When the conservative satire An American Carol failed to catch fire at this weekend's box office, there were a wealth of potential targets for blame: the terrible, terrible trailer, the heated political climate, even the low-wattage cast of Hollywood's few Republicans (without even so much as a cameo for D.B. Sweeney!). However, the team behind the David Zucker-helmed parody would prefer to ignore those valid debits, instead alleging that there has been a vast, ticket-switching conspiracy designed to deflate American Carol grosses (and boost, perhaps, the thinly-veiled pro-immigration dogma of Beverly Hills Chihuahua?):

We have learned a great many things during this election year, but chief among them is that Republicans hate Hollywood (though not really). In fact, their vendetta against Tinseltown is so strong that they have now seized the means of production, which would at least explain the trailer for the upcoming right-wing comedy An American Carol — that is, if anything could explain An American Carol. A spoof of The Christmas Carol from Republican director David Zucker, it's the story of a Michael Moore-resembling filmmaker who is shown the error of his ways by a cast made up of Hollywood's biggest Republicans. If that description sounds a little dry, try these details on for size: the Moore stand-in comes to his senses when he is taught to kill members of the ACLU, and George Washington is played by Jon Voight. A closer look at the insanity, after the jump:As egregious and anti-funny as nearly every beat in the trailer is (we were especially partial to Gary Coleman's slave-talkin'), they all pale in comparison to this scene, teased by Reason:

Ben Stiller making his way into the Good Morning America studios ... Madonna's son David getting caught in the rain on the Upper West Side ... Robert Downey Jr. leaving his hotel in Midtown ... Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard walking to a toy store in Brooklyn ... Ugly Betty's Becki Newton signing autographs outside ABC ... Lisa Rinna walking around Midtown ... Kelsey Grammer and his wife returning to their hotel after a visit to the doctor ... and John Mayer walking near his apartment, completely covered up with a scarf over his face.

We left you Friday with Kelsey Grammer's Job-like test of faith, in which he detailed for Jay Leno the steady onslaught of tragedy and near-death experiences to befall him in recent months. Now comes news the Swing Vote star has canceled four TV appearances, hospitalized for an irregular heartbeat after "feeling faint." [ET Online]

· Kelsey Grammer dropped by The Tonight Show to talk about what it feels like to have a near-fatal heart attack, and the devastating cancellation of Back To You, and the phone call to his hospital bed telling him to clear his Fox offices, and the death of his dog, and the death of his mother. Happy weekend, everyone! [The Tonight Show]
· Just a little taste of what you're missing at Comic-Con. (Warning: May contain traces of bespandexed nutsack.) [Wired]
· The final Britney/K-Fed verdict is in. She has to pay him $20,000 a month in ridiculous-watch-game upkeep fees. [Reuters]
· A rundown of what Comic-Con visitors saw at today's The Wolfman panel included some footage and an eerie tagline—"The power of Satan to change men into beasts”—that we're almost positive was used in a Paris Hilton fragrance campaign. [AICN]
·And finally, we proudly present one of God's Mistakes: The pigkey. [BWE.tv]

· You might catch this cherished-Breakfast Club-memory-despoiling ad for JCPenney before PG and PG-13 rated movies this weekend. Yes, you too can look like you just raided Barry Manilow's wardrobe! [creativity-online]
· Russell Brand was asked to host the MTV Video Music Awards in September, instantly elevating him to household who-the-fuck-is-that? status. [AP]
· Congratulations Marissa Jaret Winokur on giving birth to your first child, Zev Isaac Miller. (Which according to our Jew/Goy dictionary translates literally as "Levi Alves McConaughey.") [People]
· Here's video of Christian Bale telling a reporter to mind his own business. The transcript really didn't do it justice: He can even turn a simple "no comment" into a deeply involving, multi-act affair. [ETOnline]
· Why Never to Believe a Publicist, Chapter MMMDCCCXC: That little Kelsey Grammer chest-hiccup? His heart stopped completely: "They had to blast me twice and get me started all over again." [NY Times]

Actor Kelsey Grammer has suffered a minor heart attack while vacationing in Hawaii. Doctors will likely advise that he go on a diet consisting of more tossed salads and fewer scrambled eggs.

Primetime inevitability Kelsey Grammer's hard-partying past has finally caught up with him, as the 53-year-old actor suffered a "mild heart attack" while vacationing at his Hawaiian home. According to Star magazine, the actor was swimming in Kona (by contrast, ETOnline claims he was paddleboating at the time, then gave birth to twins) when his "heart stopped for a few seconds." He was later airlifted to Honolulu for tests and observation, and will be released soon: "Kelsey is doing fine now and he will be going home tomorrow," [flack Stan Rosenfield] said. Not since the Grammers were paid by Glaxo Wellcome to promote awareness of Irritable Bowel Syndrome—only to later learn the drug they were promoting made symptoms worse and could sometimes prove fatal—has the couple been so energized by a medical cause. Let the Lipitor-shilling commence! [Star]

· But how did yesterday's 416 point stock market bed-shitting affect the faceless multimedia corporations behind your favorite entertainment products, you ask? Disney was hit the hardest with a 6% fall, followed by Time Warner at 4%, and 2-4% drops by News Corp., CBS, Viacom, and Sony. [Variety]
· Kelsey Grammer's Grammnet Productions throws away a 15-year relationship with Paramount for a one-year fling with 20th Century Fox TV's younger, hotter piece of studio ass. [THR]
· Fox's Fifth Graders Humiliating Morons draws a depressingly huge 26.6 million viewers in its American Idol-boosted premiere. Realizing that the series' initial numbers might be a little inflated by its lead-in, the network hopes to continue to hold that audience's interest by adding an element to Fifth Grader in which the show's precocious ten-year-olds kick its contestants in the genitals after each incorrect answer. [Variety]
· Oscar winner Alan Arkin will join Little Miss Sunshine co-star Steve Carell underneath the Cone of Silence in Warner Bros. Get Smart movie adaptation. [THR]
· Robert Downey Jr. signs on to play "Kirk Lazarus, the greatest actor of his generation and a four-time Oscar winner" in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, but there's no mention if that's the role that Tom Cruise was reportedly hoping to land to extend his buddy time with Stiller past Hardy Boys. We'd hate for Downey to get blacklisted at Cruise's United Artists for stealing a role away from the new mogul. [THR]

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, and the millionth sighting wins a Cavalier—so send them in often! Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the time you spotted Debbie Downer finding nothing to complain about at Mozza.

· Richard Meier says his proposal for Ground Zero got slammed by New Yorker critic Paul Goldberger because Meier refused to bend the LMDC's rules and give Goldberger the plans in advance. [Page Six]
· Possibly coming to New York: "J Edgar! The Musical." (Starring the actors behind the Simpsons, Kelsey Grammer, John Goodman and Christopher Guest.) [NY Daily News]
· Harper's Bazaar Editor Glenda Bailey on rumors of her impending demise: "If people want to waste time gossiping, that's up to them. I couldn't feel more secure." [The Word]