Andrew Sullivan, wow. Just wow. The gay British conservative who over the course of a decade went from proud publisher of racist pseudo-science just for a larf to virulent Obama supporter has spent a month obsessing over everything Sarah Palin has ever said and done and even maybe done. So. He's written some stuff on the bizarre circumstances of the birth of Trig Palin. He defends it (reasonably in our estimation) by arguing that Palin's pro-life position and the politicization of her familial circumstances (special needs kids, son in Iraq, family on stage at convention) makes inquiry into her pregnancy relevant. Sullivan sent this crazy email to the McCain campaign, asking for comment:

It can be hard to sift truth from myth from conspiracy theory when it comes to Sarah Palin, even if that's what you're paid to do. But one would hope a professional journalist's natural skepticism would be piqued by the now-notorious Photoshop job at left of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin holding a rifle next to a swimming pool while wearing a bikini. Too good to be true! But Lola Ogunnaike, entertainment reporter for CNN's American Morning, seems to believe the image is authentic. Yesterday she told Reliable Sources host Howard Kurtz that Palin should maybe avoid posing with guns like this, because it might come back to bite her in the ass:

Washington Post media regurgitator Howie Kurtz says that curator of all things journalistic Jim Romenesko was wrong when he said that Kurtz violated the WP's own policy by letting a Fox News flack attack Jon Stewart anonymously in response to Stewart's own (on-the-record) attack of Fox. Kurtz argues that since this was a spokesperson giving the network's official response, their name didn't matter. In the bowels of the Fox News headquarters, the PR department marked Kurtz's name off their enemies list, while finishing a Photoshop mockup of Romenesko morphing into a hyena. [WP, Previously]

It has been months now since Fox News' PR machine issued one of its trademark slams of a critic, and we, for one, are happy that they have come off their summer vacations and gone back to work. The target this time: Jon Stewart, darling funnyman of the liberal elite. Surprise! The best part about this new spat: the person who comes off looking worst of all is not Stewart, nor Fox's flack, but rather the Washington Post's vacuous conventional media wisdom purveyor Howie Kurtz. A fight to admire, and a symptom of increased media fragmentation and public alienation! A full recap: The Democratic convention is such a news-bereft wasteland that Stewart was apparently giving a press conference, consisting of him riffing to a roomful of eager reporters. During the course of this, he said that Fox News' "Fair and Balanced" slogan is "the biggest 'fuck you' to people with brains that I've ever seen in my life" and that Chris Wallace is the network's only legit anchor, and that Fox is biased against Obama. Stop the fucking presses, right? But Howie Kurtz, trooper that he is, put in a call to Fox, and came back with this paragraph for his story:

Minneapolis Star and Tribune "gossip" columnist (there is no gossip in Minneapolis) C.J. has a kind of hilarious "item" about how Times media columnist and addiction memoirist David Carr is now feuding with Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz. How does she manage this? She quotes a Kurtz column in which Kurtz sums up Carr's assesment of himself as a lousy junkie, then calls Carr to ask if he'll be on Kurtz's show. Carr, probably befuddled at receiving a call from C.J., says something kind of confusing about how they are not that close. Then, FishbowlNY picks it up? Best entirely nonsensical made-up feud ever! Team Junkie! [Strib]

No wonder Lara Logan was so cranky on The Daily Show—she's preggers! Logan, the CBS war correspondent whose well-deserved promotion to CBS' chief foreign affairs correspondent was overshadowed by all this homewrecking nonsense, is now safely in Washington and expecting a child with Joseph Burkett, the contractor she famously carried on an affair with while stationed in Baghdad. The scoop comes from Washington Post "media critic" Howard Kurtz, which is funny, because he is generally useless and was all hand-wringy about how tabloidy this story was last week. Funny how a little exclusive can change a guy's mind, right? More passionate wartime forbidden love, below.

Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz is married to a publicist, and one would expect the press scold to studiously avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest with regard to her clients, who pay in hopes of getting their story into newspapers like the Post and onto TV shows like Kurtz's Reliable Sources at CNN. In fact, both Kurtz and wife Sheri Annis have been rather brazen about advancing one another's interests. As the Times notes this morning, Kurtz on Sunday interviewed for his TV show a CBS journalist who had written a memoir about her time in Iraq, and who just happens to have hired Kurtz's wife to do publicity. Kurtz went so far as to read aloud from her book before noting his conflict briefly at the end of his segment. His wife, it seems, has been even less ethically careful:

Here, finally, is a video clip of Julia Allison's Sunday appearance on Howard Kurtz's CNN media extravaganza, Reliable Sources. I'm not somebody who can detect human emotion, but doesn't it look like Howie has a crush on her? You can really see it in his eyes. Click to watch the instantly classic clip, which includes Julia's request that all you haters "go for it!"

Katie Couric is in talks to leave the CBS Evening News, the Washington Post reported, lending credence to an earlier report in the Wall Street Journal that the anchor is likely to leave before her contract expires in 2011. Couric would be offered "either a syndicated talk show or a full-time role on 60 Minutes" if she is eased out as anchor, the Post's anonymous sources said. Howard Kurtz, who wrote the Post's Couric story, is playing a bit of catchup: he published an interview with Couric Monday that missed the exit talks, allowing the Journal to scoop him two days later. [Washington Post]

Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz takes on Rupert Murdoch and his Wall Street Journal today, in Kurtz's inimitable "not actually taking anything on" style. Some say Murdoch will push the paper to the right or destroy its essential character! Others say he won't! What's indisputable, though, is that Murdoch's Journal is trying to establish (or re-establish) itself as a national paper, maybe a tough sell in a media landscape where only the New York Times really holds that title. But Murdoch's got lots and lots and lots of money! Fun facts: the newsroom staff is up to 750, from 600 two years ago. They are adding Washington and foreign reporters. Madness! It's almost as if no one told Rupert that print is dead. But the irreparable damage to the paper's character! What about that?

Roly-poly Republican strategist Karl Rove has a bit of a bad reputation, what with his mastery of quasi-legal dirty tricks, spearheading of underhanded whisper campaigns, and cut-throat dedication to enabling the most damaging presidential administration in living memory. So everyone basically thinks of him as a figure of cartoonish evil, like Dick Cheney. But now that he's on Fox News as a commentator, the liberals who run the rest of the media are shocked to find that they actually like Karl Rove!

Hey Barack Obama! Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz really doesn't appreciate you ignoring him and his friends, okay? "Some reporters say Obama seems disdainful toward journalists," Kurtz wrote in his column yesterday. "But the man who touches so many Democratic hearts feels no need, for the moment, to reach out to journalists...a curious disconnect indeed." Um, Howie, it makes us feel kind of uncomfortable when you show us your passive-aggressive inner child like that. If you stop, we'll totes find someone to sit with you at lunch today!

Every once in a while, we like to get a tour of a real sewer—and the drama surrounding the publication of 'Washington Post' media critic Howard Kurtz's latest book offered an opportunity too filthy to miss. Central to this particular mess's question is: Does a reporter's fondness or contempt for another reporter disqualify them from criticizing their work in print? (And if so, are we fired?) So let's go deep into the morass and play our favorite game: Who Hates Whom?

Howard Kurtz is cracking up, people! That is to say, he used the word "D'oh!" in his Washington Post column today, in which he reckons that Comedy Central funnyman Stephen Colbert actually is running for the Office of President of These United States because: "Not only was the guy on 'Meet the Press' Sunday, but some pundits are openly debating how many votes he'll get in South Carolina." Poor Howie—his book on the network news wars is being touted as "the new cure for insomnia" by Harper's Washington editor, Ken Silverstein, who read Kurtz's blog last week and threw up in all our mouths a little.

Before we tease Howard Kurtz again, we'd just like to say for the record that we find him to be kind of endearing, in an A/V club member kind of way. He's enthusiastic enough to maintain his own Facebook site and to do cheesy-ass things like interview himself about his own book on his own news show. That said, he's enthusiastic enough to do cheesy-ass things like interview himself about his own book on his own news show. Auto-fellating stunts like this outside of middle school are just a tad over-the-top. Are some tepid reviews prompting this kind of prancing about? The press isn't letting up on his quick-draw research skills or his performance in the art of the self-shill. We're not sure if anyone at CNN signed off on Kurtz's decision to invite a panel of media critics to interview him on that very same show, but running clips of his book tour appearances probably didn't earn him any friends among "the sneering class." When asked (groan) by himself, "who the biggest influence on the anchors is these days," Howie offered up old pal Jon Stewart, reasoning that he "points out the absurdity of real news!" Too bad Stewart wasn't in on the planning for this Reliable Sources broadcast.

It seems Howard ("waiting for Drudge to post more about his new book") Kurtz might have every idea that Jon Stewart hates him! According to Gawker commenter sumgiushoodno, who attended the taping of last night's Daily Show, the last ten minutes of the interview, when Kurtz and Stewart really had their claws out, were cut in editing! Transcripts anyone?

The most engaging part of Howard Kurtz's appearance on The Daily Show last night was Jon Stewart's introduction of the Washington Post media critic: "My guest tonight, Howard Kurtz, known of course... as the inventor of the curtsy." Heh. Kurtz was on the show promoting his new book about the protracted and bloody conflict that has occupied the hearts and minds of the American people for the last four years: The deadly battle for network news ratings. He made his first mistake by saying, without a hint of the irony required to survive on-camera with Stewart, "Well, you've heard of Katie, Brian and Charlie." Stewart, we think, thought Kurtz was a Big Three suck-up whose book didn't so much analyze the networks as adulate them. You can see Kurtz reinforce that impression in this clip, where he extols the bravery, the responsibility, dammit, the independent thinkers, of network news journalists. Stewart, for his part, dealt Kurtz his special brand of passive-aggressive napalm by calling his book "interesting." Twice.

Howie Kurtz, Washington Post media critic and author of "Reality Shows: Inside the Last Great Television News War," tells blog BigHeadDC that he'd be glad to meet with New York Press editor David Blum over similarities between Kurtz's book and a 2005 afterword to Blum's 2004 book. (Both the Kurtz and Blum books report, in similar ways, that Dan Rather threatened to take the Killian documents story that led to his dismissal from CBS to the Times if the network didn't promote, let alone run, the piece.) Kurtz has claimed the anecdote as a scoop. Speaking to the New York Observer last night, Kurtz described himself as "a fanatic about attributing information," but said he wouldn't mention Blum's book in any future editions of "Reality Show" because "since he got the information directly from [Josh] Howard, it didn't matter that the story had already been used elsewhere." Would Blum be open to a meeting? "It depends on the shape of the table," he told us.

We've been checking out Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz's new book, "Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War," an advance excerpt of which was posted Sunday with great hubbub on Drudge. That excerpt recounts a discussion between Dan Rather and '60 Minutes' executive producer Josh Howard that took place on the eve of the airing of the controversial piece that would end Rather's career at the network. Kurtz's story was treated as big news—but the substance, and some of the language as well, was no different from New York Press editor-in-chief David Blum's 2004 book, "Tick... Tick... Tick..: The Long Life and Turbulent Times of 60 Minutes."

In a weird adapted excerpt from his book on T.V. news that apparently comes out tomorrow, Washington Post nosepicker-columnist and CNN blatherer Howie Kurtz lets us know that the liberal T.V. painted the Iraq war as a bloody place where people get blown up and bad things happen! That is so crazy! How could they?! (Is the rest of his book so ludicrous?)