Leigh Van Bryan, a 26 year old bar manager, and his 24 year old buddy, Emily Bunting, didn’t have anywhere near the trip that they planned on. And it was all because of a tweet Bryan sent a few days earlier saying “Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America.” This had caused them to be pegged as a potential target and get picked up by armored guards upon arrival.

Oh, those terrorists. They’re always such catty gossips.

But the Department of Homeland Security had more evidence too. They found an earlier tweet from Bunting which read “3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA pissing people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!” The Monroe bit was actually just a reference to a Family Guy joke. Unfortunately, the police apparently missed that episode. Bunting told the Daily Mail that they searched through her things for “spades and shovels” and asked her if she was going to be Bryan’s “lookout” during the excavation.

So how did their trip start? From the Daily Mail:

“Leigh said: ‘It’s just so ridiculous it’s almost funny but at the time it was really scary. The Homeland Security agents were treating me like some kind of terrorist.

‘I kept saying to them they had got the wrong meaning from my tweet but they just told me “you’ve really f***** up with that tweet boy”.

‘When I was in the van I was handcuffed and put in a cage. I had a panic attack but the worse was yet to come.

‘When we arrived at the prison I was shoved in a cell on my own but after an hour two huge Mexican men covered in tattoos came in and started asking me who I was.

‘They told me they’d been arrested for taking cocaine over the border.

‘When the food arrived on the tray they took it all and just left me with a carton of apple juice.’”

Bummer, dude.

You know, I’m trying really hard to feel bad for these kids but I really can’t. Sure, it’s kind of awful that the youth of today have to live in a constant state of fear and paranoia, trapped in a veritable police state where Big Brother can arrest you simply because he misunderstood a joke, but, lets be honest; anyone who goes around quoting Family Guy is basically a terrorist anyway.

Family Guy fans have grown accustomed to the show pushing limits of taste and appropriateness, but this episode — which was widely panned (The A.V. Club gave it a relatively generous “C+”) — seems to have pushed some buttons beyond it just not being funny and not having the anticipated Halloween theme. Jezebel’s Whitney Jefferson, for instance, in a post suggesting that the show hit a “horrible new low,” said she had long ago been numbed to the offensiveness of the show, but that this episode went too far. “What I saw,” she wrote, “was seriously awful.”

Hammer asked Walsh what was wrong with the episode, and she said that because Brenda’s responses to concerns and rationalizations about her beatings were typical of domestic abuse sufferers, it was too close to real life and, therefore, not funny:

“They made fun of the victim more than they made fun of the assailant,” Walsh explained. “The main theme of the show was about this poor ‘stupid’ woman who was too dumb to leave her relationship. And domestic violence is far more complicated than that. We’re watching someone rationalize a domestic violence relationship and this is the kind of thought process that actually goes on in real life. It’s not satire anymore.”

Plus, it’s kind of stale. Writer Alec Sulkin also wrote the brilliant “Stew-roids” episiode, so it’s not like he has a bad track record (although he did court some controversy with a terrible tweet after the Japanese earthquake earlier this year). And there’s always a chance that the Family Guy writers were purposely pulling a Halloween prank on viewers by producing a “very special episode”-type stunt — eliminating most of the humor and instead playing it on a dramatic level. There was even (spoiler alert!) the brutal murder of a minor character at the end of the episode, with Quagmire squashing Jeff against a tree with a car. But the end result, if that was even the case, may have been that they turned off more viewers than they pleased. The show has dipped into sensitive material before, and FOX has actually refused to air two episodes — one dealing with abortion, the other with heavy Jewish themes. Sunday night’s episode, if reaction to it can be used as a good measure, may have been better joining those two episodes in exile.

You can view the episode here on Hulu Plus, and watch theShowbiz Tonight clip below, courtesy of HLN:

Shared MacFarlane:

Yeah, it was an angry call. And, suffice it to say, he is a phenomenally good debater. If you had been keeping score, I would’ve lost roundly. [...] I was really kind of in shock more than anything else. I mean, it was kind of an odd Hollywood moment. I mean, I was a huge fan of how show, and here I was getting this phone call, you know, really angry, angry phone call.

He added that, regardless of how successful that strike was or was not, he had felt that it was “incumbent upon people in a certain position to stand up for the people who haven’t made it yet, if they can.” Stewart’s take, as MacFarlane summarized it, was something along the lines of “Well, who the Hell made you the moral arbiter of Hollywood?” (Answer: Manatees.)

Morgan’s reaction was an interesting one:

But not if you’re, as he is, are the self-appointed moral arbiter of Hollywood. Which is exactly what the position he plays is. There’s a certain irony in Jon Stewart ringing up haranguing you for mocking him.

“I mean, if I say yes, he’s going to crucify me on his show every night for a year,” joked MacFarlane. (Oh. Honey.) “Let’s take him on together!” suggested Morgan. “I’m not scared.”

MacFarlane, very much to his credit, handled the issue gracefully, sticking to his guns while conceding that the Family Guy gag was “probably so over the line in its ruthlessness that it probably could have been more measured in its execution.” Fair enough, right?

As you may have gathered, I don’t watch Family Guy and am unfamiliar with the episode being discussed. So if you want to describe it or happen to have a clip of the scene in question, please feel free to send it my way.

In the meantime, watch the interview for yourselves, via CNN:

In case you missed it, Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Rick Santorum (R-Google) each signed The Family Leader’s so-called “Marriage Vow” (which actually seeks to destroy tens of thousands of legal marriages) last week, and among all of the anti-gay, anti-porn stuff was a paragraph that insisted that black children born into slavery had a better shot at two-parent glory than those born under President Obama’s watch:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household* than was an African American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

Aside from the obvious offense of making a favorably comparison of any aspect of slavery to anything, the group deliberately sought to draw that comparison between the slave era and the presidency of Barack Obama, using a study that said nothing of the kind, and which was published four years before Obama even took office. The study they cited contained no data from either era.

The passage caused an uproar, and over the weekend, “The Family Leader” removed the reference from “The Marriage Vow,” and released the following “apology“: (emphasis mine)

“After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues we deeply respect, we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued, and such misconstruction can detract from the core message of the Marriage Vow: that ALL of us must work to strengthen and support families and marriages between one woman and one man,” the group’s officials said in a statement. “We sincerely apologize for any negative feelings this has caused, and have removed the language from the vow.”

This type of “apology” is all too familiar. We’re sorry you were too stupid to “get it,” and now you’re all mad at us, so we took it out because you’re a bunch of crybabies. This one gets extra irony points for having the stones to use the word “misconstrued” after the way they completely made up conclusions from a study by black scholars.

Alas, even after I urged them to stop talking about slavery, Michele Bachmann’s campaign couldn’t help themselves. How did these geniuses respond to Bachmann’s connection with a pledge that made a thudding, trivial comparison with slavery? By making another thudding, trivial comparison with slavery:

“She signed the ‘candidate vow,’ ” campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart said, and distanced Bachmann from the preamble language, saying, “In no uncertain terms, Congresswoman Bachmann believes that slavery was horrible and economic enslavement is also horrible.”

It’s almost like a bad used car ad. “Emancipate yourself from high prices at Bachmann Auto Mall!”

Here’s a pro tip: if you really think something is horrible, you don’t then list something far less horrible, and say that it’s horrible, too. Let’s try a few:

Cancer is horrible and economic cancer is also horrible.

Family Guy is horrible, and economic Family Guy is also horrible. (That doesn’t even make sense.)

Michele Bachmann’s campaign is horrible, and Michele Bachmann’s econimic campaign is also horrible. (Okay, that one works.)

The one saving grace here is that it was a spokesperson, and not Rep. Bachmann herself, who made the statement. If the congresswoman is asked about it, she needs to make clear, in no uncertain terms, that slavery was not only way more horrible than economic slavery, but that it actually included economic slavery, along with every other adjective you can put in front of the word slavery.

After that, she should probably stop talking about slavery until she’s had some time to read up on it.

The real videos the military released today are part of the largest cache of high-level terrorist intelligence ever collected, and showed Bin Laden before a plain background, clad in a white robe and hat and getting all his lines wrong. While he doesn’t laugh at himself, he does turn to someone off-camera, indicating he has erred. This, CNN concludes, indicated there was a team of people behind the releases, and that Bin Laden had camera operators and writers around to make him look good (the releases also show Bin Laden was a fan of dying his beard to look more youthful).

Meanwhile, back in 2006, Family Guy‘s Bin Laden wore the same thing, stood before the same background, and mistakenly called the holiday Ramadan “Radaman,” and chortled his way through the entire video, bringing in props and chumming around with the camera. Clearly no one quite had the pulse on Bin Laden at the time better than Seth MacFarlane. Or perhaps Bin Laden began recording and saving his blooper reels after he saw how appealing his animated self was to an American audience when wearing oversized sunglasses.

Below are both the real Bin Laden videos (via CNN) and the prophetic Family Guy episode. Life imitating art or art predicting life? You decide:

The joke from Family Guy had Stewie Griffin, the intelligent talking baby, claim that Halloween was “a bigger letdown than being a Mets fan.” In the show’s typical fashion of cutting to a quick scene to illustrate the joke, the next scene has Stewie at a Mets game listening to an announcer say “it’s Opening Day, and here’s the first pitch . . . and the season’s over!” Someone clearly saw parallels between the real opening day and the cartoon, and couldn’t resist playing the audio. Yet unlike in the show, officials at SNY and the Mets are surely not laughing at this joke.

Watch the clip of the Mets game below from SNY and the original Family Guy clip from Fox:

(h/t NY Post)

Although some studies suggest conservatives and liberals prefer different shows, I dare say the shows on this list can unite everyone across the political spectrum because quality is quality. And quite frankly, in my humble opinion, if the show isn’t on the list below, it ain’t worth watching! Disagree? Defend your overlooked show in the comments. Here we go, and be sure to scroll below each of the pictures to see my rationale for these can’t-miss picks . . .

1. Mad Men, AMC (1 of 11)

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This great achievement is completely deserving of every accolade it receives. In its strongest season yet, we witnessed Don Draper’s marriage crumble and take Don’s confidence down with it. The season was certainly about Don’s self-discovery, but a much simpler question persisted throughout: was Don capable of finding happiness? An unexpected marriage proposal to his secretary at the end of the season provided him with such a fleeting moment, but in Mad Men’s world, where characters are never truly content, happiness is viewed as merely a welcome distraction from answering the larger question: what is one’s purpose?

This season the women dramatically step up their game too, as strong-willed Betty, Peggy and Joan masterfully portray the discontent of women not satisfied to live by the norms expected of them in 1960’s society. Dealing with such weighty issues easily puts this show in a class by itself, and even if none of the characters find happiness, viewers certainly will be happy for the chance to experience such rare and thought-provoking entertainment.

Memorable Quote

“I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things.” -Don’s spurned girlfriend cries to Don about his new fiancee.

Here’s the synopsis. As previously revealed, when Brian learns that Rush Limbaugh is going to be at the Quahog Mall for a book-signing he decides to go down there and give him a piece of his left-wing mind. But when ninja Rush comes to Brian’s rescue after he is set upon by bullies Brian is swiftly won over to the GOP and asks Rush to dinner. And with that, cue the music.

“To quote a famous troublemaker,” sings Brian, “I have a dream…of a Republican town, where men to the right of the aisle don’t back down.” It’s a place, croons Rush, where “everyone prays to a Republican God” and there a no Republican Muslims (“too many tall buildings”). Watch the full number below.

Here’s a synopsis of what to expect:

When Brian learns that Rush Limbaugh (guest-voicing as himself) is going to be at the Quahog Mall for a book-signing, he decides to go down there and give him a piece of his left-wing mind. But when Rush unexpectedly comes to Brian’s rescue, Brian has a political change of heart.

Limbaugh said he’s bringing his “usual bravado and bombast” to the performance, and he certainly brought it to his preview by uttering the quote in the headline of this post. He added that the voices for the episode were recorded a year ago, so don’t expect things to get too topical.

Limbaugh also seems to hold Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane in surprisingly high regard, considering the latter’s left-wing political views, saying, “He’s a Hollywood liberal, but we get along.” Maybe it’s not hard to see why: Limbaugh also sounded like he admired the show for how it “crosses the line every night that it’s on,” something he’s got plenty of experience with being accused of himself.

Oh, and Limbaugh agreed with a listener who thinks he’s reaching out across the political aisle more than Barack Obama is by doing the episode. Apparently his tolerance for Democrats has its limits. Audio of Limbaugh’s remarks below.

The program itself did not get the nomination, according to O’Reilly’s report, but, rather, the song that plays at the beginning of the episode, which has lyrics about Down Syndrome. After playing a refresher clip of the Family Guy episode for those who had forgotten, O’Reilly asks Hoover and Carlson: “Are the Emmys making a political statement of support for Family Guy‘s alleged attack on Palin by nominating the soundtrack to that particular episode for an award?”

Hoover sees a serious problem with the message it sends about special needs people in American society, and called it “rewarding people who are making special needs children the brunt of our jokes.” Even if the episode itself wasn’t nominated for content, the lyrical content of the theme song was enough to be seen as an endorsement of this type of humor.

Unlike her colleague, Carlson didn’t analyze the potential general messages the Emmy organization was sending out. She took the political route, and in no unambiguous terms called the move “a total attack on Sarah Palin, end of story,” by the academy that hands out nominations. She said that the reason Family Guy did not get what she would deem to be an appropriate reprimand, why they chose to air the story, and, later, why the powers-that-be who give Emmy nominees handed one to Family Guy was because Sarah Palin had a child with special needs and “Hollywood hates Sarah Palin.”

Video below:

Here’s what happens: On a search to find the source of all dirty jokes (which eventually leads them to Virginia) Peter, Quagmire, and Joe pass through Washington, DC where they see the Washington Monument, the Obama Monument (it’s black) and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This is the part that is going to ruffle some feathers. Standing in front of the Memorial are two Vietnam Vets and a Vietnamese man who calls the Memorial a “scoreboard” and says “aw, what happened to your friends? Hey I know that guy, I killed him, he cried like a bitch. Vietnam! Undefeated!”

Um. I’m sort of at a loss on how to follow that exchange except to say the funny is lost on me. I suspect it’s going to be lost on a whole lot of people (though, I guess you never know). Video below…draw your own funny conclusions.

A few years ago, Seth MacFarlane used his show Family Guy, the incredibly popular cartoon on Fox, to seemingly usurp the title of animation’s reigning bad boy from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park. However, despite his success (MacFarlane is the highest paid writer on television) he definitely lost his crown this week as the South Park guys made two episodes so provocative that they received death threats from Islamic extremists. And, while Parker and Stone released a brief statement about the censorship their show received following the threats, everyone in the media has been wondering what must be going through their heads during all this hoopla. Fortunately, Larry King had MacFarlane on last night and he is one of the only people around who could give a good guess about the pressure that his rivals must be facing. Unfortunately, King awkwardly avoided the questions that everyone wanted to hear.

Most of the interview was kind of strange and seemed more like an ad for Family Guy more than a discussion of MacFarlane’s process or anything. They talked about how much better the DVD versions of the episodes were than the free ones. They covered King’s desk in cardboard cut outs of the Family Guy characters. They even had grown men wearing giant costumes and pretending to be the characters sitting in the studio control room!

The worst part is, they had plenty of perfectly good chances to discuss the South Park story and find out MacFarlane’s take on it. The main topic of conversation was how “edgy” Family Guy is and how many people it’s ticked off. At one point, King even mentioned the South Park death threats but then he swerved and asked MacFarlane if he’d ever had threats in his career and the topic was never brought up again. Instead they just showed a bunch of provocative Family Guy clips that, in light of the South Park episode, seemed fairly tame and irrelevant.

King has gotten a lot of bad press out there recently following his latest divorce (including a fair share from us) but he still is one of the best at what he does so it was disappointing to see him skip over the questions that everyone watching would want to hear. In his defense, it’s certainly possible that MacFarlane asked him not to discuss South Park because, after all, this was his moment to shine and, if that were the case, we can’t really blame him. But still, one of the stories to happen in television animation history is currently going on; we’re going to want to know what Seth MacFarlane thinks about it!

Fortunately, MacFarlane did give a few good quotes about other topics.

On doing a progressive show for a conservative company:

“All the years that I’ve been there, I’ve actually never met Rupert Murdoch. My theory is that the guy is a businessman first and a Republican second. And if something with a distinctly liberal slant is doing good for the company, he’s not gonna step in.”

On his recent fight with Sarah Palin:

“I actually do think, y’know, as much as I disagree with just about everything that she stands for, I do think, at the end of the day, probably, to some degree, I think it was partially politically motivated and part genuine. I mean, she is a mom. She probably was ticked off on some level but what those percentages are I couldn’t tell you.”

On making offensive jokes:

“You don’t want to be nasty for the sake of being nasty. I mean, if you’re actually depicting a real person, for example, Terry Sciavo, as opposed to a deliberately inappropriate kid’s play, then you have serious discussions. Are we doing this? Is this just cruel? Is this just mean? And there will be a lot of those discussions that go on in the Writer’s Room on a day to day basis. I think there’s this vision of Hollywood writers as just this hedonistic bunch who are just out to make their dough and do something that’s gonna be there for shock value. Not the case. I mean, my writers, most of them are married. They have children. And there are a lot of discussions that we have in that room. Is this funny enough? Is it satirical enough that it warrants the edginess of the material.”

Of course, the most interesting tidbit learned in the interview was that King allows his nine year old to watch Family Guy. Now there’s your grounds for divorce!

Chuck Todd

My interview with Chuck was not at all what I expected. First of all, he seems to be the busiest guy in the press corps. Every time I see him, he’s doing a standup, or he’s on the phone. Even so, he talked to me for about half an hour, with very little notice.

More surprising, though, was the amount of personality he brought to the interview, which is one of the main reasons I started this series. In these clips, I believe you get to see a side of Chuck that you don’t normally get on TV, but that he has begun to display on Twitter. Here is the rest of our interview, followed by the clips we have posted already:

Luntz specifies at the beginning of the segment that the people used in the experiment are neither Democrats nor Republicans, but people chosen because they voted for Barack Obama or John McCain. Using the parameters Luntz himself sets, it is possible that some of those Obama voters specifically voted against Palin despite being Republicans, so the conclusion that Democrats are not as compassionate as they seem because eleven Obama voters from Philadelphia laughed at Family Guy seems like a bit of a stretch. Bill O’Reilly‘s point– that people find it difficult to separate Palin’s person and family life from her politics– is a more likely theory, especially considering how much of the Palin platform centers around family values and personal issues that are appealing to social conservatives.

What O’Reilly fails to point out is that this knife cuts both ways, and outrage from Palin voters at the segment is probably more of a reaction to seeing Palin offended than it is to watching a program that ridicules special needs babies. In fact, Luntz points out that the Palin voter line “tanks” right after the character with Down Syndrome says her mother is the former governor of Alaska, moreso than when the characters are ridiculing the Down Syndrome girl’s appearance without her having a political identity.

Watch the video below (and follow the nifty dynamic survey graph) below:

Here is the segment from The Family Guy as it first aired:

I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line “I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska” was very funny. I think the word is “sarcasm.”

In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life.

Sarcasm, satire…all forms of funny Sarah Palin may or may not understand and/or appreciate. Also, SNAP. However, it does not stop there. As pointed out by Gawker, who picked it up from the blog Palingates, the NYT may have left out the best part. According to Palingates this is how the full email read:

My name is Andrea Fay Friedman. I was born with Down syndrome. I played the role of Ellen on the “Extra Large Medium” episode of Family Guy that was broadcast on Valentine’s day. Although they gave me red hair on the show, I am really a blonde. I also wore a red wig for my role in ” Smudge” but I was a blonde in “Life Goes On”. I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line “I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska” was very funny. I think the word is “sarcasm”.

In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life.

My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes.

Emphasis mine. Also, yowzer. Palingates has also posted a copy of the email to back up their claim of what the NYT allegedly cut. I say allegedly, because I would not exactly classify Palingates as the most reliable source of information for all things Sarah Palin. Also, the tone of that last line is not all that consistent with the rest of the letter, nor is it all that consistent with the entire Q&A with Friedman the Times features in their Arts Blog. Though, lord knows it’s the sort of thing that’s red meat for Andrew Sullivan, who has long felt (he’s not the only one) Palin was carting out son Trig for her own benefit. I’ve emailed the NYT to confirm that they did, in fact, remove that line and will update when I hear back. In the meantime, some more from the Q&A:

Q: Do you agree with what she and her daughter Bristol were saying, that the character and the jokes were insulting to people with Down syndrome?
A: It’s not really an insult. I was doing my role, I’m an actor. I’m entitled to say something. It was really funny. I was laughing at it. I had a nice time doing voiceover. It was my first time doing a voiceover, and I had fun.

First Rahm Emanuel who represents the most powerful man, the leader of our free world, called people, a group of people who he disagrees with F-ing retards. Quite inappropriate and on my Facebook I said there, too. I don’t think he should be part of our president’s inner circle making decisions that affect every single one of us…I thought that that was very insensitive, and not just for that reason, his terminology, his coarse language, but I think he’s given our president some very bad advice in a whole realm of different areas.

So basically, she doesn’t like Emanuel (or Obama, or the Dems), and the three month old “retard” quote just happened to be a great hook to express that! As for Rush Limbaugh‘s use of the word, it’s ye old satire argument again. Bill O’Reilly is slightly more skeptical of this than Chris Wallace was a few weeks ago…but only very slightly.

“But just to be clear, you didn’t come down on Mr. Limbaugh, because you felt that, what, he didn’t have any ill intent in what he said? Why didn’t you come down on him a little harder.”

He was using satire! And with that O’Reilly just sort of lets it drop. At some point someone needs to ask Sarah Palin to define “satire.”

Palin also defends charges of hypocrisy by noting that she called Fox program “Family Guy” out for their depiction of children with special needs (video of that below, also). O’Reilly eventually tells Palin he thinks she’s “noble.” I think she may be the savviest media person on the planet. Videos below.

Palin’s full statement, made via her Facebook page, is below.

People are asking me to comment on yesterday’s Fox show that felt like another kick in the gut. Bristol was one who asked what I thought of the show that mocked her baby brother, Trig (and/or others with special needs), in an episode yesterday. Instead of answering, I asked her what she thought. Here is her conscientious reply, which is a much more restrained and gracious statement than I want to make about an issue that begs the question, “when is enough, enough?”:

“When you’re the son or daughter of a public figure, you have to develop thick skin. My siblings and I all have that, but insults directed at our youngest brother hurt too much for us to remain silent. People with special needs face challenges that many of us will never confront, and yet they are some of the kindest and most loving people you’ll ever meet. Their lives are difficult enough as it is, so why would anyone want to make their lives more difficult by mocking them? As a culture, shouldn’t we be more compassionate to innocent people – especially those who are less fortunate? Shouldn’t we be willing to say that some things just are not funny? Are there any limits to what some people will do or say in regards to my little brother or others in the special needs community? If the writers of a particularly pathetic cartoon show thought they were being clever in mocking my brother and my family yesterday, they failed. All they proved is that they’re heartless jerks. – Bristol Palin”

- Sarah Palin

Hard to argue with that sentiment (unless you’re Michael Wolff), but it should be noted here that some have been critical of Palin for strongly criticizing liberal offenders — Rahm Emanuel, Hollywood — but letting right-wing Rush Limbaugh off the hook. (By the way, here “some” includes me, Glynnis MacNicol, Tommy Christopher, and Stephen Colbert).

Related:
Did Family Guy Really Just Make Fun Of Trig Palin? [Mediaite]
Fox Hollywood – What a Disappointment [Sarah Palin - Facebook]

Update, Tuesday Feb. 16th: Sarah Palin responds.

Viewers watching Sunday night’s new episode of Family Guy on FOX might have been surprised to see what looked like one of Adult Swim’s telltale white-font-on-black-background ads. Only it wasn’t during the commercial break: it was in the middle of the episode. And it plugged Adult Swim as “funnier” than Fox for not cutting out jokes. What gives?

In the words of the mock ad, which someone helpfully stitched together and posted on imgur:  ”Can I ask you something? Why are you watching this on FOX? Family Guy is a lot funnier on Adult Swim, because we don’t cut out the funniest jokes. You probably think you’re watching this on Adult Swim now, don’t you? Well, you’re not. It’s still FOX.”

FOX being broadcast and Adult Swim being late-night cable, Family Guy does get a freer hand on Adult Swim; most recently, the show tussled with FOX over an abortion-centric episode which FOX didn’t air.

There’s an extra irony to the Adult Swim plug in light of FOX’s recent standoff with Time Warner, which threatened not to carry FOX programming until both sides reached a compromise shortly before New Year’s Day. Adult Swim and its sister network, Cartoon Network, are owned by Turner Broadcasting System, which is owned by Time Warner. Of course, the joke was most likely dreamt up and approved well before New Year’s.

An intriguing question: what’s Adult Swim going to do with the clip when they air it? The odds are against its becoming a valentine to FOX, but you never know …

(h/t Reddit)

An open-ended question: does Matthews’ self-parody show that he’s a good sport, or just that he really likes to hear himself talk, even if he’s making fun of himself?

For those too busy or important to click the link, the ad purports to be from two guys (pictured here) from Muncie, Indiana, whose iPhone app idea, Zap News, was stolen by CNN. These ads don’t show any features of their or CNN’s app but then, why should they? Everyone knows what news apps do; i.e., nothing special. Elsewhere on the web, the wronged duo demand that CNN “remove the app from the iTunes App Store and issue a public apology to us, then give us $100,000 and massages. And call our parents and tell them the truth.”

Right about now, you should be thinking to yourself, “Well, this is obviously a viral marketing campaign. The gentleman writing this column, in addition to reinforcing various stereotypes, must be some sort of dimwit.” You are correct to think that, at least the first sentence – that was my reaction, too. The question, though, becomes: viral marketing for what?

The obvious answer is: CNN’s iPhone app. But we’re talking about Adult Swim – not a program known for appealing to the more mature instincts of its viewers. If you Google the show, for example, one of the featured links that comes up is for their online game Zombie Hooker Nightmare, in which a zombie-fighting hooker has to escort tricks to her trailer. At 1:30 in the morning, they show a cartoon called Assy McGee, which is literally an ass and legs that fights crime. A Venn diagram showing the overlap of Adult Swim fans with those who’d want to buy CNN’s news app would look like a pair of spectacles.

An employee from Mekanism confirmed that the spot was created for their client, CNN, but, at this point, hasn’t been any more forthcoming.

We have to ask, then: could the Zap News App be legit? After all, Adult Swim’s ad space can’t be terribly expensive – for a few months earlier this year, they looped an ad for an album of gospel and hymns by Ronnie Milsap. (The fan-base Venn diagram for  that one would resemble a scale model of the Earth’s relationship to Pluto.) I decided to investigate.

Searching for Zap News App turns up a number of blog-style stories on sketchy tech sites – as well as a number of sites that caused my browser to sputter that I was putting myself at risk for viruses. Those sites I declined to visit. I decided then to try to find Zap.

There’s no Zap News App on the Apple iPhone Store (though some enterprising person ought to put one up there). The domain in the ads, ZapNewsApp.com, leads only to a YouTube page with various comments – some people state that it’s a viral campaign, some request more attractive spokespeople, one says “DOWN WITH CNN” with no fewer than nine exclamation points. The YouTube page has a link to a Facebook Fan page, but both of these sites were basically dead ends.

I next checked the domain registration for ZapNewsApp.com which turned up a person’s name and an address. In San Francisco. While SF is basically California’s Muncie, it ain’t Muncie.

Digging deeper still, I found an email address that turned out to be legit – and associated with a the viral marketing firm Mekanism. An employee from Mekanism confirmed that the spot was created for their client, CNN, but, at this point, hasn’t been any more forthcoming.

As best I can figure, CNN paid a marketing firm to run ads on its sister channel, Cartoon Network, that pretend some Hoosier shlubs had their lame news app stolen and turned into another lame news app. This strategy, the wizards at CNN figured, would arouse such a passion against, um, CNN, that people who stay up until one in the morning watching white trash cephalopods would run to the App Store and lay out two dollars.

As you can see, there’s a step I’m not understanding. Or, hopefully, that they’re not. It’s also very possible that this is Phase 1 of a campaign that has more to come. Stay tuned. To, it seems, Adult Swim.

Thus ends The Case of the Curious Advertisement. It has been my pleasure to be the idiot who takes the bait, thereby saving all of you from walking around with hooks in your cheeks. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Family Guy is starting, and it’s one I’ve only seen five times before.

According to Reuters, the news that YouTube is in talks with movie studios about setting up a paid movie rental service has hammered Blockbuster Inc.’s stock even further down. Netflix also took a hit — its stock fell 4% — but Blockbuster’s stock declined 10%. Since the already-healthy YouTube was bought by Google in October 2006, its traffic has exploded; over the same time frame, Blockbuster’s health has gone from bad to worse.

Observe, in fancy graph form:

Here’s a Quantcast graph of YouTube’s traffic from November 2, 2006 to July 31, 2009, followed by a Google Finance graph of Blockbuster Inc.’s stock price over the same time period.

This can’t be good news for Blockbuster Video, or as uproarious Family Guy might call it, “Lackluster Video.” If Tay Zonday drops a fresh new YouTube vid, it could just finish Blockbuster off.

That’s about to change. The show is working on an episode that will include conservative heroes Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove – and from the look of Rove’s tweets about it, they are very invovled in the process of putting the episode together.

As part of responses to inquiries from some of his followers, Rove tweeted:

We’re working on the FG script @Randy_Hudson. And, it’s satire, so everyone will be mocked!

and:

No political arguments w/ Mr. MacFarlane @BenInNy. Had conference call w/ him Friday 2 finalize FG script. Thank my participation to my son!

Mr. MacFarlane would be creator Seth MacFarlane, who has never been shy about his liberal political views (meanwhile his son, Andrew, is a teenager – and must be a fan of the show).

Family Guy has been a frequent target of criticism from the right-wing. The Parents Television Council regularly puts it on its “Worst TV Shows” list, and there are claims of promoting anti-Christianity. In an October episode last year, a character on the show was portrayed wearing a Nazi uniform – and a McCain/Palin button.

But including Limbaugh and Rove in the show – and as it sounds from Rove’s tweets, in the process of shaping the episode – is the right move. As MacFarlane told THRFeed.com, “Family Guy’ tends to be very liberal because it’s written by liberals…So we thought let’s give the other side some face time.”

Giving the right-wing of the country an in on the comedic satire front is a mature decision by a show that has continued to expand its reach into the mainstream. It received its first Emmy nomination for Best Comedy earlier this month.

Now can Rove and Limbaugh be funny and self-deprecating? Maybe they’ll bring back cartoon MC Rove.

Here’s MacFarlane talking about the upcoming conservative-themed episode: