CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric really knows how to take on the villains in American society -- like Toucan Sam and the Trix Rabbit. In her latest "Katie Couric's Notebook" commentary (the day before Halloween), Couric railed against advertising for sugary cereals: "Don't let a bunny or a tucan [sic] take over your parenting role."

Froot Loops, Cookie Crisp, Reese's Puffs – almost got a cavity just reading that. Yet, they're the kinds of sugary cereals children beg for at the grocery store.

The boxes and TV ads usually have a colorful cartoon character on them. But, one group of researchers is not amused.

The Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University reports that cereal companies spend more than $156 million a year on ads geared for kids. At a time when 12 percent of U.S. children from ages 2 to 5 are considered obese - along with 17 percent of kids 6 to 11 -- this problem is anything but sweet.

All parents have been there in that grocery aisle -- having to decide between what the kids want and what you know is better for them.

But maybe some oatmeal for your Little Miss Sweet Tooth can help her avoid big health issues in the future.

The Daily Kos is letting its metaphors run wild against conservatives. Ken Cuccinelli, a solidly conservative state senator running for Attorney General, is described as a monster:

And whether or not dragons exist, monsters do. Sometimes they run for political office. I believe if one looks at the public record of Steve's opponent, State Senator Ken Cuccinelli, one will see someone whose record in public office and his declared intentions have monstrous implications.

Then the blogger called "teacherken" says these conservative monsters and dragons should be killed. He might mean defeating them at the ballot box. Maybe. If the writer were conservative, no one would assume anything but the real words on the page: kill.

At the edges of some medieval maps one might see the legend "here there be dragons" with illustrations of sea serpents. These marked the end of the known world, with the fears inherent in the unknown.

And yet, as children know, the monsters and dragons are part of everyday existence. They are under the bed, they are in our imagination, some seek to use them to manipulate use - pace the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs and others of their ilk.

Michael Calderone at Politico reports that the White House press corps is evolving to the left in the Obama era. Even as Team Obama denigrates Fox News as not a "legitimate news organization," even demeans it as a mere receptacle for GOP "talking points," the White House Correspondents Association is broadening its reporter pool to partisan, anti-Bush, left-wing opinion websites like Salon and Talking Points Memo, and also to the Obama-favoring black magazine Ebony. The Huffington Post is also planning to apply.

The WHCA’s most high-profile decision this year was selecting comedian Wanda Sykes to suggest Rush Limbaugh was comparable to al-Qaeda and wished to have his kidneys fail. Widening the press pool – a group which circulates one or a few reporters to cover the president everywhere he goes for the group – offers a higher profile of professionalism to whoever joins it.

Calderone contacted MRC for our reaction, and I gave it:

Catholic News Agency reports The New York Times refused to publish an op-ed submitted by the Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, that complained that Times news reports and opinion columns were anti-Catholic. Archbishop Dolan wrote the "most combustible example" was "an intemperate and scurrilous piece" on the opinion pages of the Times by Maureen Dowd.

"In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women, all the while slashing Pope Benedict XVI for his shoes, his forced conscription -- along with every other German teenage boy -- into the German army, his outreach to former Catholics, and his recent welcome to Anglicans."

How angry are ultraliberal talk show hosts over Joe Lieberman’s opposition to a government "competitor" in the health insurance system, the so-called "public option"? Ed Schultz was mad enough Wednesday to get very personal with Hadassah Lieberman, the senator’s wife, who has worked for several DC lobbying firms. Schultz suggested she was a "whore." He said:

Now, the pillow talk in the Lieberman household in the sack had to be rather interesting, OK? You have got the wife working on behalf of the industry that's lining the pockets of the senator who has now come out against the public option. OK, look, how dumb are we? Is this a coincidence?

He asked: Does the word 'whore' apply? Are we there yet?

Mrs. Lieberman’s interests in the health debate are nebulous, according to left-wing journalist Joe Conason at Salon.com:  

Fox Television must be getting nervous about keeping "The Simpsons" fresh now that it’s in season 21. This show is so old it’s just about drinking age. But Fox tarted it up in the headlines with nudity and impiety. They put cartoon mom Marge Simpson on the cover of Playboy magazine and mocked Christians by comparing them to cannibalistic zombies.

The Playboy issue came out on October 16. The suggestive "Devil In Marge Simpson" cover isn’t much to write home about – other than the mainstreaming of porn and the sickening corporate symbiosis, with Fox Television lending one of its signature cartoon brands to Playboy, whose circulation is tanking. The "pictorial" inside the issue is a little more pornographic, with one picture giving Marge Simpson a very three-dimensional, anatomically correct chest in a see-through nightie.

Did anyone really "need" this? Other than Hugh Hefner and his declining business?

Two days after the Playboy hit the stands, Fox aired their annual "Treehouse of Horror" episode of "The Simpsons," which is usually the darkest and goriest show of the year. It’s also one of the most-watched: more than eight and a half million people watched this show.

For some mysterious reason, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams augmented his tour of Afghanistan with an interview with The Huffington Post, where most bloggers think of the American presence as comparable to cancer, or maggots. One spot in his interview with Danny Shea suggested that the Americans weren't so welcome in Afghanistan:

SHEA: There's all this talk of making the cities more secure. Is there any sense that the people in the cities want the foreign troops there?

WILLIAMS: Whereas some of the locals in Iraq (depending on the circumstances) will often be comforted to see U.S. dismounted infantry patrols, (in ways they were not until fairly recently) and will ask them for help and to stay with them, the situation here in Afghanistan is different. The two societies are vastly different.

It is not helped by the fact that U.S. forces often take a very aggressive posture -- arriving in small towns in massive armored vehicles with machine gun turrets, each infantryman with his hands on his M-4 rifle in front of him...and often on the trigger with the safety off.

Here’s more proof Barack Obama has locked up the Secular Celebrity Left: AP music writer Nekesa Mumbi Moody writes:

Sting isn't a religious man, but he says President Barack Obama might be a divine answer to the world's problems.

"In many ways, he's sent from God," he joked in an interview, "because the world's a mess."

But Sting is serious in his belief that Obama is the best leader to navigate the world's problems. In an interview on Wednesday, the former Police frontman said that he spent some time with Obama and "found him to be very genuine, very present, clearly super-smart, and exactly what we need in the world."

"I can't think of any be better qualified because of his background, his education, particularly in regard to Islam," he said.

Sting told AP he was fascinated by American politics, and also by Obama’s opponents on the right. (Oh, so Sting listens to Limbaugh?)

When a woman writes a book in which she claims she had 15 abortions in 15 years, it’s amazing that The Washington Post can write a sympathetic account of her barrage of life-ending "choices" and save the moral judgment for pro-lifers. But that’s exactly what reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia did in Friday’s Post. In paragraph 44 of their profile of "abortion addict" Irene Vilar, the pro-life movement finally gets to speak – as a hateful cartoon.

Lately, he [her husband] has tried to shield her from "violent, hateful and utterly un-Christian comments" on blogs, he says. On the Internet, she has been called a "monster," "scuzzy," a "skank." A poster at USbacklash.org wrote that she is "one of the sickest people who ever lived, including Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, or any other murderer I can think of! Too bad one of her suicide attempts didn't take. . . . We hope she keeps trying!"

Mark Preston at CNN's Political Ticker reports there's a major Hollywood contingent judging a Health Reform Video Challenge contest for the Democratic Party's Organizing for American campaign. (See today's Open Thread for one flag-mangling contestant.)

Stars on the judging panel for the final 20 TV ads include John Cho ("Flash Forward"), Rosario Dawson ("Men in Black"), Dule Hill ("The West Wing"), Brandon Routh (who played Superman), Kate Walsh ("Private Practice"), Olivia Wilde ("House") and musician Will I. Am of the Black Eyed Peas.

But the most risky name is Seth MacFarlane, the abrasive atheist creator of the Fox cartoons "Family Guy," "American Dad," and "The Cleveland Show."

The harshest ad in the contest features grade-school kids talking about how they'll suffer (and even die) because health care is denied:

BOY: A year from now, I’ll break my leg and my parents will have to sell our house because we couldn’t afford health care

GIRL: Three months from now, I’ll need surgery, and my parents will go bankrupt because they couldn’t afford health care.

In today's example of "Are online polls reliable?" is a poll at NPR.org, which found an almost exact split among readers of the NPR blog "The Two-Way" on whether the White House or Fox News should win the battle over reputations. (As of 5 pm Eastern time.) NPR blogger Mark Memmott asked it this way. Are you supporting:

-- The White House on this one; Fox News isn't "fair and balanced." 49% (151,983 votes)

-- Fox News on this one; it asks questions others don't and the White House should be able to handle them. 49% (152,482 votes)

-- Neither side. They're both trying to play this "feud" to their advantage. 2% (5,896 votes)

Memmott wrote it in such a way that it did not require NPR fans to suggest Fox News is fantastic, but it does suggest that position is on the side of giving adequate scrutiny to the White House.

UPDATE: As of 4 pm Friday, the Fox News side of the question is now winning handily, 70 percent to 28.  

He mentions last week's David Folkenflik story for NPR on the Fox feud, but that story was stilted to avoid addressing the liberal bias of the rest of the news media. That was a concept that was merely alleged, not demonstrable:

The latest report by the Parents Television Council on violence against women in prime-time broadcast TV drew major-media attention – some of it flagrantly incorrect. Washington Post TV writer Lisa de Moraes complained that PTC should have studied cable shows instead of broadcast shows, and only mangled statistics by a favor of...a million:

The PTC report brings us no closer to understanding the situation. In Feburary 2004, 2.9 children ages 2 to 11 watched those four broadcast networks that PTC whomped on in this study. Meanwhile more than 5 million children watched prime-time cable TV. And, in May 2009, 1.5 million children watched ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox in prime time, while more than 7 million children chose cable programming instead.

Brent Bozell was hardly alone yesterday in touting new polls showing a surge for conservatism in reaction to Barack Obama's forever-lengthening statist agenda. Also making the rounds is Nile Gardiner's blog for the Telegraph (of the UK) suggesting President Obama has failed to defeat American conservatism:

This week’s striking Gallup poll on political ideology is further confirmation that the United States is in essence a conservative nation, which has ironically become even more conservative under Barack Obama. According to Gallup, 40 percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36 percent as moderate and 20 percent as liberal. This is the first time conservatives have outnumbered moderates in America since 2004.

Brent Bozell found the homepage of washingtonpost.com funny today. William Kristol’s op-ed, titled "A good time to be a conservative," began with this thought:

Bien-pensant conservative elites and establishment-friendly Republican big shots yearn for a more moderate, temperate and sophisticated Republican Party. It's not likely to happen. And probably just as well.

But here’s how the Kristol piece was promoted on the Post homepage: "The GOP’s right turn: A more moderate, temperate and sophisticated Republican Party is not likely to happen."

By clipping Kristol’s opening clause, it sounds remarkably like The Washington Post on February 1, 1993: "Corporations pay public relations firms millions of dollars to contrive the kind of grass-roots response that Falwell or Pat Robertson can galvanize in a televised sermon. Their followers are largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command."

On a day in which media liberals will celebrate President Obama for signing a bill against "hate crimes" against gays and lesbians, a bill named for Matthew Shepard, it might be time again to remember the name of Jesse Dirkhising, who died ten years ago this fall to a national media blackout. Here's Brent Bozell from 1999:

When Matthew Shepard died on October 12, 1998 at the age of 21, five days after getting into a pickup truck with two goons who beat him mercilessly, he had already become a huge national news story that continues today. It made the cover of Time magazine with the headline "The War Over Gays," with reporters predictably using the occasion to blame religious conservatives and call for hate-crime laws and other gay-left agenda items.

But when Jesse Dirkhising died on September 26 at the age of 13 from suffocation after being bound, gagged with underwear in his mouth, blindfolded, taped to the bed, and sodomized by one gay man while another gay man watched, the national media said nothing, even after The Washington Times exposed the untold story.

Last Wednesday, former vice president Dick Cheney received the Keeper of the Flame award from the Center for Security Policy in Washington, where he denounced President Obama for dithering on Afghanistan. This sent several left-wing columnists and radio hosts into a rage. But there’s rage, and then there’s the wild ravings of host Mike Malloy, who was thinking Cheney was a baby-eater:

Cheney, by the way looks very ruddy; I couldn't get over that like he must have feasted on a Jewish baby, or a Muslim baby; he must have sent his people out to get one and bring it back so he could drink its blood, because that's what somebody like Cheney does to get that ruddy look.

The New York Post reported "CNN should consider banning its anchors from appearing on ‘Celebrity Jeopardy’ after the humiliating defeats of Wolf Blitzer and Soledad O'Brien." O’Brien came in third behind a comedian and a basketball legend:

This month, it was O’Brien’s turn against NBA legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Michael McKean, of "Spinal Tap," "Laverne & Shirley" and "Saturday Night Live." McKean, a previous winner, ended with $24,800, followed by Abdul Jabbar with $8,800 and O'Brien with $6,200.

A CNN insider defended the journalists: "They are reporters, not trivia experts. And the buzzer is complicated. It's not activated until Alex [Trebek] finishes the last syllable of the question. If you hit the button too soon, nothing happens."

....Wolf was blitzed last month, coming in last with minus-$4,600, behind comic Andy Richter, a past winner who racked up $68,000 for charity. "Desperate Housewives" star Dana Delany came in second.

As Scott Whitlock noted last week, the Washington Post editorial page thumped away at conservative Republican Ken Cuccinelli, who’s currently ahead in the race for Virginia’s Attorney General: "Given his sometimes bizarre and incendiary ideas, we worry that Mr. Cuccinelli would drive qualified and nonpartisan lawyers away, transform the attorney general's office into a staging ground for his pet peeves and causes, and make it an object of ridicule in a state where it has enjoyed a long run of respect."

But what about when Cuccinelli’s Democrat opponent, Steve Shannon, becomes an object of ridicule? The Post ignores it.

The Washington Post has a funny way of covering conservative protests. Take Sunday's protest against "gay marriage," in which black churches have rallied to insist the people vote by referendum instead of letting the D.C. council dictate. The headline is "Both sides mobilize in same-sex marriage." Doesn't the reader assume that means that both sides mobilized.... yesterday? This headline would not happen in a story on a liberal protest.

Post reporter Tim Craig suggests distaste for the protesters in the first few words: "A small but noisy group of protesters, many bused in from churches," rallied Sunday. This would not happen in a story on a liberal protest. Size would almost be irrelevant. (And their transportation wouldn't be a negative.)

Craig counted "about 150 opponents of same-sex marriage" in the second paragraph. Earlier this month, when hard-left protesters rallied outside the White House to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan, the Post waited 25 paragraphs to tell readers only 176 people showed up.

They put that rally on page one, not page one of Metro (where yesterday's protest landed).

The Washington Post warmly remembered longtime Los Angeles Times reporter and Washington Bureau Chief Jack Nelson in a Thursday obituary headlined "L.A. Times reporter was driven by his conscience." Nelson was hailed by many for courageous reporting of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The Post’s Patricia Sullivan pulled this tribute from the Associated Press:

"He maintained that the main thing people want from newspapers is facts -- facts they didn't know before, and preferably facts that somebody didn't want them to know. Jack was tolerant of opinion writers; he respected analysis writers, and he even admired one or two feature writers. But he believed the only good reason to be a reporter was to reveal hidden facts and bring them to light."

But that’s not entirely true. Nelson didn’t support revealing hidden facts when his own newspaper dug into Bill Clinton’s use of Arkansas state troopers for sexual conquests. He suggested "right wingers" were wrong to suggest he was so opposed to it that he threatened to resign. But he clearly disliked the story, and had wanted to subject the troopers to polygraph tests: