Though John McCain came out of the Republican National Convention with a lead over Barack Obama, the general consensus is that political momentum has swung back Obama's way — and for further proof, look no further than important swing voter Diddy. Last seen praising Sarah Palin's RNC speech ("You did your thing. You gave a speech that pretty much shut me the fuck up") Diddy has changed his tune even faster than a ridiculous nickname past its expiration date. Now, after having watched Palin biff question after question with Katie Couric, Diddy is frightened — so frightened, he's hiding under the covers, threatening never to come out if McCain and Palin get elected. Finally, a celebrity endorsement the Republicans can actually use! [Diddy Blog]

For American presidential campaigns, the run-up to any televised debate is nothing so much as an exercise in managing expectations. Your opponent is fearsome and will probably crush you. Your own candidate will be lucky to form a single coherent sentence. Then, after the debate, you can spin a weak performance as a come-from-behind victory. In this little game of flackery, Sarah Palin could not be better positioned for tonight's face-off against Joe Biden. The Republican vice presidential nominee is up against a respected lion of the senate. Severe economic anxiety has put her ticket nine points behind in a new poll. The debate moderator has a big crush on Barack Obama. And, most importantly, a series of disastrous interviews with Charles Gibson and especially Katie Couric has made Palin look like an uninformed, inarticulate embarrassment. You can watch the complete lowlights in the attached video, including Palin's failure last night to name a single Supreme Court decision other than Roe vs. Wade. But keep in mind that the worse Palin looks now, the better she'll likely appear, to some key voters, tomorrow morning.

♦ Now that Tina Fey is suddenly cool again, publishers are falling over themselves to sign her as an author. The bidding is up to $6 million. [NYP]
♦ Katie Couric: She's back! [AP]
♦ Footage of Elisabeth Hasselbeck feuding with the other View gals over Sarah Palin this morning. [MollyGood]
♦ Norman Lear is teaming up with HBO on a drama series about "the world of 1970s pro wrestling." [THR]
♦ NBC has picked up a remake of the Partridge Family. [THR]
♦ TV's fall lineup has been a ratings disappointment. [WSJ]
♦ Solid ratings for House and Fringe elevated Fox to No. 1 on Tuesday. [TV Decoder]
♦ Citizen journalism has its dangers. Just ask CBS! [AdAge]

"The CBS Evening News gained only about 10 percent in audience from the previous week — and it was actually down from the same week the year before." [Times]

Sarah Palin spent some more time with Katie Couric, her new undermining roommate, who seems to have accumulated like 20 months worth of interview material, all of it horrifically damaging to the Republican vice presidential nominee. This time around, Palin couldn't name any newspapers or magazines she regularly reads, except for "all of them," which she clarified to mean whatever four-year-old copy of U.S. News she finds in the waiting room at her dentist's office. Then she didn't know what the morning after pill was. Katie was like, "whatever, I'm so out of here." Then Palin said she "loved" her lesbian friend, and Katie got excited again, about seeing Palin naked and "unfiltered" at the big debate. When will Palin finally vote Couric out of her sorority house and end this embarrassment? Cringe for her in the attached clip (click the video icon to watch).

David Letterman continued to hammer John McCain last night, taking obvious glee in the fact that he has finally found an adversary worthy of supplanting former bête noires like Les Moonves and the entirety of NBC Broadcasting. If you'll remember, McCain incurred Letterman's wrath by canceling a Late Show appearance under the guise of heading immediately to Washington D.C. — something Letterman debunked by cutting to a live feed of McCain's interview with Katie Couric just down the street. Last night, after taking shots at McCain in his monologue ("He loves bailouts — he bailed out on me"), Letterman welcomed guest Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who promptly swore her allegiance to the Late Show host, then demonstrated it with another live feed cut to a lonely Katie Couric. Clip above. [CBS]

Did you miss John McCain and Sarah Palin's chat with Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News last night? A clip of the fiesty encounter follows after the jump. But more Palin awkwardness may be on the way! According to Politico, there's a clip of Couric asking Palin about the Supreme Court: "After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases. There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence."

Sarah Palin just keeps going back for more car-wreck interviews with Katie Couric. After forecasting a possible Great Depression and saying something indecipherable about her state's relations with Russia, the Republican vice presidential nominee reportedly went silent when called on to name Supreme Court cases other than Roe V. Wade. Also, in the attached clip, Palin and John McCain both implausibly try to blame "gotcha journalism" for reporting on Palin's support for cross-border raids into Pakistan, a position shared by Barack Obama and attacked by McCain during the presidential debate. (Click the video icon to watch.) Now, Politico reports, the Republican ticket is pulling Palin back to the safer waters of right-wing talk radio. Putting McCain's popular-but-inexperienced running mate in front of more TV cameras was a calculated gamble by the campaign to broaden her appeal. It's now safe to say that it failed.

♦ Will Project Runway move to Lifetime from Bravo? NBC won the first legal battle against PR producer Harvey Weinstein on Friday, which means it's not entirely clear where the show will end up. [NYT]
♦ The Sun may publish an issue tomorrow after all. [Portfolio]
♦ Tina Fey to the rescue: Saturday Night Live has seen a major boost in ratings so far this season. [THR]
♦ Vanity Fair on the face-off between Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett. [VF]
♦ An Indian version of GQ debuts this month. [Guardian]
♦ Howard Kurtz says unseen clips of Katie Couric's interview with Sarah Palin are on the way; CBS says it has released everything it's got. [HuffPo]
♦ The Times looks back at the drunken career of the Post's Steve Dunleavy, who's retiring after 41 years in the business. [NYT]
♦ The Wall Street Journal has launched a mail-order wine club. Really. [NYT]

Though Tina Fey has publicly voiced a desire to stop playing Sarah Palin in November, Lorne Michaels issued the Emmy winner the comedy equivalent of a stop-loss last night, conscripting Fey for a second tour of duty as Palin on Saturday Night Live. This time around, Fey and Amy Poehler spoofed the vice-presidential candidate's bungled sit-down with Katie Couric, and though the sketch will forever live in the shadow of the instant classic original (and we would rather have seen Kristen Wiig play Couric than the hugely pregnant Poehler), there were still some worthwhile bits. Our favorite? Fey-as-Palin's talking points meltdown (at 2:50 in the video). The sketch, after the jump:Click to view

Tina Fey returned her old home at Saturday Night Live once again last night to portray mind-boggling VP candidate Sarah Palin, opposite Amy Poehler's Katie Couric. In the clip, Palin discusses her whirlwind tour of NYC and the UN, and tells Couric what to do if you stumble upon a Russian on the Alaskan border. Check it out after the jump. Click to view

Everyone is treating Sarah Palin like a vapid celebrity and it is just so patronizing! Here she is, four thousand four hundred miles away from her tanning bed, meeting all these important people with accents in her very most distinguished Nancy Pelosi outfits and president of Pakistan tells her she is "more gorgeous" than he expected her to be! Gossip columnist "nearly lunged" to check out the label on her jacket at a fancy dinner the other night. So sexist, right! And it gets soooooo much more offensive!Mainstream media outlets - and our very own Richard! - have dipped into the market for Palin family fan fiction. Two weeks ago this market seemed the exclusive domain of independent satirists like Something Awful - which portrayed a young Levi Johnston as harboring an elaborate Sarah Palin wet nurse fantasy - and Jeff Johnson's blog, which imagined Todd Palin as the type of dude for whom "whiskey makes him more sober." Well this week New York's blog went there, inspired by the Sarah Palin's real-life, closed-to-the-press meeting with Henry Kissinger:

It looks like John McCain will be heading to tonight's presidential debate after all (according to this priceless pool report from McCain's plane, which also states, "General atmosphere is utter confusion"), but one no-show is continuing to cost the candidate, and that's McCain's now-notorious skipped Late Show appearance. David Letterman continued to rip into McCain during his monologue yesterday, even conscripting guest Paris Hilton (who had her own memorable run-in with McCain) into the proceedings. Meanwhile, executives at CBS News are up in arms about the live news feed Letterman tapped into on Wednesday night's broadcast that showed McCain getting made up in advance of his Katie Couric interview:

On Katie Couric's website, it's always "Sen. Biden" this and "Sen. Biden" that, but the Democratic VP nominee's Republican counterpart gets the catty treatment. She's just plain "Sarah Palin." Conservative slam book American Spectator even found a CBS News editorial aide saying Couric sought approval to not call her "Governor." Because otherwise, you see, Palin might have looked all executive and so forth in her disastrous interviews. Couric is obviously just scared of a more powerful cougar. When will the jealous media elites stop conspiring to make Sarah Palin look bad? Watch Couric finally give Palin the respect she deserves, after the jump.

So. That Couric interview? Didn't seem to instill much confidence in anyone that we're dealing with anything other than a stunt that's gone horribly awry, like suspending a campaign to fix the economy. Like, people who thought she was dumb are shocked at just how dumb. (Or incurious, whatever you want to call it! You can't be a complete idiot and be a successful politician in Alaska, after all.) (That was a joke.) So would it maybe alarm you to know that her insane answers to Katie's pretty standard-issue questions were based off of pre-written notes? That's the contention, anyway, of some DailyKos diarist, whose proof is that Palin appears to look down a couple times. If she did have notes, she sounds like she got them from the dumbest kid in class. Honestly, what did these notes say? "MAKE NO SENSE"??

Honestly it's just sad now. Sarah Palin looks genuinely upset that everyone mocked her for saying she has foreign policy experience because of her state's proximity to Russia. Asked to explain what sort of foreign policy experience that proximity lends her, she says her state is very close to Russia. Katie Couric just smiles politely. The new exclusive clip from the CBS interview with America's Saddest Joke is attached below. Click to view
Watch CBS Videos Online John McCain should be ashamed of himself.

The first half of Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric aired tonight and it's already making the wrong sorts of headlines. This is looking a lot like Palin's train wreck sit-down with ABC News' Charlie Gibson. (Video of the most damaging moments — this time around — after the jump.)

Well, isn't this interesting. Hours before the anticipated David Letterman evisceration of John McCain aired on the East Coast, a YouTube popped up (by a user who had never posted any videos before and registered today) with all the highlights. Thanks, CBS mole! Video after the jump:

Somehow, YouTube already has a copy of David Letterman tonight lacerating John McCain for skipping the Late Show and suspending his campaign in the midst of the Wall Street meltdown. As reported earlier by Drudge, Letterman became especially upset when he caught the Republican presidential nominee in a live feed from New York being interviewed by his own network's Katie Couric. McCain had personally told Letterman he was canceling because he was headed back to the capital to handle the financial crisis. Whoops.

John McCain announced today that he would suspend his presidential campaign until the current economic crisis is settled, leaving some big holes in this week's TV schedule — most especially, this Friday's suddenly in-jeopardy presidential debate, which McCain is seeking to postpone (Barack Obama and debate organizers have rejected the idea). In the short-term, however, McCain pulled out of his planned appearance tonight on Late Show with David Letterman, and the host is pissed. Seems McCain told Letterman that he was canceling so that he could rush back to Washington D.C., but then Dave caught wind that McCain hadn't gone anywhere — that, in fact, he was just down the street taping an interview with CBS anchorwoman Katie Couric. What followed was an on-screen excoriation, according to the Drudge Report: