Hey, folks, have you checked your local listings? Big press conference tonight! You know what that means, right? Big bitching from the White House Press Corps this afternoon! Nobody should be surprised by this.

Print reporters in the White House press corps are seething at perceived slights against them by President Obama and his team. Many print journalists see their role being diminished as Obama and his aides seem to lavish attention on television anchors and reporters and on liberal bloggers, and this is raising the adversarial tone at the daily briefings of Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Got that, Robert Gibbs? You are going to get an increased adversarial tone from the press corps if you don't watch it! Is it because the White House has been obfuscating (on White House visitors), breaking promises (on Don't Ask Don't Tell), struggling to hold the line on major policy (health care, energy), or dodging key issues (TARP transparency)? No! Because you see, those would all be GOOD reasons to get adversarial with the White House. Instead, the adversity is motivated by the same things that have traditionally motivated the White House Press Corps: status and vanity.

Oh, and this is not a new story, not at all! These same criticisms were levied against the Obama administration way, way back during the campaign! In January 2008, the press corps were bitching, through able-bodied mouthpiece Howard Kurtz, that they weren't doing enough to "court" the reporters. HOW CAN REPORTERS LEARN TO LOVE OBAMA IF HE DOESN'T EVEN TRY TO WIN THE NEWS CYCLE? And who can forget the elegant laments of high-toned ass Dean Reynolds, who literally complained because the campaign was not being nice to him?

Guess what, the press has not managed to change the Obama press operation in all that time. What's changed instead is the Magical Press Room Protocols, the Arcane Mystery that the Press Corps has guarded as their most precious possession. Those are a few of their favorite things, and Obama hasn't shown them sufficient respect!

He usually adds a liberal voice, such as a blogger, and a member of a minority-oriented news organization. And since his opening statement tends to be a minispeech and his answers usually run long, this leaves little time to call on other reporters in the hour-long format. Reporters at Gibbs's briefing Monday also raised objections to Obama's practice of preselecting those he calls on and operating from a list.

OH, WAAAH. It sure sounds like Fallujah or something!

Of course, it seems petty to single out the structured "mini-speech" beginning of the presser as a cause to raise ire. That "mini-speech" is for the president's constituents to hear. And it's been made pretty clear to me that preselecting questions and lists are de rigeur practices for the White House Press Corps. That's why, to date, despite my repeated asking, I have never had a single member of the White House Press Room tell me that they would refuse to participate in the process if they were preselected. So, you know what? I think it's time for the White House Press Corps to maybe be quiet about their feelings for a while.

Seriously. His answers run long? Jeezy creezy. If the White House replaced the opening "mini-speech" with a spirited session of "Hand Jobs For the Front Row," they'd let that presser run all night.

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So, I guess this is what is happening, in the world. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made a video for his Twitter followers yesterday, and for some reason, he is holding a gigantic goddamn knife at the beginning of it. Seriously, look at that thing. It looks to me as if, in the moment before this video begins, he's just looked at the crazy, massive knife and asked it, "Well, who's your Messiah NOW, knife?" And then he sat there, waiting for his ginormous knife to give him an answer, only it didn't, because it's a huge honking knife. Or maybe this extra-large piece of cutlery speaks with a voice that only Arnold Schwarzenegger can hear! I don't have the answers to these questions, but trust me, I am terrified.

Anyway, Arnold then goes on to thank his constituents for all the "great ideas" he's received for "cutting the state costs." Only...and maybe this is just me, okay...he sounds sort of sardonic, and mean? Anyway, you Californians should think, long and hard, about that super-sized, terrifying knife he was holding in his hand and give your governor a wide berth, today.

[WATCH]

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Well, in a result that he will probably accept as downright apocalyptic for America, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart has been selected, in an online poll conducted by Time Magazine, as America's Most Trusted Newscaster, post-Cronkite. Matched up against Brian Williams, Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, Stewart prevailed with 44 percent of the vote. Now, if we're being honest, he probably managed to prevail as the winner precisely because he was the odd man out in a field of network news anchors. Nevertheless, I think Jim Cramer should feel free to SNACK ON THAT.

Brian Williams drew the second largest percentage of votes, with 29 percent. Gibson and Couric finished third and fourth, respectively, with 19 and 7 percent of the vote.

Time has helpfully broken out the results, state-by-state, so if you want to muse on some anomalous results, feel free. Brian Williams won Arizona, Wyoming, Nebraska, North Dakota, Florida, South Carolina, Indiana, Delaware and Vermont, and tied in Kentucky and Alaska. Charlie Gibson was big in Tennessee and Montana. Katie Couric pulled off the Mondalian feat of winning one state: Iowa.

Stewart finished no lower than second place in all states, except, curiously, Vermont.

To view the results, click here.

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Earlier this morning, I joined Jezebel's Megan Carpentier for another one of those early morning online chats known as Crappy Hour. We used the occasion to muse on all things "Birther," because they are, "so hot right now." Hot like a steamy, mindless pit of insanity. Anyway, it got me thinking: these Birthers basically assume a vast, complicated conspiracy, through which countless individuals, of varying degrees of power and station, have managed to fool the entire nation into electing a guy from Africa as our President. THIS IS OBVIOUSLY THE PERFECT PLAN. But what it's lacking is its narrative, its story. So, I made with some on-the-fly imaginings. It's not much, but I thought you'd enjoy the first scene of "O BIRTHER, WHERE ART THOU: The Incredible Psychosis-Based Story Of How Some People Somehow Managed To Get A Kenyan Dude Elected President, For Some Reason."

LIGHTS UP on SOME GUY and SOME OTHER GUY

SOME GUY: Hey! I know this lady, she's given birth to a Kenyan. What do you say we make him President?

SOME OTHER GUY: Uhm...it's like, 1960. We are never going to get a black guy elected President.

SOME GUY: Trust me! We can totally do this!

SOME OTHER GUY: Okay, why does it have to be a Kenyan? Why not just some black guy here, in America? I mean, this just seems needlessly pointless and convoluted and hard.

SOME GUY: I DON'T KNOW. IT JUST HAS TO BE THIS KENYAN.

SOME OTHER GUY: Okay, well, you know, of course, that Kenyans can't be President. So, are we going to convene a Constitutional convention or something?

SOME GUY: No, I just thought we'd get a bunch of government officials, from both parties, at the Federal, state, and local level, to all help with this, for little to no money, for forty years. And obviously, we'll need to be constantly inculcating people in this cabal, including people who aren't even born yet. And we'll all have to stay quiet about it, and not let anyone know. But, yeah, we can totally do this.

SOME OTHER GUY: Okay. And what would be the point to this? What's the outcome we're seeking?

SOME GUY: I HAVEN'T THE FOGGIEST IDEA!

This is a story with a moral, and it is this: the press needs to place the burden for explaining how all of this was supposed to work and what it was intended to accomplish squarely on these crazy people, which is where it belongs. Then, of course, point cameras at them. Because, yay!

RELATED
Crappy Hour: Obama Birthers Bring The Crazy To The Airwaves...And No One Is Immune [Jezebel]

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You know, when Michael Steele promised to revitalize the GOP with a series of incoherent hip-hop jams, few took him seriously. But some have answered the call! Remember the "Young Cons?" They were like the Kool Herc of conservative hip hop, flossing up a storm on the YouTubes. Now, straight outta the Pence youth initiative comes Peter Cowman, limply lip-dubbing over some of Lady GaGa's beats, complaining about taxes and junk!

[WATCH]

To quote Idlewild's song, "American English," maybe this kid is young without youth, or maybe he's old without knowing anything true. As Matt Yglesias notes, citing the work of David Madland and Ruy Teixeira, "What's interesting about this particular youth outreach angle is how detached it is from any actual opinions held by young people." That said, this Peter Cowman fellow has managed to make the Lyte Funky Ones look hard by comparison, so this effort is not without accomplishment.

That said, this is a bigger issue than partisan politics. This is about stopping fake rap, regardless of ideology. Please follow the links below to learn how you can do more to help. And if you see fake rap happening in your community, shut that nonsense down.

RELATED:
The End Fake Rap Movement Needs Your Help [Videogum]
The Petition To Put An End To Fake Rap

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Everyone's been talking about these crazy insane "Birther" folk, and their amazing, generations-spanning, bipartisan super-conspiracy to get a Kenyan elected President. But only Rachel Maddow went out and got The Washington Independent's Dave Weigel to talk about it, for the win. Weigel has been extensively documenting this particular strain of the lunatic fringe like he was Lewis Thomas writing The Lives of a Cell, and he deserves to be known as the go-to guy on this topic.

Weigel did his best to explain the current thinking in the "Birther" community, if you can call it thinking. (And no, one cannot.) "I don't know what they want anymore, because every time Hawaii verifies something, or a reporter verifies something, or a witness verifies something--that witness, that state, that reporter is lying, and their evidence must be thrown aside." Weigel notes that the "birther" community sprung from the Obama administration's attempt at transparency: The campaign took the extraordinary step of posting his birth certificate online, and, proving the axiom of good deeds and punishment, managed to spawn a "cottage industry" of people determined to prove the certificate was a forgery.

Weigel also got off a great line about "Birther bill" supporter Rep. John Campbell, and his appearance on yesterday's Hardball, "It looked life he was auditioning for the Jack Lemmon role in Glengarry Glen Ross. Trust me. You need to follow Weigel on Twitter.

[WATCH]

I'd like to toss in a thought, about Lou Dobbs, and his comment: "There's a lot of questions remaining, and seemingly the questions won't go away, because they haven't been dealt with, it seems possible, to straightforwardly, and quickly."

First: Lou Dobbs, you hear that word salad pouring forth from your mouth, making you sound like that beauty queen who couldn't explain our nation's map deficit? That's the functioning part of your brain, rebelling at the thought of promoting this nonsense. IT IS TRYING, VAINLY, TO HELP YOU, LOU DOBBS. Second, Lou, you say that there are "questions remaining" that "seemingly won't go away." Well, Lou Dobbs, there is this stuff, called "journalism," and these things, called "telephones." As Weigel says, "Calling Hawaii and getting this verified should be enough for any sane person to put this to bed." So, why don't you pick up a phone, and call the nice people in Hawaii who manage these birth records, and do some journalism, maybe?

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