The Kicker

Wow, who knew how many people love Rachel Maddow?? In the wake of Jacques Steinberg’s New York Times profile of the MSNBC pundette—favored, Steinberg reports-slash-suggests, to get her own anchoring gig once Chris Matthews’s contract expires next year—the often snark-laden world of media blogging has united in massive, fawning, and not-even-ironic adoration of Maddow. Vanity […]

The Us Weekly-ization of journalism might just be complete. On TIME magazine’s Web site to check out the candidates’ takes on Afghanistan, I saw this: Love it. And I’m already looking forward to TIME‘s analysis of the Bush/Cheney bromance.

Matt Yglesias, Atlantic reporter and uber-blogger, announced last night—after his news was outed by colleagues—that he’ll be leaving the world of journalism for the nearby-yet-also-worlds-away realm of the think tank. The Center for American Progress, to be precise, where he’ll be working on ThinkProgress and its affiliates. “I think CAP is a great organization, I […]

My friends, in discussing the verbal tics of certain aspiring presidents, I would be remiss to pass over the punishing repetitions of that other aspirant to the throne, our friend Arizona Senator John McCain. Recently, the Times reported that McCain’s campaign minions have been struggling to massage his style and make it fit into the […]

Like my colleague Katia, the LA Times‘ James Rainey, too, called up some editorial cartoonists recently (we did it in the wake of Cover-Gate; Rainey had been working prior to Cover-Gate on a piece about how “cartoonists are disappearing like brunet anchors at Fox News” and how the loss “continues to numb- and dumb-down an […]

In a New Delhi bylined piece, the Telegraph passes on the tale of an Indian temple where worshipers show their reverence for the enlightening power of journalism by bowing before a pile of newspapers. (And, no, it’s not the Newseum.) Alas, amid all the adulation, ugliness rears its head: According to [a temple priest] all […]

More “tasteless and offensive” political satire (h/t NRO Media Blog).

Plenty of meaty topics for political reporters to probe as Sen. Obama prepares to travel across the pond and beyond. The New York Times tucks right in: [T]he regulars on the Obama campaign plane will have new seatmates: star political reporters from the major newspapers and magazines who are flocking to catch Mr. Obama’s first […]

Reporters at San Francisco’s leading Spanish-language TV news station make roughly one quarter less in base pay than their English-language counterparts, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. This despite the fact that KDTV/Univision’s evening newscasts attract more viewers in the 25-54 demographic than every other newscast in the Bay Area save the top-rated KGO-TV. Worse, the […]

Today’s Maureen Dowd column tries to make the case that Obama is humorless. It’s a short step away from that familiar elitist meta-narrative. In service of this point, Dowd warms over quotes from herself, The Los Angeles Times, Andy Borowitz, and a New York Times colleague—you wonder if you’re reading a column or some sort […]

If you go to www.eldersofzion.com expecting to find the old tsarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you’ll be hilariously shocked to discover that the address leads to, wait for it, the website of the Anti-Defamation League. Go on. Try it. If you do, you’ll find the ADL’s rebuttal of everyone’s favorite anti-Semitic […]

Beatrice and Benedict. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Looks like another couple may soon be engaging in the classic love story that is They Hated Each Other Before They Loved Each Other. Or, more specifically, that even more classic love story: They Hated Each Other Before They Decided to Tolerate […]

Contessa Brewer on MSNBC this morning: “Hillary Clinton had a new look when she showed up for a big speech* in the Senate yesterday.” And what do you think the remainder of Brewer’s report was about? (No, cable news neophyte, no further information on that “big speech.”) BREWER: You may not notice it at first […]

As self-appointed -Gate-keepers, I wanted to acknowledge that we missed one last week (a -Gated -Gate, no less): Brandenburg Gate-Gate, overshadowed by or lost somewhere between Nuts-Gate and Cover-Gate. If you, too, missed what I believe was our first Euro-Gate of this election season, see here and here.