Liberal peacenik Barack Obama's top secret sit-down meeting with Fox News ahead of the election was revealed in Vanity Fair this week by Michael Wolff, Rupert Murdoch's chosen biographer. So Fox News overlord Roger Ailes decided to go on the record today about all the various machinations at the shadowy back room confab. Did Ailes really have a "cordial" conversation with Obama, as he claims? Or was it actually a "frank discussion," as Obama's people claim? Read the tea leaves before Barack appears on Bill O'Reilly's show tomorrow: The time: three months ago. The place: some hotel room. The players: Obama, his advisers, Ailes, and Rupert Murdoch. Obama's angle: You people at Fox News aren't being fair:

Look, I used to be a professional musician. And basically, most mashups, remixes, and other forms of Music 2.0 just don't work. All brain, no booty. But this remix of Bill O'Reilly's most awesomely human moment — "Fuck it! We'll do it live! Fucking thing sucks!" — blows Girl Talk off the turntable. Throw away your thinking caps and crank it to 11. Valleywag's contribution to the fad: We've successfully tainted Natali Del Conte with the line. it's so much cuter when she says it.

Cable news is a hyper-competitive environment full of huge egos fighting with each other for every scrap of a ratings point. And at this time of year, with all the shouting heads descending upon the political convention like a gang of ferrets into a small sack, conflict is inevitable. Plus it's hot, and there's not too much real news anyhow, so everyone is grumpy. After the jump, an illustrated guide to the most vicious feuds in the cable world. Pick your side, demonize your enemies, and play along:

Did you read Sunday's Times piece about how people are getting their news from Jon Stewart these days? Because I sure as heck didn't! I don't need the Times to tell me to stop reading the Times and turn on my cable box — mainly because I was pretty sure I had read that same exact story in the Times before. But this morning, as the story was still carrying the top of the "Most Emailed List," I decided to go find that old Times story I remembered. Well, it wasn't easy. There are 102 stories listed in "Past coverage" of Jon Stewart (the original Michael Phelps!), about nine of which employ the phrase "get their news from." And yet I could not for the life of me find the one I remembered actually reading. Turns out it is because, like the former "young people" who started this whole "getting news from the Daily Show" trend, I am now very very very old…Because they've been doing this story since September 2000.

Jon Voight's recent toe-dip into the murky pool of political commentary attracted more than a few piranhas, the hungriest of whom may have been Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells. And after a July 29 blog item suggested freezing Voight's career as payback for his public condemnation of Barack Obama ("If I were a producer and I had to make a casting decision about hiring Voight or some older actor who hadn't pissed me off with an idiotic Washington Times op-ed piece, I might very well say to myself, 'Voight? Let him eat cake'"), Bill O'Reilly came a-calling last night with a theory about a new Hollywood blacklist against conservatives. While we (and Wells himself, apparently) had hoped for a more bloodthirsty offensive from Wells, we're endlessly engrossed by his session on Dr. O'Reilly's couch, elucidating the vengeful feelings inherent to angry industry bloggers everywhere. Seriously, Bill, this is nothing — wait until Oscar season. [Fox News]

On the defensive after appearing in a Snickers commercial yanked for homophobia due to its swishy speedwalker, 80's icon Mr. T appeared on The O'Reilly Factor and made it up to gays everywhere the only way he knows how: with glorious, glorious camp. The arm-wrestling brawler immediately produced a long-winded, written defense which he then read from on air; highlights include the passages, "I have been pitying fools for 28 years, Biiiiiill," "Speedwalking is an Olympic sport," and desperate pleas for someone, anyone, to talk to "SPEEDWALKA!" for his reaction. T particularly triggered our sympathy (not pity, we leave that to the experts) when he whined, "On The A-Team, I called the bad guys a disgrace because they was harassin' helpless people. No problems. No complaints." Too true, T. Compared to GLAAD, those bad guy lobbyists really need to get it together. [Amy Proctor Blog]

A totally disreputable website called WhosDatedWho has reported that Maureen McPhilmy, who's now married to Fox shouting head Bill O'Reilly, once dated cracked-out rapper Flavor Flav. This has already spawned much mockery and philosophical schadenfreude among bloggers, who point out that O'Reilly is the prototypical rap-hating nilla Republican bastard. The fact that the same website says that O'Reilly himself has dated both Jeff Gannon and Reichen Lehmkuhl doesn't seem to have come up as a counterpoint. Still, we're going to choose to believe that Bill O'Reilly married Flavor Flav's ex until Bill personally comes on our show to tell us otherwise. [The Slanderous Rumor]

Everyone is out to get Bill O'Reilly! First Scott McClellan, the elven former White House press secretary, said on MSNBC last weekend that he and his minions used to feed Bush administration talking points to O'Reilly and other Fox News shouting heads. "It was done frequently, especially on high-profile issues," he told O'Reilly nemesis Keith Olbermann following an appearance on Chris Matthews' Hardball. Then CNN covered the allegations as though they were news! Clearly a conspiracy is afoot. O'Reilly said on his show tonight that McClellan and MSNBC "look to be partners in this enterprise," while CNN picked up "garbage." So O'Reilly can presume MSNBC is in cahoots with McClellan simply because it aired and editorialized on his statements, but MSNBC can't say O'Reilly was in cahoots with McClellan even when McClellan himself says that's what happened. Watch this twisted logic unfold by clicking the video at left.

Perhaps you've heard the news that Nike has pulled its "That Ain't Right" balls-in-face ads after an outpouring of outrage sparked largely by this very website (though we weren't the first to address it). Are you proud of yourselves, commentariat? You are feared in all corners of corporate America. But the larger point here is that advertising is getting to be a very touchy business; companies are making fools of themselves nearly every week because of the crackheaded work of one of their ad agencies. After the jump, we look at five ads that had to be yanked recently, where they went wrong, and who came out ahead. Read and learn:

Suck it, NPR! If anyone listened to you they'd surely have voted you most biased. Against not being boring! BAM. [Via Fark]

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.

Nonpartisan journalist Bill O'Reilly is a man who calls em how he sees em, and that means that he's not afraid to give credit to the liberal lie-mongering site HuffPo when credit is due. When former Bush flack Tony Snow died last weekend, the AP ran an obit that was not 100% positive. Even worse, "The LA Times website allowed loons to post vile things about Tony Snow." O'Reilly condemns these examples of factual reporting and free speech, respectively; but he actually praises foreign-born socialist Arianna Huffington for scrubbing her site of all Snow smears. Truly a bipartisan lovefest! Watch the clip of what happens when you look up "Fairness" in the dictionary, below:

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.

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.

Bill O'Reilly just aired the much-hyped but apparently very brief video Fox News has of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson saying he wants to "cut [Barack Obama's] nuts off." It sounds like Jackson is upset over the Democratic presidential candidate's position on faith-based federal initiatives. But that's beside the point. First off, what left-wing political activist worth his salt whispers sensitive, private thoughts like these while fully mic-ed at a Fox News affiliate? More to the point, did Jackson learn absolutely nothing from the "Hymietown" fiasco in 1984, when he tried to make off-the-record remarks about Jews in New York to reporters on a campaign airplane flight? Anyway, Jackson has already apologized, and the two guests brought on by O'Reilly didn't think it was a big deal (one because Jackson already apologized, and one because he argues Jackson's not taken seriously anymore anyway) . Video of Jackson's comments and text of his apology are after the jump. UPDATE: O'Reilly also said Fox News has audio of Jackson that is "more damaging that what you heard" but won't air it because it's not relevant and the sensitive network is not out to get Jesse Jackson. Video after the jump. UPDATE 2:

Oh hey look everyone, Jesse Jackson said terrible things about Barack Obama while a microphone was on, and now, oddly, Fox News has this tape! Sean Hannity talked about it on the radio today, and Bill O'Reilly will be playing the tape tonight, on his show. OMG they are creaming themselves. Drudge already has the apology and no one has heard the tape yet! Reportedly, the Reverend is upset that Obama "talks down to black people on matters of faith," and then, more colorfully, he says he wants to rip Obama's nuts off. Maybe? "Hannity would not say 'nuts,' but based on his description (portion of the male anatomy beginning with an 'n') I believe that's the word he was going for." So this is basically great news for everyone!

In response to a Times column about Fox News uglifying a picture of reporter Jacques Steinberg and viciously smearing Tim Arango and other journalists, the cable network's chief rageaholic, Bill O'Reilly, is pretending to be pissed at the Times for caricaturing him in the illustration for a 2007 book review. The caricature, he said during his Fox show last night, even included some kind of devil horn (clip after the jump). But O'Reilly's screaming on-air hatefest is the worst sort of act, because if you actually examine the illustration, reproduced after the jump, you notice two things.

Last week brought the appalling news that pill-popping professional idiot Rush Limbaugh signed an eight-year, $400 million contract with Premiere Radio Networks. He'll now collect $38 million a year, which he'll probably direct to some of the passions detailed in a NYT Magazine profile of Limbaugh this past weekend, like La Flor Dominicana Double Ligero Chisel cigars, private jets (he just purchased a Gulfstream G550) and life-size oil paintings of himself. (The deal also provided him with a $100 million signing bonus.) But what about the rest of the news media heavyweights—how much coin are they taking home annually? The salaries of America's most beloved anchors and blowhards of various political persuasions after the jump.

Heinz has a new commercial out in the UK starring a guy who works at a deli. He's so popular for his delicious mayonnaise, you see, that the man of the house gives him a kiss on the way out the door. But Bill O'Reilly sees this for what it really is: "It was obviously a gay thing!" O'Reilly's insight into the gay issue is almost as piercing as his colleague John Gibson's was when he cracked all those gay jokes about Heath Ledger right after the actor's death. "This whole gender-blending thing, it's confusing to me," says O'Reilly. "I just want mayonnaise. I don't want guys kissing." Sorry; you must have a man's tongue in your mouth before you get any mayonnaise, Bill. Watch the homosexual Heinz ad after the jump.

So the Post has posted the Page Six item Keith Olbermann was so worked up about yesterday, and it does indeed say Hardball host Chris Matthews "seemed" to be talking about a strategy for landing Tim Russert's job at a memorial event for the NBC personality, and that Olbermann is threatening to quit if he doesn't get Russert's Meet The Press job. (On Countdown, Olbermann denied issuing an ultimatum for Meet The Press and said Matthews shut down talk of him replacing Russert when an acquaintance brought it up.) But the gossip item also quotes a source, ostensibly from the traditional broadcast side of NBC News, who claims that Russert himself wanted NBC News political director Chuck Todd as his own replacement, and that the network will never install someone from MSNBC on the show: