TLC’s new show American Muslim has garnered some controversy after the Florida Family Association drove the hardware store Lowe’s to boycott the program– not because it depicted images of violent fundamentalist Muslims, but because it didn’t. On tonight’s Daily Show, host Jon Stewart tried to make sense of both the complaint and the boycott, while “senior Muslim correspondent” Aasif Mandvi called for a boycott, not of the program, but of Lowe’s, for selling everything anyone would need to put together a primitive bomb.

Now that is putting your money where your mouth is. Yesterday, Russell Simmons had spoken out on the cowardly companies like Lowe’s who had buckled to extremist conservative pressure to stop advertising on TLC’s All-American Muslim, a show that dared (DARED!) to show Muslim Americans who weren’t crazed terrorists bathing in the blood of Christians or something. Furious at the seeming victory of bigotry, Simmons did what any person with integrity, passion, and an absolutely insane amount of money would do; he offered to buy up all the now-vacant ad space himself.

Admit it: You’ve missed Sarah Palin. Once a seemingly ever-present fixture in politics and pop culture, Palin has all but bowed out of the spotlight in recent months. Ever since she wrapped up her “Just Because It’s Fun” whirlwind bus tour, the former governor of Alaska has only popped up on Fox News every so often to offer her take on current news items. But she hasn’t been making news, really, and we miss that.

Maybe you’ve heard there’s a wedding coming up over in England or something? Bit of a big deal, and all of our American journalists are bailing on spending Easter with their families so they can be in London to cover this shindig. Anyway, if you’re beside yourself with William and Kate fever, your friends on TV have you covered. No need to wait–it’s Royal Weddingpalooza right now!

CNN’s airs a Soledad O’Brien documentary, The Women Who Would Be Queen Sunday night at 8 p.m. (with additional airtimes). The doc deals not just with Kate Middleton, but also Princess Diana:

The host of TLC’s What Not to Wear does not plan any “synergy” with fellow TLC star Sarah Palin. Clinton Kelly was on HLN’s Joy Behar Show on New Year’s Eve, and the host made things pretty clear: he does not like being on the same network as the former Alaska governor. He thinks she’s a hypocrite who’s TLC show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska is nothing but an “eight hour infomercial.”

So that pretty much kills any chance of a crossover episode where Kelly dissects Palin’s wardrobe at her home in Wasilla:

We’re officially in the eye of the least newsy week of the year, and in this desert of eventfulness, one lucky talking head struck gold. Tucker Carlson called for football player Michael Vick to be executed, and people cared. In fact, Carlson seems to have started a trend of promoting execution of those who mistreat animals, as now MSNBC’s Cenk Uygur would like one prominent Alaskan huntress to pay her debts to society for killing caribou.

Only one more episode until TLC‘s Sarah Palin’s Alaska calls it a season. But before the fun is over, Sarah Palin, meet chainsaw. On the “Logging” episode of her reality show, Palin learned how to chop down a tree and jumped right in to “one of the most dangerous jobs,” by taking a chainsaw to the tree faster than she can fire off one of her tweets.

As the truism goes, David Hasselhoff is beloved in Germany. But American TV viewers, apparently, have better things to do with their time.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Keeping Up With the Kardashians style A&E show Hasselhoffs premiered to disappointing ratings on Sunday night:

MSNBC isn’t normally a network that you’d associate with being “in the tank” for former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, but a recent Hardball segment certainly makes it look that way. Leaving aside the relevance of hunting expertise to governing, Chris Matthews presents an edited clip of Palin downing a caribou on Sarah Palin’s Alaska, then holds forth on the image-making potential of the image, and finishes by praising Palin as a “dead shot.”

As a review of the full clip demonstrates, however, Palin’s true shooting prowess lies somewhere south of the Mendoza Line, which proves as much about her qualifications to be President as John Kerry‘s windsurfing proved about his: nada. (h/t Teresa Kopec)

It turns out there’s a lot more to hunting than buying a gun, aiming it at a living thing, and pulling the trigger—at least, according to The Awl’s Abe Sauer. Yesterday, he published a piece that claims the latest episode of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, in which Palin and her father go caribou hunting, “absolutely exposes Palin as a charade” who doesn’t truly know the first thing about the sport.

Okay, America, make up your mind. Do you want to watch Sarah Palin’s Alaska, or not?

Last week we told you about the TLC show’s sudden ratings collapse in its second week, after a huge, record-breaking debut. Double-digit dives like that usually lead to further erosion, which is never good for a television program.

But Sarah Palin–Joe Scarborough‘s opinions notwithstanding

Mostly missed, in an hourlong interview with Sean Hannity that produced buzzworthy soundbites about Katie Couric and Dancing with the Stars, was former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin‘s unprompted response to the uproar surrounding daughter Willow’s recent Facebook misadventure.

While Palin correctly points out that the national media should not have exploited the musings of a 16 year-old, the balance of her response reveals important things about Sarah Palin, not as a parent, but as a media critic and human being. Not only does she undermine her claims of media “lies” by making stuff up herself, she also displays a disturbing attitude about the use of the word “faggot.”

So, apparently one visit to Sarah Palin’s Alaska was enough.

After setting a ratings record for its debut episode a week ago, the second airing of TLC’s reality show starring former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin plunged 40%–shedding about two million viewers.

Frank Rich tackles a hot topic in his column in the New York Times this Sunday: Sarah Palin‘s possible presidential run. And he contends that America should get ready — because Palin has what it takes to win, and her opponents in the Republican Party are afraid to stand up against her.

Seeking to make hay out of Willow Palin‘s Facebook misadventure, among other things, Bonnie Goldstein, Editor of Politics Daily’s “Woman Up” blog, writes that the Palin teens “lack supervision,” and that “Sarah Palin may want to budget a companionable nanny for the older children.”

While we predicted that some would level this attack, it seems counterintuitive that a blog devoted to women’s issues would not only see the Palin kids as fair game, but would then perpetuate the sexist notion that parenting is the sole purview of the mother. Todd Palin’s name never comes up.

TMZ is reporting that Willow Palin, 16 year-old daughter of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (and sister of newly-minted Dancing with the Stars champion Bristol Palin) struck back at a critic of her mom’s TLC show by calling him “f*ggot,” along with a string of other obscenities. The incident is being widely reported on the internet, and while Miss Palin’s word choice is, indeed, homophobic, it would be unfair to label her a “homophobe.” If anything, the lengthy exchange illustrates the lack of thought that goes into this kind of name-calling, and presents an opportunity to get these kids thinking, instead of fighting back.

Read the full, uncensored exchange after the jump.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but Sarah Palin’s Alaska, Sarah Palin‘s new reality show, became the most watched premiere ever in TLC history, with nearly five millino viewers.

Here are some more details about the widely-promoted, much-discussed first show:

Sarah Palin has had a very contentious relationship with the author Joe McGinniss, who moved in next door to the Palin family for a few months over the summer.

It became a topic of last night’s premiere episode of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, with Palin saying, “it’s just none of his flippin’ business.”

By now, it’s common knowledge that people can see Sarah Palin’s Alaska from their living rooms. But as the show’s premiere edges closer, a new question is taking root: can 2012 be seen from Sarah Palin’s Alaska? According to one former aide quoted in The Daily Beast, the answer is yes. “She is running for president,” he said. “And this is a season-long bio ad, free of charge.”

From the moment it was announced, Sarah Palin’s Alaska was not going to be just another TLC show, starring Sarah Palin.

Besides attracting the ‘will she or won’t she’ debate, the show has a vibrant new media effort going at (amazingly-titled) SPAlaska.com. Mediaite went to a launch event for the show last week.

Everyone’s soon-to-be favorite reality show, Sarah Palin‘s Alaska, premieres on November 18. For a time yesterday, though, the first episode of the show was already up on TLC’s website—long enough for Sam Stein at the Huffington Post to take a look at it. As Stein points out, the episode contains one moment of particularly delicious irony: Palin complaining about “an invasion of our privacy” to the cameras recording her every move for a TV series.

Yesterday, we told you about SPALASKA, Sarah Palin’s Alaska‘s official site. (Its name is so fantastic that we think it should always be written in all caps.) Today, we learned a little more about the people that make SPALASKA tick—and found out that one of its bloggers, Danielle Johnsen, has written some pretty negative things about her new boss.

It’s Friday evening. That means it’s time to kick back, relax, and enjoy this one-minute clip of the former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin scaling a mountain in Denali National Park. (“You always wanted to be a rock climber,” Todd Palin tells his wife as she struggles to complete one leg of the journey. “Rock climber or rock star?” she counters.)

TLC is smartly capitalizing on the Sarah Palin buzz with a lengthy roll-out of material based on her upcoming show Sarah Palin’s Alaska, premiering November 14 at 9pmET.

First, there was the trailer. Now we get a clip, featuring – what else – a mama grizzly.

If you’ve been looking for a fun way to humiliate a female friend who woks in media, you’re in luck! TLC’s makeover show What Not to Wear is apparently looking for badly-dressed lady journalists to appear on the show.

As Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan reports, the following email was recently sent out to “the types of people who know journalists”: