Great line by panelist Jim Pinkerton on the always-cool "NewsWatch" on Fox News last night. During a discusson of Enron chief Ken Lay's attempt to blame the media for Enron's collapse, Pinkerton scoffs: "That's like an athlete blaming the Olympics for getting caught doping."

Could this be true? A reliable tipster says that Stephen Colbert was, quote, "awful" as the entertainment at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington last night. The tipster says that even within the parameters of hey, we're just poking fun at the prez here (seen at left being a good sport with presidential impersonator Steve Bridges) there was nothing funny about it.

Crooks & Liars has the video.

TCG was, sadly, not invited to the dinner this year, so please email me with any hot gossip/anecdotes/sightings/awkward shouted conversations across the ballroom you might like to share (your anonymity is guaranteed), or drop them in the anonymous tips box at the bottom of the page.

The Washington Post to the WH: I HATE you, Daddy!

Check out this item in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Window on Washington blog--Washington Post reporter Jim VandeHei gets the prize for grown man most sounding like a 16-year-old girl shopping for prom dresses and being told the one she wants most doesn't come in her size:

The controversy du jour aboard Air Force One today was one near and dear to the hearts of many otherwise happy couples: Command and control of the TV tuner.

“It’s come to my attention that there’s been requests – this is a serious question – to turn these TVs on to a station other than Fox, and that those have been denied,” Washington Post reporter Jim VandeHei told Press Secretary Scott McClellan. “My question would be, is there a White House policy that all government TVs have to be tuned to Fox?”

“Never heard of any such thing,” said McClellan, soon to be replaced by Tony Snow of Fox News, long viewed as an operation that enjoys most favored network status in the Bush White House.

“My TVs are on all four different channels at all times,” McClellan said of the four-screen array across from his West Wing desk.

He also noted that every White House television has split-screen capability.

“Well,” said VandeHei, “they always seem to be tuned to Fox.”

He went on.

“And these are paid for by taxpayer dollars. And my understanding is that you guys have to watch Fox on Air Force One. Is that true?”

No way, said McClellan.

“First time I’ve ever heard of it,” he said. “First time you’ve brought it to my attention, meaning the first time the press corps has brought it to my attention. In fact, I’ve watched other channels on here.”

Can you believe this? What a whiny, crybaby bitchfest on VandeHei's part--and a huge reach. "Waaah! Taxpayer dollars! Shriek! I'm going to hold my breath until you turn CNN on! Conspiracy!"

Let me get this straight. It's a scandal if a Washington Post reporter can't watch CNN on Air Force One? I pay taxes too--what about what I want? Please.

And eventually Air Force One did what many exasperated parents do when confronted with an inconsolable adolescent--gave VandeHei what he wanted:

Moments later, after a quick trip up front, McClellan came back with the update.

“We just called up. They’re going to be changing it, at your all’s request, to the channel that you requested, which is CNN,” he said.

So there it is--the Washington Post strikes a blow for taxpayer justice--and saves its reporters from having to watch any news that doesn't reflect their personal anti-Bush bias. The MSM doesn't stand for MainStream Media anymore--it stands for Mighty Silly Media. Congrats on that, dudes.

George Clooney sits down with Shep, talks Darfur on "Studio B"

Check it out--George Clooney stopped by Fox News' Studio B with Shepard Smith today! TCG knows that George is controversial, politically, but she doesn't care: she thinks he's an artistic genius and he was fierce in "Syriana" (even if, as Jon Stewart pointed out, that movie didn't exactly make any sense.) George sat down with Shep while doing a PR blitz to plead for international help for the Darfur region of Sudan, where he just visited (check out pics of his trip--you can donate at this link to the International Rescue Committee, too.)

Harry Shearer on the decline of news: Meet Apocalypse Rita

Harry Shearer tells the Seattle Times that the state of journalism is getting worse then he ever thought possible, and this means you, Rita Cosby:

SHEARER: I'm a news junkie and I watch or listen to the news, and every single one of them [Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw] kind of drove me crazy in a different way, so I got it out of my system by making fun of them. And I think their sort of united departure in a strange way put an end to a period where they really did set the agenda for what people thought was happening in the world.

SEATTLE TIMES: Seems like Anderson Cooper and Nancy Grace are signs the species is fading out.

SHEARER: Yes, and is not being replaced for the better. I speak as someone who thought it couldn't get worse, and I'm finding to my dismay it can.

SEATTLE TIMES: Are you talking specifically about Rita Cosby?

SHEARER: Well, Rita and Anderson, frankly. I think the decline is from a group of people whose pose was, "We know more about the world than you do because we can always put on our safari jacket, jump on a jet, 10 hours later get off at a trouble spot, ask four members of the crew, 'What's the mood here?' and then do a live standup about it" — to a world in which a guy does the same thing but now the pose is not that he knows more than you but that he feels more than you. It's the Oprahfication of the news.

Check out FNC reporter Greg Palkot's latest Reporter's Notebook from his most grueling embedment ever, with the Marines in Afghanistan during "Operation Mountain Lion":

During the five-hour wait through the night for the chopper, a firefight burst out behind the next hill over between our troops and insurgents. It was kind of like waiting for a bus and you’re watching a shootout at the next bus stop over. Mortars, machine guns, tracer fire, flares and then, just for good measure, an A-10 Warthog fighter plane. This plane sounds like a mammoth buzz-saw in the air when it rips up the landscape with bullets.


Check out Palkot's amazing reporting in this video clip from "Special Report with Brit Hume, including this quote from an inspiring Marine Colonel who talks about why he re-enlisted and what Operation Mountain Lion means to him:



Col. Nicholson: [The Taliban is] about to experience the same fear in their hearts they tried to inflict upon Americans.

Trauma baby Aaron Brown: Who's crying now?

Aaron Brown tells JS Online's Tim Cuprisin that he's either too traumatized to talk about his separation from CNN, or, more likely, he's saving it all up to inflict some traumatizing of his own in a tell-all:

He's not ready to talk about CNN's "NewsNight," program, launched in November 2001 as an innovative hour combining a cracking "whip" of reports from correspondents around the world, meaty interviews, a glance at the next day's newspapers and Brown's own thoughtful, literate style.

"I was very proud of the program," is about all he'll say . . . for now.

Yes, our boy Aaron definitely has something up the sleeve of his tasteful golf shirt. The whole interview smells like the beginning of a joke:

CNN prez Jon Klein walks into a Duane Reade and says to the pharmacist: "What do you have for burning ears?"

Slate jumps on the what-if bandwagon, but with a bash-FNC twist

Slate's Josh Levin rips off TCG's concept of another reporter behind the White House press podium but adds a singularly unoriginal twist: bashing Fox News by envisioning Bill O'Reilly as WH spokesman:


Q: According to USA Today, the president's approval ratings …

MR. O'REILLY: I have access to secret prisons, OK, secret prisons that are even more secret than those ones in Bulgaria that you think are secret. And these are the kind of places where you have to check the collected works of Karl Marx at the door, because the only ideologue you'll be hanging out with is Helen Thomas.

Q: When will you tell us what you did to Helen?

(CROSS TALK. TASERS.)

MR. O'REILLY: And finally tonight, the mail.

Got a letter here from John Dickerson in Washington, D.C.: "The president has looked back before 9/11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9/11, what would his biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons has he learned from it?"

Hey, Mr. Dickerson, we're running out of time so I have just two words for you: Shut up.

60 Minutes adds Cooper: Geritol with a triple-espresso chaser

The New York Post reports this morning that CNN's Anderson Cooper will apparently be providing a hipness transfusion to the (dignified or doddering, depending on your POV) "60 Minutes":


CNN's Anderson Cooper will become a contributor to "60 Minutes" under a deal he's hammering out with CBS.

Cooper will stay at CNN as the host of "Anderson Cooper 360" and will contribute occasional reports to "60 Minutes" - which will also air on Cooper's show.

It will be the second time the networks have shared on-air talent. Cooper's CNN stablemate, Christiane Amanpour, contributed to "60 Minutes" for several years.

Reps for CBS and CNN would neither confirm nor deny the deal.

Cooper, who turns 39 in June, would be the youngest "60 Minutes" contributor by far.

He would also add another fresh face to the venerable newsmagazine. Katie Couric, who's jumping to CBS to anchor the "CBS Evening News," will also get a "60 Minutes" slot.

Who wants their HDTV?

I know this question's been asked before but I'll ask it again: Why isn't cable news in High Definition yet? This blogger at HD Beat laments:

Why hasn't one cable news station switched over to high definition yet? It seems that the target demographic of these sets are also the sameones that watch cable news stations. Plus, the format of the programs would allow more information to be displayed on the screen, but here lies the problem.

Ever watch ESPN's SportsCenter in high-def? Course you have. The picture is beautiful but there is nothing extra that the HDTV format gives you. When they display stats on the screen you can see that they extend right to the spot that a 4:3 TV ends. ESPN can't give you more info just because you have a HDTV. They would be alienating the non-HD owners.

This has to be the same reason that cable stations have not gone high-def yet. They can give you a great picture but nothing more. Moreover, these stations rely on a lot of cameras that are not in the studio to give you most of their programming so there would be a good amount of non-HD content on the station.

Move over, Neil Young

So Neil Young's song "Let's Impeach the President" is getting a lot of cable news coverage. Big deal. Young's an artist: he's supposed to be provocative, he's not doing it with taxpayer funds, he's not setting flags on fire. And I'm pretty sure President Bush isn't exactly weeping into his O'Douls over it, either. And as Stephen Colbert pointed out the other night, "Cinnamon Girl" rocks so hard that after recording that song, Young pretty much has license to do anything he wants with the rest of his life. So let's move on to a much groovier song, in my estimation: The Hispanic Institute's "Let's Censure Lou Dobbs"!

Okay, it's not a song, but if there were any justice, it would be a real chart-topper! From the Houston Chronicle:

Gus West, a member of the Board of Directors of The Hispanic Institute said, "We are specifically calling upon the management of CNN to censure Mr. Dobbs because it is obvious CNN is allowing him to sacrifice the notion of objective and balanced reporting for sensationalism and ratings increases. At a time when a balanced and thoughtful debate is required to address the security of our borders, and how we deal with individuals that come to this country seeking a better life, Mr. Dobbs's inflammatory rhetoric does not contribute to a solution."

And from the Institute's release, a question posed to Mr. Dobbs:

To paraphrase Joseph Lash, "Have you no sense of decency sir? At long last have you no sense of decency!"

Right on! I'm holding up a lighter right now.

Tucker Carlson responds

Responding to yesterday's post, Tucker Carlson tells TCG via email that "no 'Republican activist' ever poured a drink on my head."

The New York Post had a slightly different report at the time of the alleged incident: that a female Republican operative threw her glass of wine in Carlson's face after Carlson had a disagreement with her boss. TCG concedes that, stylistically, pouring your drink over someone's head and throwing your drink in someone's face are two different things. Having a drink poured over your head is humiliating, while getting wine dashed in your face at least has some racy flair to it, like a scene in "Dangerous Liasons," or whatever.

At any rate, TCG wasn't there when it happened, though she heard about it from a reliable source at the time. She's sorry if she got her drink-pouring and drink-flinging confused. Readers can decide for themselves if Tucker Carlson deserved, or even experienced at all, any kind of angry contact with someone else's alcohol, though in cases like this, TCG likes to quote Clint Eastwood in "Unforgiven": "We all have it coming, kid."

Cuprisin on Fox News Sunday host Wallace: Thomas, Gregory can breathe sigh of relief

In the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel,Tim Cuprisin writes that FNC host Chris Wallace says he's happy behind the news desk:

"I figure within about 10 minutes [behind the WH press podium] I would get into a fight with Helen Thomas or David Gregory and tell 'em where to stick it, and that would be the beginning and end of my career," Wallace jokes. "As someone who spent six years in the briefing room on the other side of the podium as a reporter, that's the last thing I'd want to do."

Wallace seems pretty satisfied hosting "Fox News Sunday," which marks its 10th anniversary this weekend. The program - which airs at 9 a.m. Sundays on Channel 6, with a 5 p.m. Fox News Channel repeat - is a bit different since reporter Wallace replaced pundit Snow at the end of 2003.

"I'm more of an interviewer, you know, and maybe it's something from the genes, but I think I'm a pretty tough interviewer. And the only instructions I've been given by (Fox News czar) Roger Ailes, from the very first day, were just to treat everybody the same," he says. "I think I have."

Fox News chief Ailes quietly honors VN vet's memory

Tucked away in the little Warren, OH Tribune-Chronicle is this really nice item about a memorial fund set up by FNC chief Roger Ailes to honor the memory of a friend and Vietnam veteran:

His tragic death occurred 40 years ago, but the memory of U.S. Navy veteran Douglas M. Webster has continued to thrive locally and nationally.

A memorial fund has been established in honor of Webster, and his sacrifices in Vietnam were recognized recently in the 80th annual In Memory Day in Washington, D.C.

Webster, a 1960 graduate of Warren G. Harding High School, died Dec. 5, 1965, while on a tour of duty aboard the USS Ticonderoga.

His stepbrother, Michael Rawl of Delaware, said Webster’s A-4 Skyhawk was being pushed out onto the aircraft carrier elevator when the ship executed a turn. The Skyhawk, with Webster inside, fell off the side of the ship into very deep water off the coast of Yokosuka, Japan.

...Rawl and Roger Ailes, who was friends with Webster and is also founder of the Fox News Network, recently created a memorial fund in his name that is maintained by the Community Fund of the Mahoning Valley. The fund helps young people to develop personal ethics and physical strength through participation in the YMCA and athletics.

...In May 1998, Webster’s life was highlighted in one of two segments of a Fox News special called ‘‘Washington Classified: Too Many Secrets."

As the daughter of a Vietnam vet fighter pilot, I can tell you that honors like this are still too few and far between for these servicemen; kudos to Roger Ailes for quietly honoring the memory of an outstanding American.

Tony Snow: the Reverse Lookism begins

Lacking any legitimate criticism, the pedigreed media haters are piling on Tony Snow for being born good-looking. The nerve of that guy, not having the right bad genes! The MSM is of course rightly intolerant of bias on the grounds of race, gender, or disability...but if you're exceptionally abled, like Tony is, in the looks and brains department and about to go to work for the wrong kind of (Republican) White House? Well, that kind of discrimination is A-OK with them. As Rebecca Dana writes in the New York Observer, the Houston Chronicle's Julie Mason is leading the how-dare-he-be-hot charge:

“It’s sort of the obvious elevation of style over substance,” said Julie Mason, a White House correspondent for the Houston Chronicle. “Not that he doesn’t have substance, but they do seem to be going with flash over someone who’s a little wonkier. Usually that’s done in a more sleight-of-hand, subtext way, not like, ‘Here’s a guy with great hair.’”

...Great hair—thick, fluffy, a graying Ken doll’s hair—is just one of Mr. Snow’s broadcast virtues. A former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush and a popular radio host, he is full of Southern charm and colorful language.

Mason has just created a new definition in the media-bias dictionary: saying that someone has "style over substance" is another way of saying "acceptable discrimination."

Also, apparently, "charm and a way with words" is now synonymous with "unfair advantage." So, fair is unfair and unfair is fair. Make sense to you? Nope, not to me either...but that's why bias was invented: to arbitrarily excuse injustice.

Van Susteren: FNC won't pull punches with Snow

"On The Record" host Greta Van Susteren blogs that anyone expecting FNC to go easy on Tony Snow in his new job as White House spokesman is going to be rapidly disabused of that notion:


...we at FOX News now have a new challenge. In doing our jobs, we must be sure that we are not swayed by friendship and must develop a professional — and perhaps sometimes adversarial — relationship with Tony. His job is very important to both the president and the American people — he can't pull punches and neither can we. Bottom line: We must all be smart about doing our jobs, which means open, thorough and fair. Our job for the American people is to ask questions of our White House and get answers.

It's officially Snowing

Fox News Channel has just confirmed that Tony Snow will be named the next White House press secretary. The formal announcement will be made at the WH on Wednesday morning and Tony is expected to be in attendance. Congrats and good luck, Tony!

NY Sun on publishing-powerhouse Fox News

The New York Sun has a great piece by Gary Shapiro this morning on the intellectual powerhouse that is FNC's stable of best-selling authors. And "Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade draws a very cool sports metaphor to FNC's success:

Fred Barnes, Eric Burns, Neil Cavuto, John Gibson, E.D. Hill, Colonel David Hunt, Brian Kilmeade, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Bill O'Reilly, Bill Sammon, and Eric Shawn - the list sounds like a network schedule. But these are just some of the Fox News hosts, correspondents, or analysts who have recently published books. People often bandy about terms like "corporate synergy." The power of the Fox News brand may show where - and how - it's actually working.

The co-host of "Fox and Friends," Mr. Kilmeade, said he talked about his book, "The Games Do Count: America's Best and Brightest on the Power of Sports" (ReganBooks), on his own show when it first came out, and the book was given away as a trivia prize as well. He was also on air on Mr. O'Reilly's and Mr. Cavuto's shows to talk about his book. ReganBooks held a party for him at one of the studios at Fox.

As authors, cable TV hosts, analysts, and correspondents have more potential marketing reach than ordinary authors, because they have a built-in "platform" for promoting their books. "They are on TV night after night, and nothing sells books like massive television exposure," said a book agent from Janklow & Nesbit, Eric Simonoff, who represents Mr. O'Reilly and Colonel Hunt...

...Mr. Kilmeade said that when he was on book tour, a lot of people were fascinated by how Fox came out of nowhere. "They want to know how we did it." He said he felt a little like the 1969 Mets, who were "built to win but a lot of people were slow to realize it."

Tucker Carlson: I've urinated out of a lot of windows

Just when you thought MSNBC's Tucker Carlson couldn't get any more insufferable, he says this in the middle of an all-around intellectually-incoherent debate with Newsweek writer Susannah Meadows (you'll need a Tylenol or a Valium if you actually watch the video, they're both so irritating):

CARLSON [Commenting on Meadows' statement that the suspects in the Duke investigation have been seen urinating out of windows]: I've urinated out of a lot of windows. I did it the other day...it doesn't make me a rapist...

No, of course not. It makes him in-your-face rude and kind of inappropriately weird for talking about it on national television, though. Of course, we're talking about a guy who famously had a drink poured over his head in a bar in Washington some years back by an Republican party activist who could think of no better way to express her deeply-felt conviction that Tucker Carlson was a jerk.

This whole Duke this is really bringing out the Angry Tucker. Watching "The Situation" every night is like watching "Nancy Grace" turned inside-out: in the same way that Grace has already convicted the Duke lacrosse players, Carlson's already exonerated them. Night after night after night, Tucker and Grace are more warring attorneys than journalists. But, rightly so, the ratings reflect that. So if CNN and MSNBC don't mind activist faux-journalism, them keep knocking yourselves out, y'all, right on deeper into the ratings gutter.

Looks like Snow

It's looking more and more like Tony Snow is going to say yes to the WH spokesman job... In Time this morning:

The overture to Snow, a sax player who once taught physics in Kenya, was one of the first decisions by White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten after he was named to the job last month. He took Counselor Dan Bartlett into his confidence, and Bartlett reached out to Snow. White House officials said Bolten has made communications a priority and has calculated that it is in the President’s interest to engage reporters.

The appointment could be expected to buy the White House at least temporary good will with the White House press corps. White House aides have generally been excited by the idea and view it as a breath of fresh air under Bolten, although some wonder whether a fiery, strong personality like Snow would stick to scrupulously scripted talking points on delicate subjects like Iran.

Snow was a guest on "The O’Reilly Factor" on Fox News last week and said: "You got to realize the press secretary not only has to answer questions, but you got to be an advocate for the people asking them when it comes to, you know, getting seats on the plane and doing that. It's a very interesting hybrid job. So you can make enemies for life. What you have to do is you have to figure out to work with them. And you've also got to make sure that you got enough information at hand."

Saying he was concerned about the loss of family time and the "massive cut in pay," he added: "The up side is that for somebody like me who's been a pundit for many years, you sit around and you think about the way the world should be," Snow continued. "You become part of something that's very rare, which is an inner White House circle, where you've got to make decisions. So there is something that has a sort of perverse attraction, which is it's a meaty, substantive job with real responsibilities."

TCG was lucky enough to meet Tony Snow a couple of years ago and, he was nice enough to share his thoughts on the finer points of rock music including Guns n' Roses and AC/DC...looks like the White House is about to get a whole lot hipper.

Wall Street Journal: FNC in position of strength with cable and satellite operators

Cool article in The Wall Street Journal (subscription) this morning on FNC's ever-increasing dominance--and self-confidence--in the cable biz:

IT'S FOX NEWS CHANNEL'S 10th anniversary this October. But the cable network doesn't want a diamond bauble to commemorate the occasion. It wants cold, hard cash -- and plenty of it.

Fox News executives well remember their early days, when the channel got little respect and was in the shadow of Time Warner Inc.'s CNN. While it blew by its rival almost 4 1/2 years ago in the ratings, it still trails them in one key area -- distribution fees paid by cable and satellite operators.

On that score, the News Corp.-owned channel is now looking to overtake CNN and just about every other cable channel, aiming to triple the fees it charges them to carry the channel. It wants an increase to $1 dollar per month per subscriber, from the 25 cent to 35 cent subscriber fee the network currently earns. CNN gets an average of about 50 cents per subscriber; MSNBC takes in between 30 and 35 cents.

"We're in the elite group," says Tim Carry, vice president of affiliate sales for Fox News. "We have a significant advantage over 90% of the industry, yet over the last 10 years we've been paid as if we're at the bottom."

....Fox News has more viewers than any other cable news channel with a prime-time audience of about 1.5 million viewers this year, according to Nielsen Media Research. CNN's prime-time audience this year is about 700,000 viewers while MSNBC has been averaging 350,000 viewers. Fox News's ratings are high enough to make it a top-10 cable network.

Fox News is banking that it is now one of the handful of channels which can play hardball with cable and satellite operators if negotiations stall. Like Viacom Inc.'s Nickelodeon and Disney's ESPN, Fox News has rabid fans who would howl if it wasn't part of their basic cable package. Its mix of news and talk has struck a chord with conservative viewers.

I take issue, however, with the WSJ's characterization of FNC's fans as "conservative." Most people I know who dig FNC over all the other cable newsers are, like TCG herself, straight down the middle, politically, and veering to the right or to the left on certain issues. And that's what makes us "rabid fans," I think; we're faithful to FNC because it's the only cable news channel that reports and gets out of the way to let us decide.

FNC's Dana Lewis in Chernobyl: Bearing witness to a living disaster

FNC reporter Dana Lewis' reporting from Chernobyl, Ukraine is just heartwrenching and stunning. He is a brave man to bear witness to the physical and emotional suffering of the living and the dead at the site of the world's worst nuclear power disaster. Lewis will be reporting on this story on Fox News throughout the day today and Wednesday, and tonight on "Special Report with Brit Hume" Lewis will present more on the enduring human toll of the disaster, 20 years on. Lewis has footage of the 18-mile area around Chernobyl that apparently looks more like a war zone than anything, but considering that firefighters, and Soviet soldiers, and other workers were forced by the government to shovel radioactive waste after the accident, I guess you could call it a war zone, complete with crimes against humanity. Check out Lewis' Reporter's Notebook; he talks to survivors and raises some scary questions.

Nearby there is a graveyard of vehicles used in the Chernobyl catastrophe: 2,000 helicopters and fire trucks and even the buses that evacuated and relocated some 200 thousand people.

The first thing you notice in that graveyard is all the hoods are open. Look closer and the engines are gone. The security guard says there have been a lot of looters, but the local administration has also been selling off the contaminated engines. Where are they now? No one knows.

Firefighter Anatoly Zakharov's truck is likely there in that field. Of the 28 firefighters first on the scene with him that morning in 1986, 12 of them are dead.

Today Zakharov shows us scars on his leg from radiation burns, his knee where a cancerous tumor was recently removed and says he spends up to a month in hospital every year getting blood transfusions and bone marrow transplants.

"Just before my friends died, they all said the same thing: their bones hurt and it hurt just to move." Zakharov said. "That's how I feel now."

FNC's Rick Leventhal in Baghdad: Mortars in broad daylight edition

FNC reporter Rick Leventhal, whom I have had tremendous respect for on many levels since his reporting from Ground Zero on 9-11 and in his ensuing embedment with the Marines during Operation Iraqi Freedom (his back-and-forth with Shep Smith about the indignities of life in the desert just wrapped it all up with a bow for me--to keep your perspective and sense of humor in, quite literally, the middle of a war was incredibly impressive) is back in Baghdad. And he's bringing his same cool perspective, right in the belly of the insurgents' 24/7 artillery party. Check out his latest reporter's notebook:

We often hear gunfire outside the Baghdad bureau, usually at night. Sometimes it's just a shot or two, other times it lasts for 20 or 30 seconds — multiple rounds from a heavy weapon.

We also hear explosions, but usually just one at a time, far enough away that they just sound like muffled booms.

This morning though, I was up early, and at around 8 a.m., I heard a rapid succession of blasts that sounded closer than usual. This was no car bomb or roadside IED, I decided. They were multiple explosions in a short period of time, perhaps within ten seconds.

I scanned the horizon but saw no signs of smoke or fire, and heard no sirens or calls for help. Perhaps it wasn't an attack? Perhaps it wasn't as close as I'd thought?

A couple of hours later, in the office, I found out what happened. It was apparently a rocket or mortar attack that fell just short of one of the high concrete walls ringing the Green Zone, where many U.S. and coalition forces, diplomats, contractors and top Iraqi politicians live and work.

There were three blasts in the street, killing seven Iraqi civilians and wounding eight others. Three of the people hurt worked at the Iraqi Defense Ministry nearby.

There were eight other mortars or rockets that apparently exploded at the same time on the other side of the Tigris River, that hit no targets and hurt no one. These, I think, were what I heard.

Who is firing mortars or rockets in broad daylight? I wondered. Why didn't anyone see them, or if they did, why didn't anyone do anything to stop them? Unfortunately, this kind of thing is happening all too often here.

Perhaps with the new government taking shape, a new attitude and strength will infuse the powers that be, and the people on the street. Maybe it's the beginning of the end for the insurgents and terrorists disrupting daily life here. That's what a lot of people are hoping.

FNC's Palkot: Operation Mountain Lion "the roughest embedment I've ever been on"

FNC reporter Greg Palkot was on "Fox & Friends" this morning talking about his recent embedment in Afghanistan, and all I can say is that Palkot (above, negotiating the terrain with the Marines during "Operation Mountain Lion") is one tough son of a gun:

PALKOT: I have been on many, many military embedments for Fox News in the last five years since Sept. 11th, but I can say without reservation that I am just back from the roughest embedment I have ever been on... Osama bin Laden has been known to frequent the mountains and the caves there...The terrain [the marines] are dealing with, 100-pound packs, getting over that terrain, just as difficult. The guys had weapons on their backs. We had TV gear on our backs, so we felt their pain.

And anytime your nine-to-five includes identifying and keeping very close track of several different kinds of gunfire and explosions that are happening in your personal space, well, then you are not just tough but awesomely cool under pressure: check out this bit of Palkot's televised reporting from on the ground in Afghanistan:

PALKOT: Behind me, you're hearing gunfire, very certainly could be insurgent elements here in this Kunar province, we're near one of the villages thought to be harboring many, many terrorists. We've been seeing tracer fire over the hillside here. You can catch that. Also an illumination flare could be sent up by either side to try to pinpoint, try to find the people on the ground here, that is the terrorists, as well as the marines themselves."

And that, as they say, is not the half of it: witness Greg's most recent "Operation Mountain Lion" reporter's notebook:

The Chinook arrives, and we trundle out. The officer barks at us to move faster. Not easy when you're carrying 80-plus pounds. Then, as we stand beneath the whirring chopper blades, we're turned around and told to go back. Our bird has sprung a gas leak. We'll have to find another. Oh boy, that's a great start.

Several other choppers come and go before ours arrives and we pile in. It's about 1:30 a.m. now. Noisy. Crowded. Dark. We only have to travel a few minutes and a few miles, but it's over tall mountains. I look ahead and I can see through the front windshield. It's an incredible sight. The chopper appears ready to crash head-on into the side of one precipice after another, only to veer away at the last moment. It's disorienting, and after watching this for about five minutes, I stop.

We finally stop at our drop-off point. It's the wrong one, but we'll go with it. I was informed by Lt. Desantis, the Commander of D.O. Platoon, that we'd have to hike about 150 feet away and wait a bit. That's when I realized that nothing would be quite as fluid as it had been presented. We marched up sharp sand-shifting ground — altitude about 9,000 feet — as fast as we can...

Greg Palkot, bringing it.

TV Week: And the biggest dog on the TV news porch is...

Fox News chief Roger Ailes is named the most powerful person in the TV news biz by TV Week. And where's CNN's Jon Klein and Jim Walton? Way, way down at the bottom of the list, at number 10, right below Meredith Vieira, at number 9. Ouch. Read more of Michele Greppi's piece, where she also raps yappy poodle Lou Dobbs for his lack of brio.

Why he was chosen: Roger Ailes is the man with the cash-green thumb that makes him a favorite go-to guy of Rupert Murdoch. He's driven and inventive and demands the same of those who work for him, whether at Fox News or the Fox Television Stations Group-the latter a challenge that led to the conception in February of a new broadcast network, MyNetworkTV, in order to program and finance the programming of prime time on the Fox-owned stations that will lose UPN affiliation this fall.

He's the only executive on this list whose news division revenues are regularly highlighted and headlined in the parent company's earnings reports. For the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2005, Fox News Channel advertising growth helped drive up News Corp.'s cable network division 15 percent.

He's the only executive on this list whose programming claims 10 out of the Top 10 spots in the weekly ratings competition. Bill O'Reilly's show is now just one of six Fox News programs that cracked the million-viewer mark for first quarter 2006. And young Shepard Smith, who won many new fans with his reporting on Hurricane Katrina, is the Fox talent most likely to inspire a bidding war.

The No. 1 cable news network is on track to rack up $500 million in ad revenue for the fiscal year-a whopping 20 percent over last year. Fox News Radio has expanded dramatically since it launched two years ago.

Foxnews.com has evolved into a fast-growing Web site with traffic increasing by double-digit leaps from month to month. Its users tend to visit more often and linger longer than users of the competition's news Web sites.

Fox News Channel has made it official that it is seeking a $1 per-subscriber fee as it renegotiates 10-year-old carriage agreements with cable operators who distribute the channel to some 88 million subscribers nationwide.

Fox News Channel's status as the home of must-see TV in the cable news world presumably will boost the chances of getting the requisite cable carriage to finally launch the digital business news channel that Mr. Murdoch wants, which could become a reality in late 2006 or 2007.

Like CNN, Fox News Channel has showed double-digit losses of viewers in the target news demo of 25 to 54, but Fox News had more viewers to lose.

Last year's rank: 3

Fox & Friends Weekend: The immigration debate continues

Mark Finkelstein, my favorite poster on the awesome anti-media-bias Newsbusters.org site, writes a great synopsis of a spirited immigration debate between Ellen Ratner and Jim Pinkerton on "Fox & Friends Weekend" this morning especially for all you maniacs who were busy sleeping it off when it aired. (And of course, last but certainly not least, I have to add: Welcome back, Kiran!)

The opening topic on today's 'Long & the Short of It' segment on Fox & Friends Weekend dealt with Howard Dean's recent claim that job # 1 in his view is tougher border security.

Pinkerton smelled politics, describing Dean as "somebody who is reading the polls. . . I know for a fact Americans by a majority of three or four to one are in favor of tighter border security. So I think Dean is, as it were, getting on the right train going the right direction about tougher border security. I hope he can now bring along Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi."

Ratner seemed to share Pinkerton's take: "Look, everybody will talk about tougher border security. That's what people want to talk about now. Whether it can be accomplished is a whole other issue but it will be a campaign issue in 2006."

That's when Pinkerton baited his hook. Addressing host Kiran Chetry [whose beautiful back-from-maternity-leave photo I am legally obliged to display], he slyly said:

"Kiran, in the last month or so Ellen has done a terrible job representing the far left on this immigration issue which proves to me how powerful it is. The old issue was unlimited border let everyone in. The new issue is 'get tough, build a wall'. We are getting there. I sense enormous progress. Politics do work."

Ratner went for the bait like a ravenous bluefish hitting a, well, whatever it is they hit when they're running in Long Island Sound.

"I'm in favor of open immigration, Jim!" she exclaimed. OK, then, Ellen, your far-left credentials have been renewed - at least for the time being.

Live from New York, it's Saturday Night...I mean, Lou Dobbs Tonight

Regular viewers of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" know that there's an ongoing and unfunny, tired spoof of the "O'Reilly Factor" with the ordinarily very funny Darrell Hammond (in the pic at left) as O'Reilly. A big part of every recurring sketch is viewer mail that Hammond/"O'Reilly" reads at the end of each sketch; the "mail" is always stuff like "Dear Bill, You are the all-knowing God of my universe and everyone else's universe. In all directions of time, now and forever. Anyone who says otherwise should be violently murdered. Keep up the good work! Signed, Phil from Indiana." Yeah, it was kind of halfway funny the first time SNL did it, and by that I mean that pretty much everybody can and should laugh at themselves a little bit, especially public figures, and O'Reilly seems to have a good sense of humor, so no harm, no foul, right? Except now SNL is doing the same fake, over the top O'Reilly mail bit practically every weekend, and it's just dumb and not funny, and more important, bears to relation in reality to the fan mail that the real O'Reilly reads on his show.

Because, as we all know, nobody would ever read fan mail like that on a real cable news show. Right, Lou Dobbs?

DOBBS: Taking a look now at your thoughts....Joe in New York [writes:] "Fire Lou Dobbs? The people advocating this are a bunch of pusillanimous cowards. Hell, not only should Lou not be fired , he should get a raise and a promotion for the great job he is doing. His program should be mandatory for all aliens, legal and illegal. They should have to quote him verbatim as a prerequisite to stay in the country. Keep up the great job you're doing. Don't give an inch. We're all behind you. Lou."

I promise you, I, nor any member of my family wrote that.

As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.

Tina Fey, we're all waiting for SNL's next big sendup: Lou Dobbs. I totally see Chris Parnell as Dobbs in a blonde wig. Well?

And now, introducing the next White House spokesperson....

Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall's having some trouble ginning up his usual slash-and-burn venom for all things Fox News, asking lamely re the possible Tony Snow-to-the-WH move: "Why not just have Hannity do it?"

I'm sorry (well, actually I'm not) that Marshall can't quite get his heavy-breathing hate up to the desired level. But here's my question: who would suit the haters in the role of WH press secretary? Someone who's never had a job in his or her life before ascending to the podium in the briefing room?

Ha ha. Silly question. Of course the Josh Marshalls of the world don't want that. They just want NBC's David Gregory in the position. Now that would suit them fine. Can you imagine?

HELEN THOMAS: David, can you tell us why the President is such an %#$%@#%?

DAVID GREGORY: Thanks for that excellent question, Helen. I just spoke to him in the Oval and I can confirm that he is, indeed, a world-class %#$%@#%. To tell you exactly why would take more time than we have here today. Next question?

Paula Zahn, multitasking morality and salaciousness

Fox News "Special Report with Brit Hume" contributor and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer (who TCG personally thinks is one of the smartest people alive) made a great point about a possible double standard in rape cases, vis a vis the Duke rape investigation: is it fair to name the accused and not the accuser? Krauthammer said that the rules the media hews to today were made when the country was a very different place, when the culture was incredibly different and not as understanding and sympathetic to victims of sexual assault, and given that the world has changed, it might be a good idea to revisit the rule that the accused are always named, but never the accuser.

The bottom line is that double standard or no double standard in the media's handling of rape cases, the cases will always get the lion's share of press attention for one reason: they allow certain elements of the MSM to simultaneously dictate morality and revel in salaciousness at the same time. Like, oh, I don't know, say...Public Nitwit Number One, CNN's Paula Zahn, asking Jesse Jackson why the Duke accuser had such an icky job that may have put her in harm's way:

ZAHN: No one doubts your generosity in wanting to send this young woman through schools. But didn't she have options? Couldn't she have been a bus driver? Couldn't she have been a waitress? Weren't there other ways to make a living?

Aren't reporters like Zahn supposed to know that you can make a ton more money stripping than with waitressing or bus driving? Say, you know how many people suspect that a lot of prominent reporters are clueless, snotty, elitist, out-of-touch dummies who have no idea what many ordinary people go through in the course of a life without money for an education or for daycare? Well, those many people are right.

FBI vs. Jack Anderson's angry memory: decision, Anderson

So the FBI's getting some resistance in their quest to go through late legendary investigative reporter Jack Anderson's papers; Anderson's family is saying no way. This is no surprise, and the FBI just didn't think things through before making such an unnecessary and invasive request. That is, Jack Anderson's memory is still alive; he's an icon, and icons stay with us. The FBI might as well be fighting Anderson himself for his papers. Legends are legends because they have a following, and Anderson's family will honor that following by keeping the press free, which is what Anderson spent his life fighting for--and in a way, still is.

Tony Snow: You could fit all of Keith Olbermann's friends in a phone booth

Johnny Dollar has the latest audio from Tony Snow on the White House spokesman position and on remembering Keith Olbermann back in the day...when he worked at Fox and at ESPN. Oh, and Tony has some good laughs at the blue bloggers' frenzied cheap shots...check it out!