• Madonna did not show up to her alleged lover/disciple Alex Rodriguez's All-Star party, nor did his bitter teammates, so he hung out alone in the club with his mom and two "kabbalah buddies," including a woman spotted leaving his house the next day.

Ex-editor: "I thought it was a perfectly justifiable decision... I personally like it when magazines take on the issues of the day." [Post]

Wondering what to get for the outraged liberal person in your life? Perhaps this person already has a Mother Jones subscription and Arianna Huffington's book and no more room for bumper stickers on the back of their Prius or whatever? Help keep their anger at Daily Kos-commenter levels with a reproduction of the New Yorker's offensive/stupid/ corrosive/overcriticized/whatever Barack and Michelle Obama caricature cover! Prices at the magazine's store range from $29.95 for note cards for bitter poor white Hillary Clinton supporters to $280 for a large framed cover, appropriate for the caviar communists who run Hollywood (or, more likely, for those people's decorators). Give the gift that keeps on feeding extremism, all year 'round! [New Yorker Store]

O'Reilly Factor executive producer David Tabacoff shot down the rumor floated here last week (via Fox News insider) that Jesse Jackson called Barack Obama the n-word in unaired portions of his infamous "cut his nuts off" comments about Barack Obama. Tabacoff told TVNewser that Jackson never uttered the slur, nor did he use an even more incendiary phrase, "half-breed n——r," surfaced on Daily Kos and Hybrid Nation this week. OK, nice way to clear Jackson's name, but the denial is also going to kick up a fresh round of chatter about Jackson's comments, since the question now becomes what other than the n-word was so awful that host Bill O'Reilly saw fit to call it "more damaging" than talking about tearing off someone's testicles. Apparently, Fox won't be showing any more footage "in the immediate future." Right. You have to save this stuff for the convention! [TVNewser] UPDATE: Fox News chief Roger Ailes also denies the "half-breed n——r" slur.

Were you confused when you woke up Monday and some members of the elite were outraged about something and other members of the elite were not outraged? Internicene elitist warfare! Confusing! If you were like everyone on the internet, your reaction to that New Yorker cover satirizing the rumors about the Obamas went through five steps, from shock on Sunday to acceptance earlier this afternoon. Let us explain!

Hah. Newsweek's Jonathan Alter is upset about that New Yorker cover. Because he knows the power of images and of repeating smears, even for satirical or debunking purposes. Which is why, after he derides the cover, he then presents a list of every anti-Obama smear he can think of, all listed in bold text. Whoops! To help reverse the damage this column will cause, we present here another pro-Obama photoshop. In this one he is athletic and virile!

Remember how the New Yorker's Barack Obama cover was supposedly going to confuse a certain class of voter over whether Barack Obama is a legitimate, Democratic candidate for U.S. president or flag-burning muslim terrorist? Everyone sort of pictured these gullible souls as poor, uneducated whites, but the joke's on us, because the caricature has pushed no less a political sophisticate than MSNBC's Chris Matthews into a pit of stuttering confusion. Talking about the cover on Hardball tonight, Matthews suffered a severe relapse of his notorious Obama/Osama condition. Symptoms include calling Obama by the name of terrorist Osama bin Laden; referring to bin Laden as "Obama" and flashing on-screen pictures of one dude when talking about the other. Click the thumb to see which one happened tonight. HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY NEW YORKER FASCISTS. [Huffington Post]

A reader is upset with Gawker for wholeheartedly embracing The New Yorker's terribly offensive cartoon about how Barack Obama is a terrorist. She writes:

New Yorker editor David Remnick went on The Situation Room today to answer to Wolf Blitzer about his magazine's ridiculous Obama cover. "There are gonna be a lot of people who aren't going to be sophisticated New Yorker readers," Wolf asserted, "who are going to look at this cover" and assume it is an accurate portrayal of reality. Remnick—typical hate-monger!—says this is condescending. In the attached clip, watch Wolf claim that the cover could've appeared on "a neo-Nazi magazine." Context is meaningless! No one gets anything anymore! Remnick says some crazy thing about being Colbert in Print, but no one gets jokes without studio audiences to explain what is supposed to be funny. (After the jump, in a calmer setting, New Yorker political writer Hendrick Hertzberg holds up the cover and grins. He almost giggles!)

This is the problem with being an editor or publisher or writer or cartoonist or even blogger and having some small lingering trace of a sense of irony-sometimes you accidentally assume that the Vast and Mysterious "Audience" shares that subversive French sense. Thankfully, after what will presumably be a full week of Outrage and Demands for Apologies, David Remnick and his New Yorker will never make that mistake again. As you might've seen, the cover of that influential publication this week shows Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim, and he is Terrorist Fist-Bumping his aggrieved wife as a flag burns in the Oval Office. This obvious and heavy-handed satire has enraged Democrats and liberal media critics because now they are pretty sure this nation of child-like imbeciles will believe it to be an un-retouched photograph from the FUTURE. New Yorker editor David Remnick defended the cover to the Huffington Post. Did you know that sometimes that magazine makes "jokes"?

This is the New Yorker's new cover, depicting Barack Obama and his wife Michelle in the Oval Office. It accompanies a big article about how Obama maybe was not always about CHANGE but in fact may have been a skilled Chicago politician at some point. The cover promises to become an election flashpoint, and the presumptive Democratic nominee's campaign has already called it "tasteless and offensive." The caricature, according to the Huffington Post, "combines every smeary right-wing stereotype imaginable" about Obama. Ha ha, as if. Sure, the stereotypes about Obama being a flag-burning terrorist muslim and Michelle being an ashamed-of-America black power revolutionary are all there, but shouldn't Obama somehow also be an aloof Harvard elitist who hates "bitter" working-class whites? Instead, he's in rags and robes, with no jewelry or caviar or sociology texts and so forth. Anyway, the cartoonist said he's trying to mock the stereotypes, not perpetuate them:

Controversy! Did Jesse Jackson want to rip Barack Obama's nuts "off" or "out"? No big deal, you say? Tell it to the Post! "Veterinarians and doctors talk about cutting nuts 'off.' Only a thug or a gangster cuts a man's nuts 'out.'" Jeff Johnson makes the importance of the distinction a little clearer: "Maybe Jackson simply does not understand human anatomy. Perhaps he tells women, in the throes of passion, that he'd like to chew on their breasts, rather than suckle them. Maybe he puts his shoes on, then his socks. Maybe he thinks that hearts don't beat, that they 'squeeze.'" [Fitted Sweats]

So while we're on the subject of Radar and who owns them and what they won't cover, let's all read this fun story about the Jesse Jackson family from last February's New Republic! It's about Barack Obama the Jackson kids. First: the younger Jacksons like Barry Obama a lot more than Jesse Sr. This has been amply demonstrated recently. But the Obama family and the Jackson family are totally intertwined! Let's learn about that, shall we?

Miss the big Obama fundraiser at the Regency the night before last? Tech guru Esther Dyson sure didn't: She was one of a few dozen high-profile Democrats who forked over $33,100 to see Obama and Hillary embrace awkwardly and talk about "unity" and "common goals." She was even kind enough to snap a few pics, too, and upload them to her Flickr account, including this photo of mega-financier Steve Rattner and his wife, former DNC fundraising chief Maureen White—both former Hillary backers—talking with the big man himself. Thanks, Esther! But there's more.

It's not even been 24 hours since Bill O'Reilly told Fox News viewers the cable channel was not airing footage of Jesse Jackson's "more damaging" comments (beyond wanting to "rip [Barack Obama's] nuts off") "because we didn't feel it had any relevance to the conversation this evening" and also because "we're not out to get Jesse Jackson." Now, with rumors swirling inside Fox News (and on this site) that Jackson used a racial slur, the network may be having a change of heart. Fox News VP Bill Shine told the LA Times for tomorrow's paper that "news executives were in discussions about whether to air more of the tape." Could it air on O'Reilly's show tonight? If it does, lord knows how anyone in the news media will manage to cover Jackson saying the "n-word," given how tongue-tied everyone got about a simple testicle-removal threat. After the jump, a very funny 23/6 compilation of cable news correspondents making like the Times and getting all tongue-tied about the first bad thing Jackson said.

"I never confused him with a genuine progressive leader. Today I don't admire him at all. His collapse on FISA is unforgivable," writes Salon editor-in-chief Joan Walsh, in an essay titled "Betrayed by Obama." Adds Walsh, "I wonder whether I can ultimately vote for Obama in November, given all of his political cave-ins." Gutsy and contrarian, yes, but here's a pop quiz: Calculate the probability of Joan Walsh casting her ballot for John McCain. (Photo by AP/Jason DeCrow)

Recently, a famous person said things he shouldn't have said while not realizing that his microphone was turned on. We honestly can't believe people still do this! They've been doing it since the inventions of microphones though, basically. And since the invention of Interet Video, we can watch and rewatch these fuckups over and over again! Video guru Nick McGlynn put a couple of the more choice live-mic mistakes together into one great clip. Remember when Kyra Phillips bitched about her brother-in-law in the bathroom and somehow the audio interrupted a Bush speech? Remember when President Reagan rambled about nuking Russia? Remember when Jesse Jackson said he would tear Barack Obama's nuts off? Now you don't have to "remember" any of those things because they are all right here in this post.

Last night, after airing footage of Jesse Jackson whispering that he wanted to "cut [Obama's] nuts off" for "talking down to black people" on faith-based federal initiatives, Bill O'Reilly said on his Fox News show that the network had further, "more damaging" footage of Jackson talking that it did not air (see the last video here). O'Reilly was, perhaps, trying to sound like he was taking the high road, but really just came off like yet another Fox News smear artist. Now, a Fox News staffer is doing some whispering of his own about what Jackson said, and it seems inevitable the cable news channel will have to back up O'Reilly's allegations with full details. Citing a coworker friend who had seen the tape, the New York-based Fox staffer tells us Jackson referred to Obama "using the n-word — [and] not 'Nilla." The source also shed light on why it took three days for Jackson's comments to emerge.

"After finishing his speech to a roomful of New York donors at the Grand Hyatt without any mention of helping Clinton with her debt, reporters ran over to Obama's spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who was already spinning hard that Obama's failure to make a pitch was no big deal. Then the music stopped and Obama, very awkwardly, started speaking again." [Observer]