The Roswell Beacon, a small paper in Georgia, ran this cover (which is not a spoof) last week to illustrate a story about how area "White Supremecy [sic] Groups" have been making threats against Barack Obama. The story itself is pretty straightforward, but the cover now has wild-eyed liberal types upset. But the Beacon's publisher has vowed to stand up to "liberal blogger thuggery"! Honestly, this one's not so bad. At least they didn't put it on an overpriced sweatshirt. Larger picture after the jump.

Though he does not know it, Verlyn Klinkenborg is my nemesis. He's a member of the New York Times editorial board. Like all of the board's members, he has the privilege of using the most valuable op-ed space in American newspapers as a bulletin board for his personal musings. Verlyn takes advantage of this power to write regular items about "The Rural Life," all of which I can summarize as follows: "As I strolled through the country or gazed out my window, I saw nature, which I ruminated upon. Tra la, tra la, tra la." If I have to open up the Sunday paper one more time and see a chunk of editorial page real estate occupied by an "Editorial Notebook" essay inspired solely by window-gazing, I simply don't know what I will do. So Verlyn: I'd like to offer you a gentleman's agreement.

Avuncular Times columnist and former theater critic Frank Rich just signed a deal making him HBO's "creative consultant." Which means, according to Nikki Finke, "a consulting fee combined with payments for projects that get made." What it also means is that now he can get all his kids jobs on television too. (Zing!) [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

Living at home with your parents well into your 20s and even 30s: it's not so bad! A full third of 18-34-year-olds currently do it, a figure that's been rising for 25 years. And studies indicate that the politely-named "open nest" trend will keep going strong, which the WSJ says will mean that "the stigma traditionally linked to young adults' living at home will fade." We say: not bloody likely.

Last month, Page Six ran an item about a sex tape featuring Bam Margera Bam-ing the fiancee of radio shock jock Opie. Opie said the whole thing was false, and offered $100,000 to anyone who could produce the tape. A couple of weeks later the Post ran a retraction of the item—but laid the blame at the feet of Steppin' Out editor Chaunce Hayden, who they said gave them the bad info in the first place. Well Chaunce Hayden, unrepentant media whore, wouldn't let such a thing pass without turning it into a feud! And he helpfully forwarded on the snippy emails between himself and Page Six boss Richard Johnson. Watch out for flying spittle!

The "A-frame" shot—between the legs, with something framed in the middle—is called the "most frequently copied trope ever used" in the design world. PRINT Magazine pulls together a great collection of novels, movie and theater posters, ads, comic books, magazines, and album covers that all use the device, in a cacophony of legs that quickly goes from edgy to uniform. The best from five different mediums, after the jump:

The US media takes a lot of crap from people like us for being amoral, craven bottom feeders. We take a lot of crap ourselves for being sensationalist controversy-chasers. But all of us here in the American mass media can pat ourselves on the collective back and say: at least we never took sexy pictures of scantily-clad models posing in the rubble of an earthquake that just killed 100,000 of our countrymen:

New York Sun columnist and bizarre racial thinker John McWhorter takes a wistful look back today at God and Man at Yale, crypto-fascist William F. Buckley's seminal work on how to be an uptight Ivy League conservative. Why today? Well, there's never a bad time to speak out against the outrageous marginalization of capitalism and Christianity on college campuses, in McWhorter's view, and besides, he had a column due. He thoughtfully and eloquently fellates Buckley's 1951 plea for sticks (of morality) to be inserted in asses (of Christianity) throughout our nation's top schools. And you know—not to be immodest—McWhorter can't help but see a little bit of Buckley's controversial genius in himself:

"Time Warner Inc. is expected Wednesday to unveil details of how it will carve off its Time Warner Cable arm, a step that will transform the media conglomerate into one more focused on movies, TV programming and magazines." [WSJ]

Tech blogger Robert Scoble, formerly of Microsoft and now with Fast Company, spent some time hanging out in the Times' research and development division, which exists (really?), and filmed some of their wacky publishing experiments. One innovation, set to go online today, is a browsable interface to the Times' historic back issues, which have been available through search but which can now be viewed as a series of front pages through an interface called Times Machine. More interesting: A prototype newspaper rack with a digital window display and the ability to generate custom versions of the newspaper. Of course, newspaper companies like the Times have been imagining the future for decades, and have jumped in at the earliest stages of most technological leaps, from radio to satellite data transmission to the internet. But they've never known their customers well enough to lead in the application of technology, and it's by no means clear whether the Times can make itself the exception to that rule, geek lab or not. Judge for yourself after watching a video clip of the magic rack after the jump.

The Post's Keith Kelly reports on how the literati at Random House are reacting to their new, German technocrat overlord: with abject terror. "People are panicking and saying it couldn't be worse... On the face of it, it looks like the guy is a complete production bean counter. It doesn't look hopeful that he'll share the romantic idea of literature and publishing." Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal elicited this tart quote from Bertelsmann CEO Hartmut Ostrowski on the departure of the previous Random House chief, Peter Olson, who recently recovered from a rough bout with pneumonia: "He wanted a new life, and we agreed." Cold.

At left is the top of an interview with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez filed by Charlotte Hall, Editor of the Orlando Sentinel and President of the American Society Of Newspaper Editors. Other editors who recently accompanied Hall to Venezuela, like Marty Baron of the Boston Globe and Margaret Sullivan of the Buffalo News, led their stories with unflattering facts about Chavez, like recently-autheticated evidence he sought to supply missiles to Colombian rebels, his country's skyrocketing homicide rate and a rebuke in a December national referendum. Hall, in contrast, introduced her story with a series of anecdotes supplied by Chavez himself, descriptions of his clothing and a button he used to summon coffee, plus the observation that he kissed female editors on their cheeks. This fluffy treatment, and Hall's sycophantic smiling in the accompanying photo, we hear, horrified some in the Sentinel newsroom, particularly among those who already regarded the editor as a "clueless" transplant from the tabloid Newsday.

We're hearing problems at the Daily News! There are problems everywhere else, why not there, too. Metro editor Greg Gittrich is out? He was the anointed next-in-line to managing editor Stu Marques, supposedly, but now...? Is it true? Let us know.

In the wake of former entertainment industry exec Terrance Dean's gay-blind-item-filled book Hiding In Hip Hop, the hip hop community was split. Some reacted by saying, essentially, "Ew. That is so gay." But others basically yawned, and pointed out that of course there have always been gays in hip hop. Have you looked at some of these album covers lately?

Donny Deutsch: chairman of the huge ad agency Deutsch Inc., host of the rarely-viewed show The Big Idea on CNBC, permanently hyper talker. The press has always had a love/ hate relationship with the man. He's a dynamic, quotable guy, which is why he gets an inordinate amount of coverage in the first place. But then again, he's a confirmed insufferable egomaniac. Some people love his style; but we've found that people driven by a burning need to hear others talking about them are almost invariably well qualified for the Douchebag Award. As is Deutsch. Five good reasons why:

In an Ad Age blog column entitled "Guess What, America? There Is A Black Middle Class," marketing exec Moses Foster puts forth the message: There is a black middle class. So stop talking to us like we're all gangsters! When Foster and a friend went to an ad conference a couple weeks ago, they had a conversation that went like this: "I expect that you two like white women." Why? "Because you talk white. You're so articulate." That's so racist! Everyone knows that white people aren't articulate. The funniest part of the story, though, is the comment section, which is split between minorities relating their own stories of discrimination, and sympathetic white people scrambling to fulfill every I-have-a-black-friend stereotype there is:

Taco Bell's Value Menu slogan is "Why Pay More?" But if a rapper were to say it, they would say, "Why Pay Mo'?" Because black people can't talk right, ha! Cannily tapping into urban culture, the fast food chain is running a "Why Pay Mo'?"online promotion, complete with a Rap Name Generator (mine is Super Fly H. Nach!). Taco Bell's beef tastes like dog food, and their ad agency is making them look like a bunch of tone-deaf racists. But I can almost forgive them for all that, because their site's "Why Pay Mo' Rhyme Generator" allowed me to create a hip hop supergroup featuring evil columnist Andrea Peyser, Spitzer hooker Ashley Alexandra Dupre, drunk Post editor Col Allan, and author of the year Keith Gessen, all kicking rhymes about the fat value menu. Action photos below!:

The UK government body that regulates advertising passed new rules this month banning TV commercials that are too loud. That's right; ads shouldn't be "excessively noisy or strident." Nor should they be excessively blaring, deafening, roaring, or stentorian, if the thesaurus has anything to say about it. The ostensible reason for the rule is to prevent your neighbors from hearing commercials on your television. "This might sound straightforward," says the New York Times. Um, no it doesn't. Has the British government come up with a magic volume button-disabling law?

The outline on the model at left is not a bathing suit; that would be a tan line. The woman is completely naked. The ad for Cabana Cachaça was accepted not only at Playboy but also at Details, Men's Vogue, Esquire and GQ. Yes, this says something about eroding publication standards and the financial desperation of magazines amid the current advertising downturn. But more critically, it says that Cabana Cachaça is probably some really, really crappy liquor. Larger shot of the ad, marginally NSFW, after the jump.

"Bob Schieffer signed a new long-term contract with CBS News, the network confirmed Monday... The chief Washington correspondent initially planned to retire after the 2008 presidential election." [Broadcasting & Cable]