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Apparently the talking heads on the panel at Fox News Watch were terribly enamored with NBC's cheap publicity stunt for ratings by bringing on the Snowbilly from Wasilla so she could "stick it" to her "rival" Katie Couric, who was so terribly mean to her by asking her trick questions, like what does she read, during the last presidential election.

For someone who supposedly hates the so-called "lamestream media" Palin sure does want to be part of it, doesn't she? NBC should be ashamed of themselves for putting her on there in the first place.

h/t Media Matters

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As TV Newser mentioned earlier today, Sarah Palin will be co-hosting on Tuesday.

Melissa Harris-Perry and her guests were somewhat incredulous at the news, figuring it had to be an April Fool's joke. The dumbing-down of American media continues.

As we mentioned Saturday, Lester Holt announced on “Nightly News” that Sarah Palin would be a guest on the “Today” show Tuesday. But this morning on Weekend “Today”, Holt said that Palin will be co-hosting Tuesday’s show.

While Palin is not stranger to TV — she had a short-lived career as a sports anchor in Alaska (below) — she has made a career out of hating on what she has dubbed the “lamestream media” mostly through her segments on Fox News Channel where she is a paid political analyst.

And much of her criticism has been directed at Katie Couric whose award-winning interview with Palin in 2008, when Couric was with CBS News, continues to haunt the former VP nominee. The irony of pitting Palin and Couric head-to-head on the two leading national morning shows is just too sweet.

This guest list for the week is somewhat telling. From Fox News:

Other high-profile guests appearing on "Today" this week are "Octomom" Nadya Suleman, Kim Kardashian, the Duggar family and rapper Nicki Minaj.

Here's the promo for it:

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After watching the movie adaptation of Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's "Game Change" this weekend on HBO, the one thing I found surprising about the movie is just how big of an emotional mess Sarah Palin was almost straight from the get-go after they recruited her to run with John McCain after not being properly vetted, and the campaign started finding out all of the dirt on her that they should have known about ahead of time if they were doing their jobs.

Which led to scenes like the one above where Palin was none to happy with staffer Nicolle Wallace after her disastrous interview with Katie Couric. I'm sure we can all take a lot of what was in the movie with a grain of salt, due to the fact that a lot of what was in it came from campaign staffers stabbing each other and McCain in the back for their terrible decision to draft Palin in the first place, and other anonymous sources, but on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Wallace admitted that the scene above was "true enough" to make her squirm.

That didn't stop former Dick Cheney adviser, Mary Matalin from calling it a work of fiction, even though she wasn't there herself. Leave it to Matalin to still be carrying water for Palin since she's been one of her staunchest defenders from day one. I expect we'll be hearing more of the same type of sentiments from Republicans who still don't want to admit that McCain made a huge mistake picking her, that she was not ready for the job and that it helped to tank his candidacy, whether every detail in the book or movie are completely accurate or not. The overall theme of the movie and how she was portrayed was pretty obvious to most of us watching that campaign at the time as the events actually occurred in real time.

Full transcript below the fold.

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"Are you smarter than a half-term Governor?" looks like a hit. And Palin (Fey) does some gotcha journalism of her own on Katie Couric which is amusing.

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January 06, 2010 NBC Jay Leno Show

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From Fox News Watch the panel has a nice 'fair and balanced' discussion on media bias, using of course Brent Bozell's winger site the Media Research Center as their guide for what to point to as their proof that the media has a liberal bias. I'm quite sure Bozell doesn't consider all the garbage Fox pumps out day after day as any sign that there might be just a slight conservative bias out there to counter whatever they manage to find from the other media outlets.

They show a clip of Katie Couric sucking up to President Obama which won Bozell's 'Let us Fluff Your Pillow Award' and cite an article by JokeLine in Time Magazine on Obama's first 100 days in office as two examples of bias towards Obama. When Dana Perino is asked to compare those stories to the kind of coverage Bush received here's how she responds:

Perino: Well there is no comparison and I gave up a long time ago as a Republican thinking that we were going to get comparable type of coverage. There are though--a lot of Democrats will tell you that President Bush got a lot of fawning coverage after 9-11 and obviously that swung back the other way. But I always say if you are, if you're looking for communications advice, ask a Republican because they've had to try so much harder.

Scott: To be fair Ellis, you think there's a quote from a conservative member of the media that deserves to be (crosstalk)

Henican: Those are two icky examples. I mean I wouldn't want to be caught on tape saying either of those things.

Scott: Icky.

Henican: But yeah, come on. Let's be honest though. There is some pretty awful stuff on the other side and I did a little poking around and how's this one from Limbaugh, right? You know he said a few things. He said we've been told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles because his father was black. And that's pretty awful.

Perino: Okay, that isn't... I would never say something like that, but Limbaugh doesn't pretend to be a... objective journalist. Okay? And Katie Couric does.

Henican: And there's a variety of quotes we can pull from any of those venues. But listen, people have asked stupid stuff in both directions. Let's admit that.

Lowry: What's different Ellis is one he's not supposed to be an objective reporter. Two if you go to the Media Research web site and look at...

Henican: An objective organization right?

Lowry: and look at every single video clip from the inauguration and in your words, icky, every single one of them is icky from every single major media outlet. They were in love with this guy. And they still are most of them.

So Perino thinks as long as you're not pretending to be objective, it’s alright to say the most foul, racist crap imaginable with sexual references to boot about the President, and Rich Lowry thinks that The Media Research Center’s video collection is a fair and balanced look at the media coverage of President Obama, and obviously doesn’t consider Fox News or right wing talk radio a 'major media outlet'.

I’m so glad sweet little Dana Perino at least qualified her defense of Limbaugh with saying that she wouldn’t have said it herself. Well, that makes your defense of his statement much better Dana. I'm sure Perino also doesn't think any of the negative coverage Bush got in the press was deserved but we'll never get any honest discussion on that on Fox News either. I assume playing apologist for him is at least paying well for her along with the rest of the Bush lackey's that keep showing up on my television screen on all of the networks.

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Katie Couric asks Glenn Beck about the Tea Baggers he's stirring up at the rallies and whether that bothers him, his comment saying the President is a racist and his comment about poisoning Nancy Pelosi and hitting Charlie Rangel over the head with a shovel. Beck of course shows no remorse for the protesters behavior.

As to the racism comment he says he was sorry for the "way it was phrased" but says "it is a serious question" that he thinks needs "serious discussion".

He asks Couric is she's "ever asked Jon Stewart that question" in response to the Pelosi/Rangel question. Glenn, I don't think Jon Stewart has ever joked about poisoning Nancy Pelosi or hitting Charlie Rangel over the head with a shovel.

Dave N.: It's clear that Beck isn't about to apologize for calling President Obama a racist, because he believes it's true. And you can see, from watching his show this past month, that proving this thesis -- that Obama's radical anti-white racism is driving him to remake the USA as a communist/socialist state -- is his ongoing enterprise.

But even more noxious is his claim that he's bothered by people carrying Obama-as-Hitler signs -- a little, anyway:

Couric: When you see posters -- I'm curious -- of President Obama dressed like an African tribesman --

Beck: Haven't seen those.

[We call BS on this. Everyone's seen those.]

Couric: Or poster of President Obama with a Hitler mustache. I'm curious -- are you comfortable with that? Does that make you uncomfortable?

Beck: I'm as comfortable with that as I was when they -- the people who were marching against the war were doing it to George W. Bush.

Besides the starkly higher proportion of Obama-Hitler signs, there's one really big difference between them: There weren't any leading figures on the left -- particularly not any with a popular cable show -- telling their audiences of millions that Bush was bringing fascism to America.

h/t The HuffPo:

David Letterman had CBS News anchor Katie Couric doubled over with laughter when he referred to Rush Limbaugh as a "bonehead" and described his shirt-unbuttoned appearance at the recent CPAC conference as that of an "East European gangster."

Well at least Letterman's not cow-towing to Limbaugh but Katie's sounds disappointed she might not get her interview with him. Cry me a river. Rush might get a little less free air time to bloviate.