earlier this month Daily Beast writer Gerald Posner was suspended after it was revealed his articles contained passages that had been lifted from a Miami Herald article. Said Posner:

"Speed, the desire for a scoop, the natural inclination to want to break news on a developing story of national importance, made me shortcut my own rigorous standards."

The Daily Beast took a stab at one of the harder sciences of the media world last night, publishing a list of the top 25 most influential right-wing journalists in America. It is a pretty comprehensive list, with all the usual suspects - Matt Drudge, George Will, almost everyone on Fox News prime time - making appearances, and both conservative and libertarian columnists taken into consideration. "What unites them all, broadly," writes columnist Tunku Varadarajan, "is their influence on the public debate, and their place on the political spectrum—which is somewhere to the right of center." (more...)

Credit where credit is due: Tina Brown is a publishing icon who has had an enormous impact on the way information is packaged and consumed. She is also lovely reminder of a bygone era of profitable and well-funded magazines that cost a lot of money to produce, but also afford a lavish lifestyle for their senior management. So it was with great glee that we discovered Gawker's Ryan Tate's delightful exegesis on Brown, in the context of her one and half year-old glossy website The Daily Beast. (more...)

The Daily Beast's Chief Investigative Reporter Gerald Posner, "award-winning author of 10 investigative nonfiction bestsellers, on topics ranging from political assassinations, to Nazi war criminals, to 9/11, to terrorism," just got the exclusive gossip scoop on what really went down with Tiger that fateful Thanksgiving Eve.

According to Posner's two sources--both close to Elin Nordegren, Tiger's wife--Tiger learned of the initial National Enquirer story before it went to print. So he was all "I'm going to put my wife and my mistress and the phone together," and Rachel Uchitel (mistress) was all "Go for it." So then she gets on the phone with Nordegren and spends 30 minutes convincing her they're just friends, all, you know, "We totally haven't even kissed," but then of course Nordegren got suspicious, so she sent fake text messages via Tiger's phone to Uchitel and then called her, and then Uchitel was all "Oh f--ck."

And then the school bell rang, everyone put their phones away and went to class.

Posner's article reads more like a gossip rag than a serious piece of traditional investigative journalism, and in doing so he gives National Enquirer Executive Editor Barry Levine some of the "vindication" he so desires.

For years the Enquirer has been producing what readers regard as "tabloid fluff," but in the last few months, they've broken two enormous celebrity scandals--Tiger and John Edwards, newly appointed baby daddy. The Edwards scandal had huge political implications, "rocked the campaign to its core," as Mark Halperin and John Heilemann note in their political expose Game Change. Isn't that what investigative journalism is supposed to do? Hold government and public figures accountable?

Come Pulitzer time, Levine wants to make sure the public doesn't forget that these scoops came from the Enquirer. And I have to agree-- somewhere along the way, the tabloid seems to have gotten pretty good.

The New York Times lengthy, largely-positive Sunday profile of Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes has gotten a lot of attention from around the media (including here). But the one major element that was negative - a quote from Rupert Murdoch son-in-law Matthew Freud - has been the focal point of two Daily Beast columns in the past three days. There may be a reason. (more...)

Let's get one thing straight: If anyone could predict the future, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. There were many smart people who gazed into the crystal ball a few years back and not only saw nothing, but doubled down on the Titanic (R.I.P. Portfolio). Smarter people, however, looked around at what was happening and bet on the future. This is the only model that will work in 2010 - because the future is here. The 2008 election was a giant distraction (did anything else happen that year?) but in 2009 all sorts of trends emerged, and diverged and/or converged. (Clearly, we're on the verge.) Anyhow, it was with all of the above in mind that I made a few predictions about the New Yecade* for The Daily Beast today. (more...)

poll Last week, Mediaite asked you who was the top online editor of 2009. As we'd mentioned at the time, some sites didn't quite fit into the bloggy rubric. Which is why in this round, we're recognizing sites which are too vast and ambitious in scope to describe in terms of the work of just one editor. You know the drill, loyal, smart, and attractive readers: below is a list of our nominees for the top site of 2009, including The Business Insider, Ars Technica, Politico, and Talking Points Memo. Vote for your favorite, or leave any deserving candidates you think we left out in the comments: (more...)

Well! I watched this clip to check out what Meghan McCain had to say last night on Jay Leno's 2009 year-end panel, but it was Adam Carolla who made me double-take. He does have a point that this year has seen a lot of "mistresses" (that is to say, women with whom married men are having affairs) behave in manners that said married men would prefer they didn't. (Understatement.) But we maybe detect just a smidge of misogyny when he said: "You bitches have gotten out of hand." Carolla went on to explain how it is: (more...)

Verena von Pfetten is Air America's Senior Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor, and the former Living Editor at the Huffington Post, which makes her my former colleague and great friend. (She is also Canadian, as well as the former Verena van der Woodsen to my Blair Sklardorf). Verena had the good fortune, or misfortune, depending on how you look at it, to run into me at a moment of inspiration, during which I suggested we experiment with a new form of our traditional 5QQ — the impromptu video. Verena gamely gave it a whirl, and what followed was about as informal and off-the-cuff a rendering of the 5QQ as we have ever done (usually we email the questions to our quarry, who then have time to think about the answers. Not so today with Verena. Lucky her!). (more...)

The advertisement appears to have since disappeared from this Daily Beast article on more aggressive recruitment campaigns by atheists, but we have it preserved for posterity. Could "holy" and some of the religion-themed words be linked by some infernal algorithm? Either way, it weirdly gives the impression that the best way to fight the creeping menace of Atheism is with antioxidant-rich pomegranate juice and a 1960s Batman-like exclamation: "Holy Health!" (more...)

"Watching Beck, who sometimes resembles a snake-oil salesman’s dim-witted assistant accidentally promoted to the top job, makes a foreigner wonder just what’s happening to American conservatism ... I don’t want to seem forward or rude, but one can’t help but ask: Have you people lost your minds?" (more...)

"The truth, in administering justice, is emergent; cobbled together from the collective puzzle pieces in twelve minds, driven by emotion, confirmed by fact." — Philip Bump Astor trial juror (and Mediaite columnist) on life inside the jury room (and what the press got wrong). (more...)

video Today is the kickoff for Fashion Week — and for the Daily Beast's brand-new style section, Sexy Beast. The good news: It's already sexier than an oiled up Englishman in a Speedo. (more...)

Is the Internet scummy enough to exploit a 17-year-old tennis sensation's sexuality to drive traffic? Or are there just not enough pictures of her in a bikini or plucking balls out of her skirt to throw together a sexy photo gallery or two? Sex Watch is here to see how our link-baiting friends across the Internet are raising traffic -- and eyebrows -- on the coattails of a young blonde, 5-foot-6 Melanie Oudin, as she tears through the US Open women's draw. (more...)

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In the sea of congratulatory quotes and jolly press releases about Diane Sawyer's ascendence to the World News throne, Daily Beast reporter Rebecca Dana's report that Charlie Gibson was "livid" that Sawyer was taking his anchor slot on ABC stood out. But was it accurate? (more...)

Anytime an influential man dies, attention is paid to his wife. The grace and allure of the grieving widow has fascinated Americans for decades, from Jackie O to Ruth Madoff (in a weird way). Vicki Kennedy is no exception. Since Senator Kennedy's death, there's been countless profile pieces written about "the woman who saved Ted," their marriage, and how they fell in love. (more...)

Much like Vanity Fair dispatching a greenhorn naif into the unknowable badlands of Brooklyn, The Daily Beast recently sent its resident new media writer, Douglas Rushkoff, on a recon mission into the heart of 4chan. Rushkoff, the one-time would-be Tom Wolfe of the hacker counterculture, was tasked with living among the inhabitants of this online chamber of wonders/horrors and hopefully not coming back shivering from HTMaLaria, or riddled with digital assegai wounds, or something, we guess. (more...)

Illinois Republican Rep. Aaron Schock, 28, is the youngest member of Congress and a product of the GOP's Young Guns program, which works to get young Republican talent into office. Serving in Abraham Lincoln's district, he's an honest hard-worker who began his IRA at age 14. And, if you ask NPR, he also "has the best abs." But NPR is not the first and certainly won't be the last to cover Schock, or prominently feature his abdominals. The unusual and ongoing media attention began when Huffington Post readers voted Schock the "Hottest Freshman" in the 111th Congress, to which he said, "I appreciate this honor, but my real goal is to have a 'hot' legislative record on behalf of the people I serve." (more...)

• This was probably cooked up by a gaggle of disgruntled 4channers, but it's still pretty hilar. (RQ) • Well this is fairly creepy. Michael Jackson had a "young protégé" who he called "Little Monkey. But things were all good: "He was always like, 'Please be careful with Little Monkey. When you ride on the four wheelers, PLEASE be careful because Little Michael lives with me." (SK) (more...)

We here at Mediaite understand one universal truth about all media strategies — sex sells. Every so often (read: every day) we notice how some of our friends across the Internet use sexy headlines and photos to drive traffic. And what better way to celebrate these recession-busting decisions than in a regular feature? Welcome to SEX WATCH!     • Daily Beast: Remembering JFK, Jr. — "Little-Known Details About How JFK, Jr. Lived" happens to be a nice way of saying "A slideshow of JFK Jr.'s abs throughout the years." (more...)

Recently I was reading up on Project MKULTRA. It always amazes me that this happened, in our country, and so recently. Sometimes I need to read about it to make sure it actually, indisputably happened and isn't just a crazy conspiracy.

This time, though, I noticed this passage on the Wikipedia page:

In December 1974, The New York Times reported that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S. citizens, during the 1960s. That report prompted investigations by the U.S. Congress...

I started thinking about how this would go down today, or, say, next year, when there IS no New York Times (NB: this is not a prediction of the time-frame of the NYT's demise. Bear with me).