Charlie Sheen is out for blood. Making his first major media appearance since his latest tragic excesses went public, Sheen spoke to radio host Alex Jones today and attacked everyone from Alcoholics Anonymous to his boss to Thomas Jefferson. While doing little to restore faith in his sanity, he touched one of the most inflamed nerves in post-Tea Party America by going after the patriot and, by visiting a program like Alex Jones to begin with, may be wanting a path to punditry.

Every time an election year rolls around, our TVs are filled with mean and aggressive campaign ads. And every time that happens, every news show in America dusts off the script for their biennial report on how “OMGZ! The campaign ads are mean this year, much meaner than ever before ever ever!!!!” Reason has created a pretty clever response to this endless cycle with some parody campaign ads that use actual quotes from Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to show that, no, campaigns aren’t getting meaner. They’ve pretty much always sucked.

Glenn Beck isn’t one to hold back, and when it comes to efforts against himself by George Soros and Media Matters, of course he was going to speak up. He did on today’s program, and it had plenty of maniacal laughter, George Soros impressions, and eventually all roads led back to one of Beck’s most oft-made points: progressives think you’re stupid.

Getting to see Stephen Colbert our of character is one of the rarest events in our media landscape today. To catch it, one has to be incredibly dedicated, patient, and observant (Or, you know, just go to a live taping of the Report and enjoy the audience Q&A beforehand). So for everyone not dedicated enough to catch the latest sighting, or for those of you who just weren’t listening to WNYC at the right time, here’s Colbert out of character on Studio 360 with Kurt Anderson.

The Texas textbook debate continues to rage on after the Texas Board of Education approved Friday some radical changes to its social studies curriculum. Last night Rachel Maddow summed up some of the (fairly disturbing) revisions the conservative Board is making to the state’s history textbooks (and possibly the nation’s). Bye bye Thomas Jefferson?

As the Senate race in Massachusetts approaches the zero hour, last minute scrambling has turned ugly — and online. Beginning with the liberal blogs and their Scott Brown birther video and culminating in the president getting yelled at, now, two pillars of the political web — Daily Kos and RedState — have declared war with sabotage, intimidation and a fortified defense.

The recent kerfuffle between Nico Pitney (Huffington Post) and Dana Milbank (Washington Post) over a clumsy exchange in a White House press conference brings to mind two media mavens rarely mentioned in the same sentence: Marshall McLuhan and Thomas Jefferson. Seen in the context of their ideas about media and government, a tiff between a [...]

My name is Bill Rappleye. I’m 85. I started as a copy boy right after the war – that war, WWII – and have spent my life in journalism in the sixty-plus years since. I started at Time magazine in 1947, and worked my way up to a couple of dream assignments– Southwest: Bureau Chief [...]