Fox News had commentator Michelle Malkin on to talk about how Barack Obama's wife Michelle has not been the victim of unfair conservative attacks, and as she was speaking the network displayed the caption seen above: "Outraged liberals: Stop picking on Obama's baby mama!" The term "baby mama" is, of course, slang for the unwed mother of one's child (married ones usually just called "wives"). This is sort of like when Anderson Cooper of CNN misused the term "boo," except vicious and racist instead of adorable and funny. It also follows incidents in which Fox asked whether Michelle Obama did a "terrorist" fist-bump with her husband and in which it circulated unsubstantiated rumors that she used the term "whitey" in a speech once. Whoops! Fox News has "accidentally" injected another crazy defacto allegation about the Democratic presidential candidate's wife into the mainstream dialog. Disingenuous semi-apology to follow shortly. (UPDATE: Already happened.) Video after the jump.

"Hello, Dad," begins Nate Hill, the leader of the Chinatown Garbage Tour, which encourages participants to build "monsters" out of dead animal parts found in the trash. "I thought you might like this piece that I made because it looks like African art, and I know how much you love African art." He then shows us the "head" part of "the E.V.E. Project, the life size female human being that I'm currently sewing together. It should be complete around September." Happy Father's Day! [via Young Manhattanite] Click for the video, Dad—and fuck you.

TV is dying, right? We read about it online. Kids these days spend all their time on YouTube, and television is left to geriatrics watching Depends ads, right? But no! One word, friends: Cable. Just today, news came out that the executives at Discovery Communications, home of the Discovery Channel, are some of the highest paid in all of the media—their CEO took home $20 million, right up there with the Viacoms and Time Warners of the world. How did little old cable get so rich? Good timing, good programming, and a little bit of luck. Learn and marvel!

All these people who accidentally destroyed the newspaper industry feel so bad about it! Craig Newmark, whose Craigslist decimated the classifieds sections of the nation, endowed some chair at Berkeley's journalism school to assuage his guilty conscience. Now Google, whose ad company is destroying the revenue model newspapers depend on, is hopping on the "we totally love journalism" bandwagon. Google head Eric Schmidt claimed that their DoubleClick ad service will aid newspapers! In getting more online revenue, obv, not with the whole "saving newspapers themselves" thing. "It's a huge moral imperative to help here," Eric said. Too little, too late, Google! ONCE A WHORE, ALWAYS A WHORE.

You can look at Wendy Williams, the loud queen of hip hop talk radio, in two ways: she is popular, in the sense that her show is still one of the biggest things on the radio dial; but she's also not popular, in the sense that her crazy husband runs around her studio hiring hitmen, sexually harassing the female employees, and generally acting like a gangster, according to a new lawsuit from a traumatized publicist. Williams denies it all, including the claim that her husband slammed her up against the wall because she failed to stop smoking. But one thing she can't deny: she is mean. In 2006 she told everybody on air about how Wu-Tang rapper Method Man's wife had cancer—which was private. Method Man responded with one of the most sincere anti-gossip rants in recent history:

Ads, of course, are everywhere. But at least back in the good old days (last week), they would only creep into the borders of our TV shows, rather than becoming the entire show itself. Well, those days are gone, friend. Give up your outdated ideas about what programming should be, and settle in with a bowl of wet food and your hungry cat for a fine evening receiving the subtle marketing messages of the "Meow Mix Game Show"!

Ramiro Burr, a longtime music writer and columnist at the San Antonio Express-News, has resigned from the paper in the face of "allegations that he hired a ghost writer to produce more than 100 stories and columns since 2001." Wow. Didn't it used to be that only journalism's upper crust muckety-mucks hired ghost writers for their columns, like when Mort Zuckerman got Harry "Mr. Tina Brown" Evans to work on his columns in US News & World Report? That sort of thing is expected amongst the elites. But the Latin music critic in San Antonio? Where's the amusing elitism in that? The ghost writer came forward only looking for bylines, and gave a binder full of proof of how he would crank out columns and then pass them on to Burr. And Burr's half-ass non-denial on his own blog makes him sound pretty guilty:

Are you one of the apologist types who argues that not all hip hop music is ignorant, antisocial filth? Please excuse New York Sun columnist and bizarre racial thinker John McWhorter as he shakes his head in exasperation at your foolish "fallacy." Did you know that the urban black demographic has problems with crime and education? Let's hear you defend your precious "conscious" rap now! How does the irredeemable evil of all rap music ever recorded logically follow from the existence of social problems? John McWhorter will tell you how: with some terrifying lyrics from The Roots, proving that hip hop will be our generation's downfall:

Simon & Schuster is printing 350,000 copies of a book by Madonna's brother Christopher Ciccone, to be rushed onto store shelves next month before the singer's lawyers can sue to block publication. The book is said by the Post's sources to be "brutal" and "extremely graphic and devastating," which normally would sound like publisher hype, except in this case the tabloid seems to be in a catfight with Simon & Schuster over a spoiled exclusive so that seems doubtful. Once Madonna's rock of stability, Ciccone was estranged from the pop star around the time Madonna met husband Guy Richie, who doesn't like gays. Or maybe Ciccone just hates his sister so much that he wants people to think Richie hates gays, so Madonna's gay fans will jump ship (Richie has denied being homophobic). Whatever. The important thing is that the public will finally learn some intimate details about Madonna, poster child for discretion and underexposure. [Post]

Oh hey, look, it's John Cusack, campaigning against John McCain in a MoveOn.org ad! Cusack's War, Inc., which was a sort of Dr. Strangelove-meets-the-Iraq War, got weak reviews, but points to the actor for including a very, very difficult POP QUIZ in this commercial. Spoiler: The correct answer to every question is the same: "I have no idea, but Lloyd Dobler is DREAMY." Ad/quiz after the jump.

Fun game: take this Katie Couric comment on sexism toward Hillary Clinton and replace the Senator's name with the anchor's. Ha ha iron our shirts, Katie! Stop hosting the "news" and get back to humoring the wacky weather guy in the morning! Also it's all tremendously sad. Video below.

Now added: Earlier foreshadowing about the dark fate that awaited just-dumped Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia CEO Susan Lyne.

Rolling Stone, America's most frustrating magazine (yay, Matt Taibbi; boo, excruciating music coverage) has been having some trouble selling ads lately. So to help revitalize its "iconic and revolutionary brand," the magazine has slapped some of its classic covers on t-shirts. They're for sale at Macy's for $36 each. Eh, not really worth it. Oh, wait: each shirt comes with a free subscription to Rolling Stone. Eh, still. Better idea: make the magazine better so it sells. "The new collection of Rolling Stone tees appeals to today's cross-channel lifestyle, bringing together the influences of fashion, music, celebrity and entertainment," says a Macy's exec. "Macy's is honored to be exclusively bringing back these covers in a new, wearable way." OH NOW I GET IT. [via Ad Age]

Frank Bruni is pissed! The New York Times' omnipotent restaurant critic (pictured) today reviews a new Tribeca restaurant named Ago, which is owned in part by actor Robert De Niro. And Bruni's experience there is proof for the entire restaurant business that no matter how popular, expensive, or exclusive your place is, it is still quite possible to receive a terrible review if you act like an idiot. Please: Learn some lessons from Ago's fiasco. Here is what not to do when your restaurant is being reviewed:

If you ever find yourself needing an official corporate quote from CBS, the man who'll give it to you is Gil Schwartz, the Tiffany Network's top flack. And no matter how you feel about their news anchor, you have to give CBS credit: they're the only major media company to have a top PR person who writes books under a pseudonym about how much corporate America sucks. Schwartz's pen name is "Stanley Bing," and he's been writing for decades (currently, for Fortune) about all the business world's bullshit. Bing's real identity was outed more than 20 years ago, but—more bonus points—the network didn't fire him. They gave him a promotion! So how is CBS' Executive Vice President of Communications spending his time these days? By advising the world on how to slack off at their jobs:

Leave it to the French to [insert something racy here]. They have their own little scandal with a lady news anchor. It's similar to the issues we've dealt with here in the US—the chauvinist rise and fall of Katie Couric, last seen sympathizing with Hillary Clinton—but so much more French. The respected and beloved 60-year-old male presenter of Europe's most-watched news broadcast was just fired and replaced with a 41-year-old blonde cutie. And it's all the fault of crazy president Sarkozy!

The UK's stupid libel laws allow people to successfully sue the media for making fun of them. So Robert Dee, a 21-year-old British guy who is the world's Worst Professional Tennis Player, is suing three newspapers there for pointing out that he is, in fact, the Worst Professional Tennis Player. Mainly, this makes us glad to be in America, where we're free to tell you that Robert Dee is the Worst Professional Tennis Player. But also, the facts aren't even on his side; it sure sounds like he really is the Worst Professional Tennis Player!:

Salon's clinically insane advice columnist Cary Tennis today gets the chance to respond to the most stereotypical post-college question imaginable. A 24-year-old girl moved to LA to get into the film industry, found out it was shady, and got bummed out. Now she can't decide whether to move home to Florida and save up some money, or go backpacking across Thailand on a spiritual journey. We've all been there! Ann Landers gets 46 letters identical to this every week. So how does our friend Cary handle this easy setup? With his trademark brand of scary, dissociated ramblings indicative of an advanced case of schizophrenia or excessive mescaline use:

Sometimes the scent of desperation just rolls off the newspaper industry in great waves. The Dallas Morning News, like every other paper, has not been doing well. Their new strategy to get back on track: "a free, one-section version of the paper for home delivery aimed at nonsubscribers who are short on time." Ha, they're not short on time, they just don't want to read your stupid paper! The free version will go to "affluent" neighborhoods. So the company will pay to produce a dumbed-down version of its own poorly-selling paper and deliver it, thereby cannibalizing its own declining circulation and giving a big "fuck you" to not-wealthy readers all at once. It just might work! [DMN]

Time's Mark Halperin, the most singularly irritating and negatively influential "reporter" in politics today, got a "mid- to high- six-fugre sum" to write a book about the ongoing presidential campaign with New York's John Heilemann. Hey, Mark already wrote a book about the 2008 campaign! It was called The Way To Win and it was about how "The Way To Win" was to emulate Karl Rove and suck Matt Drudge's cock. That book was sooo prescient and successful—remember how well that strategy worked for Hillary Clinton? Hell, remember how well that strategy worked for Mark's book sales? [NYP]