Paris Hilton

Jay Leno on Friday ribbed Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the poor state of the economy.

In his opening monologue on the "Tonight Show," the comedian began with a lot of politics first joking about the President's Middle East peace talks, then moving to the war in Afghanistan, and eventually a poke at airline security.

On the day the Labor Department announced an uptick in the unemployment rate, Leno had a number of jokes about how bad the economy is.

Finally, the monologue concluded with a nice tribute to a United States Marine Corps unit in the audience (video follows with commentary):

Topics in today's show: Democrats won't fund the closing of Gitmo, Dick Cheney's popularity is on the rise, Dick Cheney gave 77% of his income to charity last year, and the new Paris Hilton documentary comes out soon.

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Starring: Jodi Miller
Director: Bruce Roundtower
Executive Producer: Matthew Sheffield

Elisabeth Hasselbeck finally called out some of "The View"co-hosts on the Sarah Palin bashing she finally proclaimed September 25 as "Hate Sarah Palin Day." Immediately the other co-hosts defensively swarmed over the comment denying there is any hate for Governor Palin. Joy Behar claimed "it’s not personal. It’s my country that I’m worried about."

Hasselbeck’s remark was sparked by a discussion over a new YouTube video displaying a Kenyan preacher praying to protect a woman, who resembles Gov. Palin, from witchcraft. Sherri Shepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck explained to the other two theologically challenged co-hosts that this is simply a prayer to protect this woman, possibly Sarah Palin, from evil.

Whoopi also defended playing and discussing the video stating "if Barack Obama had been in that church and somebody was praying over him to keep him free from witchcraft, we’d be having this discussion, okay?" However, the previous day, Whoopi sang a different tune responding to Elisabeth’s mention of Joe Biden’s many gaffes.

See <a href="http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/64ad536a6d">Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad</a> and more <a href="http://www.funnyordie.com">funny videos</a> on <a href="http://www.funnyordie.com">FunnyOrDie.com</a>

Influenced by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert's recent claims on MSNBC's Morning Joe that the McCain campaign deliberately included "phallic symbols" along with images of attractive young white women in an ad attacking Barack Obama to exploit racial resentment, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann latched onto this theory on Monday's Countdown show and observed that the ad featured "two underdressed blondes mixed with the black guy," and contended that the ad included "three phallic symbols, two blondes and Barack Obama," opining that the ad is an example of "miscegenation," and that it suggests Obama is "going to wind up dating those women."

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, also an MSNBC political analyst, charged: "That's the oldest and deepest racist, you know, canard in American history, really, is that, you know, the slave is going to come after the wife of the plantation owner." And, ignoring the GOP's history of portraying white Senator John Kerry as elitist during the 2004 campaign, Alter further charged that Republicans are "trying to portray [Obama] as being uppity," and hinted at the racially charged connotation of the word "uppity." (Transcript follows)

Care to Revise and Extend Your Remarks, Sen. Obama?

Editor's Note: Update below the fold.

The uproar of the media, serving as adjunct PR firms in defense of their beloved Sen. Barack Obama in response to Sen. John McCain's video comparing the Illinois Senator to Paris Hilton, was deafening. The ad was described as "nasty," "childish" and "juvenile," a "strange" "nuclear attack" for having dared to compare their anointed one to the brainless celebutant hotel heiress.

Sen. McCain and his camp responded that it was all in good fun, and was made only to point out the ridiculous Tiger Beat-squealing teenage girl nature of the over-the-top, all-encompassing coverage thus far afforded Obama by his Paparazzi.

But it appears that someone years ago beat Sen. McCain to the comparison punch.

Warning: excessive adulation of Barack Obama is harmful to the vision and can in extreme cases cause hallucinations.

We're all familiar with how an Obamania overdose produced strange tingling sensations in Chris Matthews.  A new, virulent strain of the affliction has now emerged, claiming its first victim in the person of Bob Herbert, who on live national TV saw visions of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Washington Monument where none existed.

The NYT columnist, a guest on today's Morning Joe, expanded on the theory set forth in his column of this past Saturday, Running While Black, that the McCain campaign ad mocking Obama as a Paris Hilton/Britney Spears-type celebrity was actually "designed to exploit" racist anxiety about black men and white women. Herbert lumped the McCain ad with the "call me" ad the RNC ran against Harold Ford, Jr. in his Tennessee senate race.

It was in describing the McCain ad that Herbert's symptoms surfaced.

View video here.

CNN commentator Jack Cafferty, on Thursday’s The Situation Room, found racist overtones to the recent McCain campaign ad comparing the hype surrounding vapid celebrities like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears to the hype surrounding Barack Obama: "I think it's very much playing the race card to put a highly educated, articulate, middle-aged black family man into a television commercial with two blonde bimbo airheads with a combined I.Q. of a box of cereal. And if you have any doubts about what I'm talking about, it's the same kind of thing that was done to Harold Ford down in Tennessee in 2006 and it stinks. It's more subtle, but it stinks just the same."

Cafferty was referring to the spot the RNC ran against Harold Ford in the 2006 Tennessee Senate race which made light of how Ford appeared at Super Bowl party thrown by Playboy magazine in 2005. In the ad, an attractive young blonde joked about how she met Ford at the Playboy bash, and asked him to call her. Liberals reacted harshly to the supposed racist insinuation made by the ad. The NAACP condemned it as a "a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African-American men and white women."

The July 31 edition of "The View" predictably picked up McCain’s now famous celebrity ad, and predictably, three of them were not pleased. Whoopi Goldberg specifically objected to the use of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and called such an action "beneath him." Joy Behar simply felt McCain was "jealous" and said he is no longer a good person. Sherri Shepherd, who probably could not pass a high school geography test, called such an action "very high school."

Elisabeth Hasselbeck dared to offer an opposing opinion noting McCain simply is suggesting qualifications matter more than celebrity. When Joy Behar mocked McCain’s celebrity appeal and displayed a picture of McCain with Willford Brimley. Hasselbeck quickly reminded the panel of many of Barack Obama’s friends like Reverend Wright, Tony Rezko, and Ludacris.

When I saw this at the office yesterday, I was in stitches. Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto aired B-roll of a saucy Paris Hilton burger ad while talking with conservative talk show host and author Laura Ingraham about her complaints in her book Power to the People and elsewhere about how cable news networks tart up their programming with skin. Asked by Ingraham if he was rolling such B-roll, Cavuto denied it, but the look on his face was priceless. (video embed below fold)

It's nothing new for Neil, who has a penchant for incorporating scantily-clad women in B-roll in his eponymous "Your World w/Neil Cavuto" program, and/or interviewing in-studio Hooters waitresses and Victoria's Secret models, always finding some business news angle of course.

I was going to clip the video for the heck of it, but Allahpundit at Hot Air beat me to it. You can read his post here or see the embedded YouTube video clip below the fold.

MSNBC's Tamron Hall [file photo] is a big "Us Weekly" fan. Even more disturbing: she believes that guilty pleasure is expiated by her reliance on the New York Times for her news.

Hall has been taking Mika Brzezinksi's place on this week's "Morning Joe." This morning's show opened with Joe Scarborough decrying the disparately lenient judicial treatment doled out to Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan. They have received slaps on the wrist, doing virtually no jail time for their drug-fueled escapades, whereas Paris Hilton spent over 20 days in the hoosegow.

When Joe asserted that Paris has been walking the straight and narrow since exiting the Big House, Tamron corrected the record.

Okay, we’ve all heard that hybrid vehicles are better for the environment. But how do they measure up when it comes to the green in your wallet?

Even starlet Paris Hilton has boarded the hybrid bandwagon, as reported by BPM Magazine.

“I came in a hybrid car because I think that’s the way to go – to save energy and to save our earth from all this – you know pollution so I think if everyone just takes the steps to do it will make a difference,” said Hilton.

However, Hilton probably wouldn’t be as concerned about the cost of owning one of these hybrids as average people.  But you wouldn’t be aware of any higher costs after reading Chris Woodyard’s August 8 USA Today story.

“It’s not just good public relations,” wrote Woodyard. “Since the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases, General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler have joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of corporate executives calling for CO2 restrictions.”

It would be even better public relations if hybrids made economic sense, but they don’t. It turns out hybrids cost more to maintain than regular cars.