Wonkette

Last night was the annual Radio/Television Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington, where all the famous teevee stars and radio voices come and make dumb jokes with the Feds. And who was there but Mittens “Mitt” Romney, our favorite hilarious presidential candidate from 2007. And for the first time, he was actually *trying* to be funny. He did this by interrupting some poor CBS news guy and then giving a top 10 list. He calls Al Gore “fat” and it’s mean, because Al Gore is going to be president again. Video below. MORE »

Remember when the New York Times lost to the Washington Post by a million points in the Pulitzers today? Well here’s your damn link if you forgot. Anyway, a Wonkette spell-check operative noticed this funny typo on the front page on the Times‘ Washington edition this morning. That’s like converting to Judaism on Christmas morning and getting no presents, except Santa Claus is handing out Pulitzers this time.

Hooray, Washington’s newspaper beat New York’s newspaper in Pulitzers by four. The Washington Post won six Pulitzer Prizes today, tying one shy of the record set by the New York Times in 2002 (but they had 9/11 in their backyard, so they just had to show up). The dumb Times only won two this year, neither of which went to “lightning rod conservative” columnist Bill Kristol. The Post scored the Public Service prize for its Walter Reed investigative series, which was pretty good. Congratulations, Washington Post newspaper! [Editor & Publisher]

Yes yes, the War in Iraq is now five years old and has reached 4,000 American deaths. There’s no real plan for reconciliation between the government and the insurgents and various Terrorists, so it’s pretty much stalled forever. In other words, Iraq is super boring and not of interest to anyone. The media knows this, too! According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, “Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer.” Well maybe if anything *cool* were going on over there, like COWBOYS/INJUNS or COUPS or PASSIONATE SEX or SPACE LASER FIGHTS, they might cover it more. MORE »

You may have forgotten that George Bush is still the president — and judging from his latest round of African dance parties, it looks like he would also prefer to forget! But this whole “still the president for EIGHT TEN MORE MONTHS” issue leaves White House reporters in a pickle. On the one hand, they’re professionally obliged to cover George W. Bush every time he chokes on a pretzel, bails out a bank, or endorses some loathsome old codger to replace him. On the other hand, the White House beat is so boring these days. MORE »

Whenever the Democratic primary season heads to a new state, the excited local press is set up for a letdown. “O, O, Barack Obama is going to give glorious, exclusive quotes to me,” the local town reporter dreams, “and I will win many Pulitzers and Barry will be my new bowling partner.” Then Barack Obama gets to town, gives a lovely speech, and doesn’t talk to any reporters anywhere. Then the reporters get depressed and write whiny articles about how Barack will not talk to them or bowl with them or even care that they exist. Today’s example: the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader! MORE »

After months of careful edits, cooperation with the McCain campaign, professional insights of several world-class reporters and editors, the New York Times printed one of the worst, most inadvertently hilarious stories Thursday about John McCain: how he screws sexy lobbyist whores and then steals everyone’s corrupt money. This story was such crap — structurally, thematically, content-wise — that it made Rush Limbaugh defend John McCain and unite the right (the right!). Today, the Times is trying to save its few remaining subscriptions by taking questions online. Executive editor Bill Keller responded in length to the first one, and hopefully he will be fired soon. MORE »

Last night, the New Republic teased that they were working on a story about those crippling newsroom politics at the New York Times surrounding the John McCain sex corruption story. The insidery tale is up on TNR’s website now, and it has launched a massive journalism nerd flock to read the details. When did executive editor Bill Keller talk to John McCain, and did McCain solicit corrupt lobbyist sex with him too? How do the paper’s Washington and New York bureaus resolve their competing agendas? Does David Brooks look as stupid in person? All is revealed! MORE »

The NSA, the domestic intelligence agency that really wishes you still hadn’t heard of it, was frustrated by their growing inability to keep their close-kept secrets out of the newspapers. So between 2002 and 2004 they held some off-the-record “media seminars” where they explained to reporters that they really shouldn’t report anything they know about the NSA and its many probably unconstitutional programs. And then, a couple years later, the New York Sun is reporting the details of those seminars. Meta! MORE »

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, while not really protecting us from collapsing bridges so much, is keeping us safe from the danger of on-the-record quotes from non-political appointees. [NYT]