Swine flu panic is just a week old and like most Americans you probably have only one thing on your mind: how can I make some sweet fast cash off this thing? Enter guerrilla marketing.

A government memo shows the Federal Aviation Agency predicted "public concern" over fighter jets flying near downtown Manhattan — and yet demanded that New York officials not explain the planes' terrifying presence.

Fox News gives subliterate people Atlas Shrugged on tape and puts them on camera. Here is a clip reel of Fox anchors repeatedly mispronouncing every proper noun they attempt to read off the teleprompter.

Time's Mark Halperin says Obama is "dominating," and has come up with a patented list of "16 Reasons Why Barack Obama Is Exceptionally Good At His Job." Here's one: He doesn't listen to Mark Halperin.

Sarah Palin, who is an idiot and therefore just doesn't get it, proudly told a pro-life conference that she considered an abortion before choosing to have Trig.

Meghan McCain, the vacuous and comically self-regarding daughter of failed presidential candidate John McCain, sold a book to Hyperion for "high six figures" (that's dealspeak for around $750,000) in which she'll lay out—what, exactly?

You know, it's been more than a month since hateful NY Post cartoonist Sean Delonas drew an offensive (and uncreative!) cartoon. Maybe he's not so bad...wait, did he just mock a blind man, for blindness?

Seriously, how can you be such a stupid racist?

The Stimulus Bill is really long! And it's full of "numbers" and stuff! This is why no one is going to vote for it.

Oh, what a shock: David Denby's book, The Internet is Mean and I Am Smart, is full of either intentional misreadings and factual errors or inadvertent glaring mistakes because he is a lazy thinker and a poor writer, who really needs an editor, which is why he would not actually be a successful blogger, because he'd get called on his shit by those "snark-merchants" or whatever the hell he calls people who call people like David Denby on their obnoxious bullshit. Thankfully only two people have actually skimmed his book.

Today is important, because it is the day we get to show what may be, without exaggeration, the single most stupid internal memo ever sent to a newspaper staff. It concerns "productivity."

The media screwed up many, many times in 2008. As in other years! The ten finest episodes, listed for you below. Merry Christmas, from the media:

Bill Kristol's very first New York Times column ran on January 7, 2008. It seems like only yesterday! Thankfully that means his contract is now just about up.

[That's not Liza! That's Bronx Mowgli's (yes, the Bronx Mowgli) dad Pete Wentz in Washington Square Park today; image via INF]

Now that we have a glorious, hopey new president, it's time for the assholes to come out. Idiot L.E.S. designer Apollo Braun—famous for being the idiot who makes sweatshirts saying "Who Killed Obama?"— has issued a mumbly press release declaring that he will not stop making his idiot sweatshirts, despite alleged pressure from the FBI, which may or may not be a likely fabrication like the rest of the idiot's stories. He also gives an appropriately amusing quote!:

You know what's really important to up-and-coming young entrepreneurs these days? What you wear! More important than, for example, economics. This is why older people run all the real businesses, while younger people spend their time talking to WSJ columnists for unintentionally hilarious and depressing features on how kids avoid going "corporate" by buying the correct name brands. Is your CEO "urban" or a "surfer?"

It's just so perfect. Tribune Co. already boasts gnomish asshole CEO Sam Zell, who cusses out his own employees in public, and "Chief Innovation Officer" (ha) Lee Abrams, the dumbest guy in the newspaper industry. And now Eddy Hartenstein (pictured), who Tribune hired as the new publisher of the doomed LA Times last month, is telling LAT reporters that leaking memos to blogs is "treason":

It's a Chicago media tussle—hardball style! Yes, well. The Chicago Sun-Times threatened to sue the Chicago Tribune for job discussions the Tribune had with Jay Mariotti, the sports columnist who quit the Sun-Times just last month. But, um, hey Jay: didn't you quit your LUCRATIVE NEW contract at the Sun-Times out of the blue because you were inspired by all the other sports journalists you saw "writing for web sites?" Where's your "web site" now, you idiot man-child? Ahahaha!

Celebrity publicists are definitely busy. They're often liars. Sometimes they try to control media coverage. But are they really a "dark breed of fixers, stuntsters and arch media manipulators"? Do Hollywood flacks count as "an invisible army of Machiavellian schemers"? No, they're more like a very visible army of bumbling media whores and hustlers. But the Times UK has several even more exaggerated descriptions of the prowess of idiot flacks. This story's hyperbole makes it the stupidest article ever written about PR, which threatens to destroy the media forever:

[Gossip girls Michelle Trachtenberg and Lydia Hearst at NYLON's "Young Hollywood Issue" party in New York last night; image via INF]