It’s all Palin material out there, friends, sorry. Thousands of available Caribou Barbie blog items, swirling in the RSS feeds, looking for capture. This one: is the Newsweek cover here super sexist, as Sarah Palin claims it to be? Kind of, yes! It’s odd for Newsweek to just steal the leggiest insert photo from an old issue of Runner’s World and slap it on their cover. It doesn’t really “fit.” Eh, Newsweek just wants outraged links, we suppose. Sorry.

Here is one of the straight-up most unethical things ever, in journalism: Newsweek has been circulating this invitation to a forum on climate change and energy policy. The objective news magazine will co-sponsor and co-host this event with the actual manifestation of Big Oil, the American Petroleum Institute. In the Capitol! GOODNESS. [Sexy Oil Party Invite!]

Mark Sanford reviewed Ayn Rand (like as a human?) for Newsweek. This is a thing that happened! Anyway, Mark Sanford really did not think this whole thing out, publishing his close reading masterwork in Newsweek, as this essay has all the makings of a winner of The Ayn Rand Institute’s annual 8th to 10th grade Anthem essay contest! Grand prize = $85,000, and plus your name and high school gets posted on the Ayn Rand fansite, which will become hilarious for your friends by 11th grade at the very latest. Anyway, see if you can tell which conjectures came from Mark Sanford’s Newsweek essay and which came from the 2009 Anthem contest winner from “Mariemont High School, Cincinnati, OH, USA.” As always, grand prize is an “iPhone,” except the “i” is capitalized and shit because RIGHTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL SDLFJSLDK. MORE »

Oh man, Newsweek. We were all prepared to just ignore this, to make it die, because JESUS, but the copy editors closed the deal nicely with this subhed: “Peace Partners: Bush and Obama could play good-cop, bad-cop with Israel.” OH COME ON. Fine, here’s a quick mockery of your broke magazine’s pornographic web-dung. MORE »

Look, our old friend Josh Fruhlinger has written a thing for “legitimate publication” Newsweek! It is a close reading of a zit ad of some sort, maybe? Click the clicky, comment generously, buy everything advertised everywhere on the site, and maybe he will write more things about zits. At the very least, he may be able to buy his wife and cat back from the pawn shop. [The Human Condition]

Here’s some funny-in-retrospect advice to Hillary Clinton from Sarah Palin! She was at some conference thing in March 2008, five months away from McCain’s doomed decision to make her his running mate, when Karen Breslau of Newsweek asked her about Hillary getting beat up in the primary battle against Obama. MORE »

Sprightly silver-painted ex-Newsweek hobbit Richard Wolffe, who is also on the teevee sometimes, talking about politics, has released a new book titled Renegade: The Making of a President. It is supposedly a well-reported account of Life with Obama during the 2008 election, and it’s in bookstores today, so be sure to… not buy it and just spend a few minutes googling around for the key “cocktail party conversation” excerpts! Here’s one: Obama called Bill Clinton a liar! More: Barack and Michelle Obama basically hated each other until recently! MORE: Obama had wanted Hillary for Secretary of State for like 500 years! Thank you for the edifying pornography, Richard Wolffe! Meh. BUT WAIT… What hilarious things did Joe Biden do all the time? MORE »

Michael Kinsley, the dignified journalist and dinner companion to David Denby, starts his review of the new Newsweek reboot with this: “Having recently been dumped by Time, I naturally had great hopes for this week’s much-anticipated makeover of Newsweek.” And 2,000 annoying words later — including a long bit about masturbating to a large photograph of the homophobic idiot Miss California — he closes with this: “Don’t forget to cancel your subscription to Time while you’re at it.” MORE »

Print journalism and punditry are officially dead, because Richard Wolffe killed them. He has quit his job at Newsweek and will go work for Public Strategies, the PR outfit helmed by Dan Bartlett that also employs our beloved sad cowboy Mark McKinnon. Basically, any journalist who is sufficiently competent to pen a press release is fleeing to PR now because there are no news/media jobs of any sort left anymore, except at Wonkette, the NAMBLA house blog. [Austin Business Journal]

• EVERYONE CHUG THIS CUP OF SADNESS: Here’s a great and brilliant article from the new Atlantic about how the United States is a banana republic after years of terrible policies and stuff. It is probably too long for “blog readers” so just read a paragraph or two every night before sleep and someday you’ll finish! Also, Newsweek has a cover story about how Paul Krugman hates Obama but remains LOYAL for he is the king, after all. It includes a very funny picture of Krugman complaining about the rain. [Atlantic, Newsweek]

• 56% OF AMERICANS ARE SOCIALIST COMMIE MARX-MAOIST STALINFURRIES: Hey looky here, the Newsweek magazine says that 56% of Americans support “nationalizing large banks at risk of failing,” while only 29% support the Responsible Centrist option of giving crappy insolvent banks run by actual hell demons all the money they want forever, on their own terms. Who knew that a majority of Americans are in favor of gay abortions and giving AIDS to our children? [Newsweek]