The Kicker

Kevin Drum and Jonathan Cohn are giving Joe Biden the Veep nod (could Obama be far behind)? Drum calls Biden “a good choice” and notes, “Big plus here — the press likes him, motormouth or not.” I’d say, scratch the “or not.” “The press likes him, motormouth.” TNR’s Cohn, in a post titled, “Biden? Yeah, […]

Fox News will know its tag line has jumped the shark (or is that set the standard?) when Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, invokes it in an op-ed in the New York Times criticizing “the American news media” for having “mounted a propaganda attack against Russia” in its coverage of the […]

Here’s Dr. Dennis Hurwitz, clinical professor of plastic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, providing some much-buzzed-about “proof” of the National Enquirer‘s claim that Frances Quinn Hunter, Daughter of Rielle, is the self-same child awkwardly held by John Edwards in The Blurry Photo Seen ‘Round the World: “I have studied babies’ head and […]

I’m all for reporters calling out the stagey aspects of campaigns and conventions. To that end (I think?), the AP’s Nedra Pickler probes the Democratic National Convention and Obama campaign’s controversial claims that “real people” “will appear” at the Denver convention: An Indiana railroader, an Iowa mother and a Michigan truck driver are getting a […]

According to CNN, CNN’s “CNN Diner” at the 2004 Republican Convention in New York City was “immensely successful” and so this year they will do it again with a “CNN Grill” in Denver and in St. Paul. Campaign Desk stopped by the 2004 version, when CNN took over the Tick Tock Diner, back in the […]

You think it’s easy working the Veepstakes beat? Opening wide for — and presenting as news — those crumbs tossed out by the campaigns (Obama “will in all likelihood appear with his newly named running mate on Saturday in Springfield, Ill.” but we didn’t, please note, say it would definitely be their first joint appearance)? […]

So looks like the Maddow Love is now officially sanctioned. TV Decoder’s reporting that Rachel Maddow, MSNBC pundette loved by, apparently, everyone, will soon find the holy grail of televised commentary: her own show. The as-yet-unnamed program will replace Dan Abrams’s Verdict (he’ll be staying on with the network in various other anchoring/reporting capacities) starting […]

On a night that found the world’s top gymnasts flipping, stretching, and straining for gold in individual apparatus events in Beijing, Keith Olbermann sat in a studio in New York City, his back to Rockefeller Center’s skating rink, doing some gymanastics of his own. Of the rhetorical variety, that is. And directed, unsurprisingly, at John […]

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, apparently. The Times reports today that Politico–and all the other outlets declaring this to be, indeed, Obama’s Week of Veep–were correct in their “predictions.” And Nagourney/Zeleny go one (tentative) step further than their veep-sheepish counterparts: they pick a day for the Big Announcement. And it’s…tomorrow! Senator Barack Obama has all […]

That’s the number of times the term “cone of silence” has been used in television coverage since Saturday’s Saddleback interviews, per the transcript database TVEyes. For those of you who’ve missed out on the story that introduces this delightfully moronic term into our political vernacular, “cone of silence” refers to the Twenty One-esque isolation chamber […]

A great city piece from The L Magazine