First there was Terry Moran’s Twitter. Yesterday, TMZ brought us audio. And here, for your masturbation purposes, is videographic footage of Barack Obama calling ex-college student Kanye West a “jackass” for what he did during that “perfectly nice woman”’s music video award speech, on teevee. Ben Smith found this clip first and posted it, but then, OH WHAT HAPPENED HERE hmm?: “UPDATE: Not so much: Wiser heads than mine at POLITICO made the call to take down the video of the ‘jackass’ moment. Sorry about the tease if you missed it.” Fortunately CNN’s Rick Sanchez stole it just in time! So… when do we get to see a video of Obama calling Jim VandeHei and John Harris “kiss-asses”? [YouTube, Ben Smith]

Yes yes, the War in Iraq is now five years old and has reached 4,000 American deaths. There’s no real plan for reconciliation between the government and the insurgents and various Terrorists, so it’s pretty much stalled forever. In other words, Iraq is super boring and not of interest to anyone. The media knows this, too! According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, “Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer.” Well maybe if anything *cool* were going on over there, like COWBOYS/INJUNS or COUPS or PASSIONATE SEX or SPACE LASER FIGHTS, they might cover it more. MORE »