"I was asked a question that made it sound like I equated gay marriage with pedophilia or incest, which I absolutely do not believe," Rick Warren explained this week. See? He didn't mean it!

We already know the recession sucks for journalists because—to generalize slightly—they have been laid off. But it sucks for working journalists, too. Guess who else got laid off: all their sources!

Jindal lied about a dead hero too, so it's extra fun! Sheriff Harry Lee of Jefferson Parish organized volunteers during Katrina to rescue residents trapped on rooftops. This was supposedly against some of that damned bureaucratic red tape or something, and in Jindal's telling he marched into Lee's office and said if the rowboats didn't go out NOW they could just arrest the governor, or something. Well, this was a lie, because Jindal wasn't even in Jefferson Parish when the flood waters were that high. His office admitted that the story was bullshit, then tried to cover for Bobby by claiming that they meant that the dramatic phone conversation happened days later.

New York Governor David Paterson's attack flack oversaw a stealth media campaign to smear Caroline Kennedy after she withdrew from the Senate race—which succeeded in making Kennedy and the Governor look terrible. Good work!

Sam Adams, the openly fabulous mayor of Portland, Oregon, screwed an 18-year-old intern, the improbably named Beau Breedlove, and lied about it. Why? Because he'd just broken up with his boyfriend, he told Out.

Oprah Winfrey finally admitted that Herman Rosenblatt, a man she celebrated on her show some years back, did, in fact, fabricate the "true story" of his years-spanning, Holocaust-surviving love affair. But she didn't say much.

Has anything the celebrity family of Jett Travolta said about the teenager been the unvarnished truth? If so, we missed it. Even the publicity photos of Jett they sent out after his death are Photoshopped.

The White House has released an awesome book called "Highlights of Accomplishment and Results" from "The Administration of President George W. Bush." Let's page through it!

Charismatic Republican Governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal told everyone sorry, but he's not running for president in 2012. Oddly, everyone seems to be taking this "announcement" seriously! Jindal just made a trip to Iowa and people are still taking him at his word! It's just a lie, everyone. The only people who ever announce they're not running this early and mean it are guys who make career-ending fuckups and guys smart enough to know they can't win. (Like goofy-looking Mark Warner, pictured.) [CNN]

Happy (in a somber way) Veteran's Day. If you're a young American aged 17-24, you might consider honoring the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform by joining the United States Army yourself! Sounds good, no? We all know the Army has been having some recruitment problems lately, what with the hopeless wars we're fighting and the psycho Commander in Chief and the excellent chance of being blown up. But the Army has decided to shift its sales pitch in order to lure you youngsters in. By talking more about Iraq!: They're adding a webcast called "Straight from Iraq" to their website, where soldiers will tell you the real deal about life in the desert war zone. Presumably not too real, though. They're also supercharging their marketing plan with the following changes: - More internet, less "sponsorships of professional rodeos." - The voice of Gary Sinise! - New commercial: "young workers in business attire suddenly start climbing walls. 'This company is filled with dreamers,' Mr. Sinise says." You'll have to join the Army to know how it ends! Of course, all of this is very much deck chair/ Titanic. If more people join the Army it will be because they can't get a job anywhere else since our economy collapsed. And if the Army was smart it would have one simple selling point: "Bush is gone." [NYT]

Our rapid 24-hour-a-day news cycle is turning "solid journalism" into a quaint anachronism! As you may have heard. First it was round-the-clock cable news, then the internet happened, and now even real news outlets are making all types of errors trying to keep up with blogs, where we just invent our stories whole, like Keyser Soze staring at a police station bulletin board. Fortunately some journalistic theorists have just the thing to prevent the general public from being suckered into believing everything they read: media training for tots!

Lies! Today, they spread everywhere instantly thanks to the internet, that wondrous web of computers full of lies. That's how a fake rumor about Steve Jobs having a heart attack can momentarily cost Apple billions of dollars in market cap. But don't blame the internet—blame the inherently wicked hearts of mankind. Because people have been running these same types of media scams to manipulate financial markets for at least 144 years:

Hah. So. John McCain's campaign got pissed off at the New York Times for reporting a kinda tenuous connection between McCain campaign manager Rick Davis and Fannie Mae. So strategist Steve Schmidt (pictured), who is increasingly insane and unhinged and so un-Rove-like in his Rovian tactics, held a conference call to attack the Times. "Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today, not by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain Campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama," Schmidt sputtered. So, hah, if Politico's Ben Smith's writeup of the call is any indication, this media-attacking will backfire! "But the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact," Smith writes, "that it may have had the opposite effect: to deepen the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy" Oh no! They certainly wouldn't want anyone to think they play fast and loose with facts! The lies:

Now that the McCain campaign has decided on its "all easily disproved lies, all the time" strategy (with, so far, great returns!), they are finding it hard to even come up with relevant or convincing things to lie about. Which is why McCain policy advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin today held aloft his BlackBerry and announced to confused reporters, "you're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create." Wait, what? The AP is already comparing this to Al Gore's "I invented the internet" claim, which as everyone but Maureen Dowd hopefully now knows, was actually mostly true, in that Gore actually said he "took the initiative to create the Internet," in the context of his being the only Senator in the 1980s who kept babbling about the importance of national computer networking initiatives. So by that measure, how true is this? What is the supporting evidence? Ha ha it still seems like crazy bullshit.

A report on "liberal blog" The Michigan Messenger claimed this week that Macomb County (Michigan) Republicans have quietly gathered a list of foreclosed homes in their area and are planning to use it to challenge the addresses—hence, the eligibility—of voters on Election Day. (Macomb holds much of the middle class northern suburbs of Detroit.) There are also allegations of shenanigans between John McCain's campaign and a law firm that specializes in foreclosures. The county chairman says the charges are a complete lie and that his quotes in the original story are fabricated, but the reporter didn't tape the conversation (which is like, Journalism 101, right?) so who the hell knows what's going on? Still, this it brings to mind all the electoral problems that were supposed to be fixed eight years ago and somehow still aren't. This is how elections are rigged won these days. You don't stuff the ballot box or "misplace" one—you close it before anyone can put it a name in. In many ways, Michigan is the swingiest of swing states. It went blue in 2000 and 2004 (narrowly) and has a Democratic governor, but the state has been hit harder than any by recession and unemployment and Jennifer "Aunt Jenny" Granholm doesn't have a ton of fans right now. (She's also Canadian! And not the good moose-hunting kind.) It isn't generally mentioned as one of the key battleground states, but Michigan could easily become the one, especially with the local apparatus in Detroit a complete shambles right now. (What with Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick going to jail and everything.) If Ohio and Florida have taught us anything, it's that it doesn't take much to take away someone's voter card—but did they teach it to us too late? Or is simply no one listening? Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s famous Rolling Stone piece was a scathing indictment of local party politics, but it came two years after anyone could do anything about it. So is this the first of many shady stories we'll hear about in 2008? Or is it an outright lie that damages the media's ability to do its one civic duty—keeping people honest? Or will we wake up sometime in December and think, "Gee, how did that happen?" Lose your house, lose your vote [MichiganMessenger.com] GOP won't use foreclosure list to block voters [Detroit Free Press]

We have some natural sympathy for anybody locked in a battle against Page Six. Although that sympathy recedes when the P6 opponent is Chaunce Hayden, the rad tat-sporting editor of Jersey gossip rag Steppin Out who was denounced by P6 boss Richard Johnson for feeding him bad tips. Because Chaunce's rage is now leading him to send out mass email blasts about "news" that he, uh, just kinda made up! Or maybe he's always done that? Either way, now he's pissed off the Post even more. Here's the full story of one errant shot in the gossip war: Today Chaunce sent out a big email blast that "New York Post, Page Six scribe, Marianne Garvey, has been fired!" Chaunce wrote that Garvey used to write for him at Steppin Out (which she describes as two pieces when she was in college for $40 each), and that she had recently turned down a cover at the mag that instead went to Shallon Lester at the Daily News, so maybe Richard Johnson was so mad about it that he fired her? But definitely, she was fired. According to Chaunce. Actually Garvey left to take a job at In Touch—which she announced more than two weeks ago. By all accounts she left on her own terms, and wasn't fired. When this was pointed out to Chaunce, he sent out a "statement":

"The truth is that Lorillard markets its Newport brand cigarettes to adult smokers of all ethnicities," writes Lorillard CEO Martin Orlowsky to the Chicago Tribune today. "The truth is that our marketing is not disproportionately directed to African-Americans. The truth is that we do not target underage smokers. The truth is that there are twice as many Caucasian menthol cigarette smokers as there are African-American menthol cigarette smokers. I challenge those who want to prove otherwise to come forward with evidence to support their charges." Ha, well... Lorillard doesn't have to market disproportionately to African-Americans, because the market share of menthols in the black community is already massive. Look at Orlowsky's own math:

John Edwards is a lawyer, so he tends to be careful about, you know, "lies." Like Bill Clinton before him, he tries to make them technically true and hope no one notices the outs he leaves himself. Today, the Enquirer claims (reports?? who knows with them) that Edwards "restarted" his affair with Rielle Hunter after he says he confessed to his wife and ended it. Also he "was sexually involved with Rielle when she became pregnant." (Speaking of pregnant-click to see the totally helpful contextual ad that pops up when you hover over that word at the Enquirer's site.) Ha ha also: "Experts are now calling for a federal investigation into Edwards' use of campaign funds." Experts in what? So John's lying about everything, right? Kind of... "The story is false, it's completely untrue, it's ridiculous," Edwards said when confronted with the first Enquirer story on his affair. Then, when he admitted the affair this month, he explained that that wasn't actually a lie: "When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99 percent honest is no longer enough." As others have noted, that math does not make very much sense. But Edwards is helped in his crusade to be 99% honest by the fact that flaky Rielle Hunter seems unreliable and prone to flights of fancy. So her affair with Edwards actually happened, yes, but how many of the details as she recounts them are accurate? How many of the stories she told her friends are based on reality and not fantasy? Sources close to Hunter can only reveal what Hunter told them, which is hardly concrete proof of anything. So is this story true? Did the affair start up again? In Edwards' confession, he said: "But that misconduct took place for a short period in 2006. It ended then." That misconduct. Leaving himself room to not admit to a further, separate misconduct that happened later. See what he did there?

First, it was revealed that the giant fireworks footprints in Beijing's Olympics Opening Ceremonies were digitally manipulated fakes. Fakes! Sickening! Then came a more shocking revelation: even China's adorable little girls are forgeries.

You can't trust the Red Chinese for a single second. (Kidding! Trust them all you want). Nor can you trust multinational corporations! When they combine, they tend to be exceptionally devious. For example: Major companies are running ads featuring Chinese athletes having tender moments with their own parents, in preparation for the Olympics. But while the athletes are real, their parents-the catalysts for the ad's emotional strength-are played by actors. You have to see it to believe it! In one ad, a Chinese hurdler poses on a billboard (pictured) with two actors who are kind of like his parents, but probably more attractive. A Coke ad shows athletes and their parents bonding by doing sports together, something that their real parents would never do, I guess. "From an acting standpoint, we prefer to use trained actors who can match our creative requirements for the TV commercial," says a Coke spokesman, while urinating on the concepts of truth and familial honor. Watch the Coke ad below, and trust no one: Click to view [via WSJ]