If we're dragging politicians' families through the mud it seems only fair to do some digging into the distant past of the mysterious Barack Obama. His ancestors came, of course, from an exotic foreign land: a mysterious, magical island called "Ireland." According to an Irish genealogy site: "Obama's earliest known relative, his 6th great grandfather, was a member of a family of wealthy wig makers who included an Irish politician, Michael Kearney." This Michael "Hussein" Kearney was apparently exactly like his distant descendant Barack Obama. A contemporary scurrilous pamphlet said of him: "No man alive was equally fired with ambition." Zing...?

It should really come as no surprise that News Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch wants to be respected by the limo liberals who (officially) disdain his politics and tactics. That's why he paid so dearly for the Wall Street Journal, and was proud for having done so, right? But no one really thought age and young wife Wendi Deng would gentrify Murdoch's barbarian soul to such an extent that he now spins fantasies about buying the Times from one side of his mouth while betraying his conservative shock troops at Fox News Channel out of the other. Murdoch's brash past is becoming an embarrassment to him as his portfolio becomes more respectable, at least according to Michael Wolff, who excerpted his sanctioned Murdoch biography in the October Vanity Fair. And yet the Aussie can't help but revert to his old ways, like when he told Wolff that Muslims are, as a group, inbred:

Buried in Barack Obama's nomination-acceptance speech:

Maybe Barack Obama is a celebrity after all: According to the AP, more than 38 million viewers tuned in to watch the Democratic nominee's DNC speech last night. Even excepting the uncounted audience who tuned in via C-SPAN, PBS, or online, "Nielsen Media Research said more people watched Obama speak than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final American Idol or the Academy Awards this year." If next week's Republican National Convention has got its work cut out for it, John McCain might want to start with a VP pick who's got more ratings power than the lead from 30 Rock. [AP]

The general reaction to last night's Obama speech has been, uh, effusive. Republicans were left speechless. Even GOP kneecapper Alex Castellanos seemed taken aback. The criticisms? Obama was maybe too focused on a Clintonian laundry list of issues, debased himself by attacking McCain, too meat-and-potatoes and not enough soaring rhetoric. So it only makes sense that the Associated Press headline is "Analysis: Obama spares details, keeps up attacks." Wait, what? That is the opposite of everyone else's interpretation! It gets better, in a "written hours before the speech was delivered" way!

• The war between News Corp. and NBC rages on. Today Page Six reports that Keith Olbermann is so concerned about being "assassinated," he's refusing to cover the Republican National Convention unless MSNBC springs for a more secure location. They also claim none of Luke Russert's new colleagues at NBC News like him, especially since he got to ride around the convention in golf carts while they had to walk. [P6, P6]

Apparently Barack Obama left Invesco Field in a Jeep, and is now just cruising the streets of downtown Denver with his new political buddies, and they're all shopping and going to Starbucks like elitist gay fashion models. It's all in the animation after the jump, which might be some kind of Republican smear on Obama being a vapid celebrity but which also is definitely mesmerizing. A tipster found it on a message board somewhere. Enjoy!

So this is what Barack meant by "it's about you." I feel so used!

It was a tricky rhetorical path before Barack Obama at the close of the Democratic National Convention Thursday and he walked it artfully. The official Democratic presidential nominee bashed John McCain hard, including rather boldly on McCain's core issue of Iraq, where the Republican opponent feels strong. The tens of thousands of hard-core Democrats at Invesco Field in Denver, all worked up into a frenzy, ate it up. Then there were The Bitters watching on their non-flat-screen TVs at home in swing states, who were reminded that McCain called them all "whiners" (so much worse than "bitter!"), that McCain wants to tax their benefits for healthcare, that Obama supports corporate welfare to teach GM how to make hybrids and that Obama's not going to coddle all these illegal Mexicans "undercutting" their wages. But the heart of the performance came toward the end.

Not all reporters are created equal at Invesco Field, where Barack Obama is about to close out the Democratic National Convention. John Koblin at the Observer printed a seating chart (left) and gave a rundown on the winners and losers. It looks like the Obama campaign continues to snub the New Yorker for its controversial parody cover, sitting the magazine's correspondents in worse seats than Jezebel/Glamour (team Megan!), the Nation and the New Republic. More delightfully, the campaign totally dissed those conssumate insiders at Vanity Fair, "which is stuck in the back row in Section J" behind basically everyone except the Gotham tabloids. Ha ha, I guess the entire free world is not actually obsessed with getting into the Waverly or your damned Oscar party, Graydon Carter! After the jump, early chatter among reporters, plus a list of seating winners.

Ow, stop! The candidate's awkward, reading-my-lines intro clip. The front and center posts by a guy whose icon reads "STR8T." His angry typo, "Will Obama ascend from the heavens and bless us all?" Just when we'd forgotten about McCainSpace, they went and revamped it. The effort would've been better spent on more YouTube clips, the one place on the Internet where the White Tornado is beating Barack. Here's McCain's awkward video hello, and a sampler of the senator's supporter-generated videos:Click to view Click to view Click to view Click to view

If Barack Obama is elected president, will he bring Silicon Valley a new bicycle in the form of a federal chief technology officer — our very own nerd in the White House? Bloggers are already nominating their favorite conference blowhards. But Obama seems pretty serious about naming someone to the position, even if it ends up being a policy figurehead. So who will it be, really?The whispers I've heard are that the most likely candidate is Mitch Kapor — the founder of Lotus, and the man who suggested the position to Obama in the first place. Technology Review interviewed Kapor about the position. He all but nominated himself for the job — and then backed away artfully:

Need proof that the media's "biased, in-the-tank support for Obama" isn't something Lou Dobbs made up? Find me a publication bigger than Silicon Alley Insider that's owned up to John McCain's comeback from way, way behind to surpass Obama's views on YouTube by 38 percent this month. McCain's official videos have outpulled Obama's, 6.8 million to 4.9 million.I've no plans to vote for McCain, but I'm all too aware that if the numbers were the other way around, I could collect a couple thousand bucks this afternoon in MSM assignments on Barack's "YouTube victory" and how it changes politics forever. As is, I'm reduced to pitching The Weekly Standard.

Did Barack Obama's Web czar just admit the campaign screwed up its announcement of Joe Biden as Obama's running mate? At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Chris Hughes, the Facebook cofounder who left in 2007 to help Obama campaign online, told a crowd of bloggers, including Steve Rhodes, that the plan to freeze out the media and alert supporters via text message and email didn't work out. "The last thing we wanted to do was send out the text message at 3 a.m.," said Hughes.And yet that's what Obama's campaign ended up doing. The plan was to send it out Saturday morning, not in the middle of the night — a time chosen to make things difficult for reporters with advance deadlines. But the campaign's hand, it seems, was forced by intrepid reporters who smoked out Biden by process of elimination. No worries, Chris. The scheme succeeded in its real aim — getting millions of cell-phone numbers to call and text in the runup to Election Day.

Barack Obama promised his adorable daughters that he would get them a puppy if he won the presidency (they would surely mention this fact more often if they really wanted to win). The American Kennel Club had a poll to decide what sort of dog Obama should get. (Of course, Obama should rescue a dog from a shelter and not select an expensive purebred, but whatevs.) The winner? A poodle. A little fucking girly elitist poodle! Who's responsible for this? The fatcats at the AKC won't say!

Bill Clinton got rave reviews for his speech last night. Five-minute standing ovation! He looked so fucking thrilled to be there. Chuck Todd and Keith Olbermann loved it! If you listen to the pundits, Bill basically rehabilitated his entire miserable public image in one nice speech. Here's avowed Clinton-hater Andrew Sullivan:

In an online parallel to big TV ads, John McCain's campaign has outbid Barack Obama's for the top ad slot — and I do mean the one up top, above the results — on searches for Barack's VP canidate Joe Biden. McCain's people have also bought "housing crisis" and "us economy" ads, according to sleuthy reporters at the Wall Street Journal. Is this some sort of genius move by Obama? Online marketers say: No.

Forget the speeches and the platform, the delegate votes and the big Barack Obama speech tonight. Political conventions are nothing if not stages on which the craziest campaign volunteers — both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have them! — can strut around in their wildest costumes. No one's been spotted with a sticker on their forehead yet, even though that's a trademark move of Clinton's crazier supporters, or wearing an Abercrombie shirt, even though that's the preferred apparel of Barack Obama's emptiest young volunteers. But the hoi polloi are coming to the big stadium event tonight, so anything is still possible. So far the DNC has seen hats and other attire in flavors vaguely gay, cowboyish, flag-desecrating, Mexican and just plain insane. There's a photo gallery after the jump, culled (mostly) by our own Richard Blakeley from the sea of convention footage.

We told you Joe Biden was going to say something inappropriate and crazy sooner or later, and he has proven us correct, spectacularly, very quickly. In his Democratic Convention address tonight, Biden almost referred to John McCain as "George W. Bush." before catching himself halfway. Not that the two men aren't politically similar, but there's not much point in taking potshots at the one who isn't running for anything. But here's what we didn't anticipate: Biden has put his foot into his mouth so many times that he's gotten really fast at recovery. In this case, Biden only needed a split second to apologize for his "Freudian slip," which is sufficiently clever that the gaffe almost looks pre-arranged. Now he gets the press frenzy that comes with a screwup plus the message control that comes with a carefully scripted statement! Crazy like a fox, this one. Also, clean. Click the icon for the video, which includes bonus footage of Barack Obama very nearly uttering the rock-star words, "HELLO DENVER!!"

"Democrats Wednesday officially nominated Barack Obama to be their candidate for president, making him the first African-American to lead a major party ticket." [CNN]