To their credit, The Washington Post took up the issue of sex-themed T-shirts at local high schools on the front page Tuesday. It makes you wonder who the most worrisome tastemakers are, the T-shirt makers, or some children's parents: 

Allison Wynn, 17, a senior at Osbourn Park High School in Prince William County...said she is fond of wearing a shirt that says, "Don't Call Me a Cowgirl Until You See Me Ride." Joanne Wynn said her daughter's shirts are humorous. "If it's not in good taste, I don't let [her] wear it," she said. 

Mrs. Graham e-mailed me about how the local Top 40 station made this mildly conservative story its main topic of conversation. They had people calling in talking about their own T-shirts. They mentioned that you can buy baby "onesies" with sayings on them too.

Who says the BBC even tries anymore to be a straight news source that has not taken a side in the ideological debate?

Here is how their latest article on Pakistani President Musharraf starts:

West 'will fail' without Pakistan

'We helped the West' Pakistan's president has warned the West would be "brought to its knees" without his country's co-operation in the so-called war on terror.

That was pretty smooth, BBC! One might almost imagine that it was Musharraf that said the "so-called war on terror".

But, look closer. No quote marks around those words. That means it is the BBC, not Musharraf, that is calling the Global War on Terror a so-called war!

This one is pretty funny, sports fans. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) went on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” Saturday to discuss his recent statement regarding global warming and the press. Along the way, he complimented Fox News for being “really the exception” to all the hype by the media concerning this issue. He also bashed CNN for making “8 different [false] accusations or statements about” him.

For those that are interested, the video is here, and a rough transcript follows.

Privatization Of The Fire Service At SRQ Airport Starts Oct. 1st... ::: From the Newsbull Weblog of: Matt Bruce
::: Read & Respond @: http://www.newsbull.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=37083 Matt Bruce
Managing Editor & Publisher, News Sarasota   A Newsbull Contributing Columnist 

SARASOTA, FL (NS/IAFF 2546) -

The Sarasota County IAFF 2546 Airport Firefighters are being replaced on Sunday October the 1st and losing their jobs to a Private Firefighting Company named as Rural Metro from Arizona...

During an interview aired Friday on CNBC's The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, when asked by host Deutsch how he would go about fighting terrorism, CNN founder Ted Turner argued that "you don't win people over by bombing them, you win them over by being friends with them," and soon recommended giving Muslim extremists what they want as a solution to terrorism. Turner, who in 2002 claimed that Israelis were guilty of "terrorism" against the Palestinians, on Friday's show advocated "being more even-handed in our dealing with the Palestinians and the Israelis," negotiating peace in the Middle East "so we can stop at some point furnishing military aid to Israel," and "pulling our military forces out of the Middle East." Turner labelled these moves as "things that they've asked of us" and "things that the Muslim extremists and a lot of other Muslims, too, would like to see us do." (Transcript follows)

Today's starter: Michelle Malkin vs. Gawker/Wonkette.

On The Corner today, John Podhoretz has the latest in a very old tale in a new laudatory biography of Isidor Feinstein Stone, or as the leftists remember and adore him, I.F. Stone. In the 1960's he was all the rage with his newsletter I.F. Stone's Weekly. A new book by Myra MacPherson, formerly a reporter for The Washington Post, apparently has ended up rebutting itself:

The Washington journalist Myra MacPherson has written a worshipful book about the radical leftist journalist I.F. Stone. A dozen years ago Stone's reputation was rocked when a retired KGB officer seemed to finger Stone as a paid agent of the Soviet Union. MacPherson evidently went to great pains to disprove this charge, and in her book she triumphantly claims to have done so. But, as Paul Berman explains in a fascinating review of her book (and a new collection of Stone's writing),  MacPherson "seems not to notice that in her ardor to rescue Stone from his enemies, she has yanked the rope a little too firmly and has accidentally hanged the man." Berman continues:

MacPherson informs us that Kalugin, having specified that Stone was never on the Soviet payroll, described Stone as a "fellow traveler" — meaning a friendly supporter of the Soviet cause, though not a disciplined member of any Communist organization. Kalugin explained (in words no admirer of I. F. Stone will want to read) that Stone "began his cooperation with the Soviet intelligence long before me, based entirely on his view of the world." Stone was "willing to perform tasks." He would "find out what the views of someone in the government were or some senator on such and such an issue."

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Well sports fans, technically this fight took place in the afternoon. But, regardless of the hour, a real barnburner took place on Fox News’ “Studio B” Friday between anchor Shepard Smith and contributor William Kristol (video link to follow).

This melee perfectly demonstrated just how wrong folks like Paul Begala and James Carville are when they suggest that Fox News is just a propaganda arm of the Republican Party. After all, if such was the case, would a high-profile anchor be asking the following questions of a high-profile conservative, while at the same time taking an anti-Administration position towards the Iraq war:

Smith: Can’t you say beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt that what’s happening in Iraq is not working as we had hoped it would happen? That the terrorism is getting worse? That they are feeding off it?

Sound like a conservative, or someone that easily could be working for CNN or MSNBC? In fact, the following could have been uttered by Keith Olbermann:

Rioting and threats of violence from Muslim extremists have apparently triumphed once again over the First Amendment. According to psychoanalyst Dr. Nancy Kobrin and noted feminist Phyllis Chesler, who wrote the introduction, Kobrin's new book, "The Sheikh's New Cloth: The Naked Truth about Islamic Suicide Terrorism", was to be published in November by Looseleaf Law Publications, Inc., but Dr. Kobrin's contract was suddenly cancelled over concerns for their staff's safety.

If torturing analogies were a war crime, Maureen Dowd might soon find herself in the defendant's dock at The Hague.

In her subscription-required New York Times column of this morning, Dowd desperately seeks to associate herself with Sacha Baron Cohen, the brilliant British comic who Thursday took DC by storm.

First in his HBO series 'Ali G' and now on the big screen, Cohen has brought to life 'Borat,' his racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, sex-mad alter ego from Kazakhstan. Borat's MO is to lure unsuspecting people into his bigotry, as when in an infamous Ali G episode he induced Arizona bar patrons to applaud and even join in his rendition of the supposedly Kazakh song 'Throw the Jew Down the Well.' On the occasion of this week's meeting between Pres. Bush and Kazakhstan's president, Borat turned up at the White House gates to extend his invitation to a private screening of his new movie, 'Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,' to be followed by a reception at Hooters.

Brent Bozell's entertainment column this week chronicled an especially sad decline of a one-time child star of "Little House on the Prairie" raging against her wholesome reputation in an attempt to keep snagging roles in the land of polymorphous perversity. Say it ain't so, Laura Ingalls!

Perhaps this is a classic example of how pathetically low our society’s morals have fallen in 25 years: Melissa Gilbert just guest-starred on the FX cable network’s grotesque show "Nip/Tuck." Are you ready for this? As a woman needing to have a nipple replaced....because her dog bit it off....during sex.

I’m not kidding. I wish I were.

Click here for instructions on running Gaggle daily on your own site. There's also an archive of previous toons available here.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that a TV host whose idea of a show-closer is tossing wadded-up balls of paper at the camera would indulge in middle-school-worthy taunts about someone's weight. And yet . . . I actually was surprised when on tonight's show, Keith Olbermann unleashed a string of jibes aimed at Roger Ailes' physique. So surprised that when Olbermann first began his barrage, with a comment about Ailes doing something "between pies," I truly wondered whether I had misheard him or perhaps misunderstood his intent. Fat jokes? Could my fellow Cornellian really be stooping that low?

He could. Olbermann's mean-spirited motive soon became manifest. Displaying what was presumably the least flattering photo of the Fox chief he could find [shown here], Olbermann followed that comment with this string of insults:

First from Reuters, which has not always been very even-handed in reporting economic news, a pretty decent report:

Consumers bright, Midwest business strong in Sept

By Ros Krasny

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. consumer spending slipped in August but falling gasoline prices elevated shoppers' moods by September and Midwest factory activity picked up as well, according to reports on Friday that suggested the economy was still motoring along.

Meanwhile, consumer prices outside food and energy edged up just 0.2 percent in August, although year-on-year price gains hit an 11-year high, offering a mixed reading on inflation.

Poor Martin Crutsinger of the Associated Press, on the other hand, must have had a lot of pent-up negativity to get out before the weekend commences, as he took the same data and turned it into what Jim Taranto at Best of the Web described thusly: "If we didn't know better, we'd think we were heading for another Great Depression."

The feminist spirit was alive and well on Friday’s edition of "The View." The women were shocked by the concept of women with concealed weapons, and positively giddy over Ted Turner’s recent remarks that men should be banned from public office for a hundred years:

Barbara Walters: "We particularly like this quote, because we have this remarkable woman on with us today...Ted Turner, when he was talking about the United Nations, said, quote, ‘Men should be barred from public office for a hundred years in every part of the world. It would be a much kinder, gentler, more intelligently-run world. Men have had millions of years and we’ve screwed it up hopelessly. Let's give it to the women.’"

Rosie O’Donnell: "Yeah! I say bravo! Go, Ted."

The "remarkable" woman Walters was hyping was socialist Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, the first female in that country to be elected to that office. During their "Hot Topics" segment, the co-hosts marveled at how an agnostic woman could win the presidency in a "macho, Latin American country" while the United States had yet to elect a female president:

The latest "Media Myth" study from the MRC's Business & Media Institute is out. BMI deputy editor Amy Menefee and researcher Julia Seymour found that the media were quick to hype rising gas prices but slow to recognize the ground-rocketing they've been taking lately.

• In 35 straight business days of falling gas prices, evening news shows emphasized “high” or “rising” gas prices more often than falling prices.
• In half the stories where journalists mentioned falling gas prices, they undermined the news with warnings of future price increases.
• It took NBC three weeks to report falling prices on the "Nightly News." By that time, the average price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline had fallen 24 cents.

For more, see BusinessandMedia.org.

As part of Newsbusters’ thorough coverage of the Bill Clinton/Chris Wallace interview, the MRC’s Tim Graham noted that the shock should not have been over Wallace’s questions, but rather the softballs provided by "mainstream" journalists such as Tim Russert. The NBC host asked Clinton brief and not exactly hard hitting queries, including "what do you think is the biggest problem" in the world?

CBS anchor Harry Smith seemed perplexed by an "Early Show" guest who had the temerity to blame Clinton for failing to eliminate bin Laden. MSNBC host Keith Olbermann attacked Roger Ailes, Chairman of Fox News, calling him "Ming the Merciless" for daring to criticize Clinton.

Over on CNN, the cable network joined in on the Fox bashing. "Situation Room" contributor Jack Cafferty described FNC as the "F-word network." (It should be noted that this isn’t the first time Cafferty has used the term, it’s sort of a go-to phrase for the liberal anchor.) CNN also featured yet another story over whether the GOP and "Big Oil" are conspiring to bring the price of gas down and, as a result, help the Republicans in the midterm elections

In other wide ranging bias, despite an underwhelming hurricane season, "Good Morning America" warned about Earth’s "soaring temperatures" and anchor Robin Roberts interviewed a parade of global warming cheerleaders.

Today we're unveiling a new occasional feature, a contest for readers of NewsBusters.

Since Rosie O'Donnell has joined the ABC-syndicated show "The View," tensions have risen pretty dramatically on the set between the co-hosts. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the lone right-of-center host has reportedly brought to tears repeatedly. The rest of the show's staff is also upset.

Your task: Predict who will be the first to leave the show and when. The person closest to the date will become the winner of your very own Rosie O'Donnell doll, voodoo pins not included, and any conservative book of your choosing. (Entries must be posted as comments on NewsBusters before the end of the day Wed., Oct.

On CBS's racially-segregated "Survivor" reality show Thursday night, an Asian man named "Cao Boi" (pronounced Cowboy) went on a rant against the Iraq war and insisted American teenagers are going to be drafted and sent to Iraq en masse -- unless you're privileged, "unless you're Mr. Bush children." He was telling a story about a conversation he had at a restaurant:

“This old man he said, 'I come to United States, I’m so lonely, all my friends are in Vietnam.' He’s like fifty-something. And he just missed the old days. 'But I come to United States for my children’s future.' I go, ‘how old are your children?’ 'Fifteen and sixteen.' HA HA HA HA! Fifteen and sixteen! They trick you. They trick you. He go ‘what’? Fifteen and sixteen, you think in a couple of more years they’ll be in Iraq? ‘I’m sorry. For what?’ You’re Vietnamese. You should know better about war. You should know all about war.”

Here's a blast from the past: The only woman ever accused and convicted of being Tokyo Rose, an anti-American radio announcer during World War II died this week. She was later pardoned by president Gerald Ford after word got out that some of her accusers were lying. Here's an excerpt from the Washington Post's story:

Iva Ikuko Toguri D'Aquino, 90, an American woman branded "Tokyo Rose" during World War II, imprisoned for making treasonous radio broadcasts and decades later exonerated with a presidential pardon, died Sept. 26 at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago. No cause of death was reported.

Although nearly a dozen female broadcasters were given the moniker during World War II, Mrs. D'Aquino was the one most tarred by the name Tokyo Rose, which, along with the name of Japanese War Minister Hideki Tojo, came to personify Axis infamy in the Pacific.

Taunting millions of servicemen with stories of infidelity on the home front, false reports of battle outcomes meant to demoralize them and frequent spins of pop songs to keep them listening, the broadcasts of Radio Tokyo were notorious instruments in the propaganda war. Many American sailors and soldiers found the broadcasts cartoonishly incredible, which Mrs. D'Aquino said was exactly her intention.

The name Tokyo Rose was an American invention. On air, Mrs. D'Aquino called herself "Orphan Ann," a reference both to her favorite radio program as a child and her lonely status as an American trapped in enemy territory. She refused to renounce her U.S. citizenship during the war, and many described her as a victim of her own courage and naiveté.

Just two weeks after Rosie O’Donnell made waves on ABC’s all-female chat show The View for proclaiming that "radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam," the Catholic League is protesting a conversation on Thursday’s show between O’Donnell and co-host Joy Behar about drunken priests and silly Eucharistic rules. (Don’t forget the obligatory Mel Gibson slam.) Sitting with glasses of red wine, the women were discussing a study showing drinking red wine helps preserve memory:

Video (1:01) Real Media (1.65MB) Windows Media (1.87MB) or MP3 audio (281 KB)

Behar: "Don’t you start losing your memory when you’re a drunk? I mean, that’s the first thing that goes."

O’Donnell: "Or you just start spouting anti-Semitic statements. [Crowd laughs, then oohs in shock] Mel Gibson! Mel Gibson! C’mon! Cause they say when you get drunk, the real person comes out. I don’t know about one glass of wine, though."

"A new study says Republicans hate puppies. Don't believe me? Ask Professor Johnson."

Eric Zorn, in the keynote speech at the Media Relations Faculty Recognitions Luncheon at DePaul University, says journalists and professors need each other. Journalists are not respected as knowledgeable in any field, and professors have no mouthpiece for their ideas. A reporter can increase the credibility of a story by getting a professor to attest to the "trend" being claimed, while the professor gets his name in something other than the campus paper or a tiny academic journal.

An editor driving to work notices that there are lots of pre-fab garden sheds in backyards along the way. A growing number, he suspects.

So he summons a reporter when he gets to work and assigns him what I’m calling a “more and more.”