So, David Carr has gone and pulled the curtain back a bit on Fox PR-the single most vicious PR operation in all the media. Good for him. So let's do our part by zeroing in on the one flack who is the face of Fox's feared, vengeful media relations operation. Her name is Irena Briganti. She's the female alter ego and mouthpiece of Fox boss Roger Ailes (pictured). She's been described as bubbly and charming in person. But she's the one holding the bloody hatchet that Fox regularly brings down right on reporters' heads. Here's everything you need to know about the scariest flack in mediadom:

As a member of two vindictive cults - Fox News and Scientology - cable news anchor Greta Van Susteren is an absolute pro at channeling rage. Witness the blog post she typed up on the 4th of July holiday. The executive producer of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 last week called Susteren's On The Record "not a news program. It's missing-person of the day." Hoo-boy. Susteren's 1000-word response swiftly pinned blame for the comments on Cooper, since he should be able to control his producer, then basically called the silver-haired anchor a coddled, commercialized, Katrina-exploiting, polygamy-obsessed pretty boy. Susteren, meanwhile, has a magical law degree that obviates the need for a teleprompter, ever. A breakdown (and partial refutation) of her rant, after the jump.

Last week, Fox News aired nasty Photoshopped pictures of two Times journalists responsible for a story about Fox losing ground among younger viewers. But it sounds like the cable network may have done much worse to another Times reporter, Tim Arango, who wrote a similar article in March. In his column for tomorrow's paper, Times media columnist David Carr recounts tales of Fox's dirty-politics-style PR tactics against journalists from his paper, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and others. One story, in particular, stands out:

Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is the highest paid writer/producer in Hollywood and, as of today, he's also one of the most THC-free. Recently, MacFarlane announced that he will no longer be smoking marijuana because it makes him too paranoid. "One of the last times I was stoned, I was convinced that I would die unless I kept moving my body. So I sat there, baked, waving my arms around like a crazy person," he explains.

Fox Television has noticed that there is a wide, wide world out there that hasn't yet been the recipient of Fox's unique brand of entertaining and educational TV programming. So they're going to bring it to them, and if they make a little money in the process, all the better! In the meantime, Conde Nast is launching a version of Wired magazine in the UK, and they've already launched some of their premium titles in India (Vogue India! GQ India!). What's going on here? The world is flat. And it's a great place to set a television, magazine, and big pile of money.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp owns Fox News and the New York Post's Page Six, so there's often a bit of corporate synergy in the targets those two outlets decide to attack. Like NBC, for example. MSNBC competes directly with Fox News and NBC with the Fox network, so it's only good business to undermine them at every turn. But it's become an all-out a war, lately, waged both in print and on television. Let's go back to the beginning!

Now we know why BlueLithium founder and short-time Yahoo employee Gurbaksh "G" Chahal decorated his $6.9 million penthouse with tacky animal skins and a cheap-looking chandelier. To look rich for middle America. Chalal is starring in a Fox "reality" show this fall called The Secret Millionaire. In it, G will live among poor people and pretend to be one of them. But before doing that, he'll have to convince Fox's audience at home he's used to living a fabulously wealthy lifestyle. Hence, the decorations, G's decorator tells us in an email defending his efforts.

Hulu — the NBC-Universal/Fox owned video website that is not so different from the numerous other websites offering full episodes of television shows, is the subject of a fawning, incredulous profile in today's Los Angeles Times. While all of the major networks already offer the bulk of their primetime line-ups for free online, Hulu boldly puts a bunch of it together on one site, thereby saving precious seconds of web surfing time. In an embarrassing display of old media-ness, reporter Scott Collins rhapsodizes over Hulu's "special features."

Fox News has been accused of being a house organ of the Republican party, though that's not entirely accurate. It follows the mostly conservative "what can you do for ME" ideology of its owner, Rupert Murdoch, with a bit of the faux-populist anti-elite Nixonian media strategy of Roger Ailes, its initial guiding force. But lately, cracks and strains have become evident. The network doesn't particularly like John McCain, the Republican nominee. And Rupert Murdoch seems to have developed a little crush on Barack Obama, the Democrat. But the network's airheaded personalities just aren't comfortable embracing the black guy with the funny name. The cognitive dissonance leads, over and over again, to terribly offensive slurs followed by half-hearted apologies. Let us examine the worst of their crimes!

After several weeks of sifting through the country's aspiring hoofers—eliminating, where necessary, any contestant they deemed perhaps better suited to Kevin Bacon stand-in work than a televised dance competition—So You Think You Can Dance finally paraded its top 20 before America last night for an unforgettable evening of high-kicking, rack-shaking, and hair-flinging. And that was just the boys! While the proceedings don't quite have the premium patina of sister-competition American Idol, both shows share something special in executive producer Nigel Lythgoe—who also serves here in the capacity of exacting judge, compassionate mentor, and sass-friendly father figure. In the above montage by Molly McAleer, we've compiled Lythgoe's greatest* opening night moments—which, in a promising sign for the season, were literally all of them. Oh, Naaaahjel, Nahhhjel—we just love that Southern attitude, too! And to think—thanks to SYTYCD, there's a chance hip-hop contestant Twitch might be allowed to come off the streets and actually enter a Broadway theater! Now that's change we can believe in.

· Thanks to you, The Moment of Truth, no one will ever commit bigoted acts of fatism ever again! You're not the most evil TV show in history—you're bringing humankind closer together! [TMOT]
· Edward Norton prefers to let The Incredible Hulk do the junket-blabbing for itself. So tell us, Incredible Hulk—how are you similar/different to your big screen alter ego? "ARAHRRHHHHGHH SMAAAAAAAASH GRAAAAAAAAH!!!!" Really? That's hilarious! [NY Daily News]
· Something about conspiracy-junkie Mary Hart's unwillingness to break ranks with her ET underlings in the wake of ChosenTwoGate really gives us a whole new appreciation for the preternaturally perky showbiz news icon. [LAT]
· Kaufman Astoria Studios runs full steam ahead with their plan to obliterate Hollywood and establish Queens as the entertainment capital of the world. [nytimes.com]
· Sumner Redstone is a happily married mummified-Viacom-overlord, he'll have you know, regardless of who you spotted him catching up with at Ruth's Chris Steak House. [NY Post]

The closest the internet can come to coughing up a reference to a "terrorist fist-jab" that doesn't involve Hill is one comment on political blog Human Events Online. The comment was deleted. And also it was insane.

Here we go again! VH1 (who else?) has just greenlit Scream Queens, a reality show in which 10 unknown actresses desperate to be the next Jamie Lee Curtis or Janet Leigh will compete for a starring role in an upcoming “major” Lionsgate film. And boy are they excited — one Lionsgate rep tells THR that “discovering new talent is always exciting,” while another chimes in by teaching us that “VH1 has had a tremendous track record in launching alternative programming that captures viewers' imaginations.” Yes, yes it does! Our brains have been expanded by Viacom's ongoing carnival featuring women degrading themselves in hot tubs and music execs attempting to Make A Band, Any Band Will Do quarter after quarter. But with a reputable horror studio behind Scream Queens and the fact that scary movies have launched more than a few major careers, this one may put its You’re The One That I Want and It Factor predecessors to shame. We look back at five recent Next Big Thing reality shows in an effort to place our bets:

So maybe this won't be the year TV dies.

We tried to explain that Barack Obama's exchanging of respect knuckles with his lovely wife was NO BIGGIE, but in writing about it, all we really did was add to the deluge of maddening idiocy. The most repellent reading comes, of course, from Fox News, who actually ask if perhaps the fist-bump was "a terrorist fist jab." Then they bring on a body-language expert to analyze what is a modified high-five, people. WE WARNED YOU. So let's watch E.D. Hill and her legs explain what that crazy threatening fist thing was!

If you're working at a subdivision of 20th Century Fox, in Hollywood, as an intern, you can probably get away with writing an anonymous blog. What you can NOT get away with? Disclosing your college (USC), plus your gender (female), plus a plethora of details about your workday, like how you were asked to help play a prank on a celebrity and "find pools," whatever that means. With that much identifying information, you are going to get caught, even inside a large company like Fox, and everyone is then going to know about how you "sometimes... spend my day hoping no one catches me Gmail chatting with my best friend." And your boss is going to know you think he's kind of a disaster:

This just in: a Hollywood PrivacyWatch Special Edition, featuring an extremely well-observed power breakfast with your American Idol, David Cook. "I saw the American Idol winner David Cook at breakfast at Belmont on Wednesday. He was having breakfast with some record execs but he was dressed in total faux-hipster. Vest over t-shirt. Check. Pork pie hat cocked jauntily. Check. Lots of necklaces outside of his tee. Check. Three (!!) of those fight breast cancer/fight something plastic bracelets on one wrist. Check. Cowboy boots. Check. He totally looked like he was dressed by someone who hates him." [Defamer AI Coverage]

• So You Think You Can Dance [Fox]

Our hats are off to the merciful executives who refuse to give up on The Moment of Truth—Fox VP of Satan-Delighting Alternative Programming Mike Darnell's sluggishly paced, polygraphic game show. Week in and week out, it drags itself into the dugout and attempts to deliver on the life-destroying promise it showed at Reality TV spring training, but rarely does it succeed. At best, as in last night's episode, we come away with the mild satisfaction of knowing that things will forever be uncomfortable between that week's featured nymphomaniac and the best friend she's doesn't think will ever have a professional recording career, but has often considered fucking.

ABC has the most popular television network website, just a shade more popular than NBC.com among the six broadcasters sampled by HitWise. But both websites are down in their relative share of the online audience, while CBS has greatly increased visits. Why? Well, for starters, CBS is ahead in the year-to-date ratings race for actual television. The top draws to the network sites are, once again, competitions and other game shows — American Idol was the top draw for Fox, Deal or No Deal for NBC and Dancing With the Stars for ABC. Almost every site, however, kept users on longer, with the average user spending three more minutes on CBS. Only visits to NBC got shorter, probably because some users are going to Hulu to watch full episodes of shows like The Office and 30 Rock