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It looks as though Lou Dobbs has picked up another spot on another cable news network. This time, he's not the interviewer. He's the interviewee.

Dobbs will appear as a guest on Monday's episode of The O'Reilly Factor where host Bill O'Reilly will grill the former CNN talking head on his sudden departure from his previous employer, his future career options and his never-ending quest to battle the invading armies of the Mexican empire aka illegal-immigrants.

Of course, the timing could not be worse. His appearance should only "fuel speculation" that Dobbs has scored a job at the Fox News Channel. The network's PR team continued to deny such speculation, something they'll continue to do until he scores a job at the Fox News Channel.

Sit a kid in front of a TV for an hour a day and a parent is bound to find something that offends them, other than the fact that plopping impressionable minds in front of a TV unsupervised is considered "good parenting."

Sesame Street is no stranger to controversy. Critics, cynics and crybabies have called out the show on everything from questionable behavior to the ambiguous situations...of puppets. Of course, all of these complaints and cackling criticisms just scratch the surface of a much bigger issue that has largely gone unaddressed: the total loss of our sanity and grasp on reality.

So as we look back at the last 40 years of television's greatest children's show, we see some speed bumps along the way. These are the ones that caused the greatest loss of tire pressure.

Poor Oscar the Grouch. Not even PBS' ombudsman will cut him a break. No wonder he's so grouchy. Well that and he lives in a garbage can. That would make me more than a little perturbed.

A clip of a two-year episode of Sesame Street popped up on YouTube thanks to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart's on his Big Hollywood blog in which Grundgetta, Oscar's girlfriend, makes a crack about "POX News" that sounds very close to "FOX News." PBS' ombudsman Michael Getler said while the name could be construed as a "clever and appropriate title" to the "Grouch News Network," the joke about the reference "should have been resisted.

I was shocked when I saw it. Oscar the Grouch has a frigging girlfriend?!?


[via Popeater]

The other day, Fox News newsman Shepard Smith announced on his Facebook page that something "crazy" would be going down on his show. Just what kind of crazy are we talking about? A monkey wearing a Napoleon hat crazy? Putting two bananas in your ears and barking like a walrus crazy? TiVoing Brothers crazy?

He never officially confirmed just what the "crazy" thing would be, but I wonder if this is it. Smith, the Fox News Channel's equivalent of Edward R. Murrow, issued an official apology for his network's (and I'm actually quoting) "lack of balance."

The "lack of balance" in question referred to Fox correspondent Shannon Bream, who conducted an interview with Republican candidate for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, but failed to nail down his Democratic opposition Jon Corzine. Smith said he didn't know the candidate wasn't interviewed and that "If I had control, it wouldn't have happened." Quick, someone check The Weather Channel for Hell's temperature and five-day forecast!

If your town wants to honor Glenn Beck with his own day, you better check the cushions in the couch for change and start taking up a collection.

The mayor of Mount Vernon, Wash. recently gave Glenn Beck his own day, and the taxpayers will now have to fork over more than $17,000, most of which was for police overtime.

Where are the teabaggers when you actually need them to protest unfair taxation without representation?

It's official, "pulling a Letterman" means sleeping with a co-worker. Why? Because I said so.

It seems that ABC's late night host Jimmy Kimmel has been in a relationship with a member of his staff as well. This time, the host has been dating the show's head writer Molly McNeary for "several months."

This forced Fox News to pose the question if Kimmel is "pulling a Letterman" and ask if he should be forced to apologize on the air to Ben Affleck. That normally would be hilarious if Fox News didn't handle all of their news with the same level of integrity and tact.

And yes, I'm jealous they came up with that line first.

Every time I watch a TV talking head like Glenn Beck, I usually walk away with the same thought I had every time I walked out of my economics class in college: "What the hell were they talking about?"

That's because there isn't anything journalistic or scientific about their pontifications. It's all "gut talk," particularly Beck who throws around more wild and unfocused theories about the ongoing war between "us vs. them" than a homeless preacher in a bus station. Chances are if you actually sat down and simply asked him "what did you mean by (x)", he would give you a 1,700 word answer that answered everything but the question you asked him.

Even though the sudden pull out from several sponsors hasn't caused Fox to prematurely eject Glenn Beck from his time slot, he was suspiciously absent from the airwaves this week.

Some suggest this Beck-free week wasn't just a much needed vacation for the host, or for the viewer for that matter.

TVNewser spoke to some Fox insiders who claim the network ordered the silver haired devil to take a week off so some of the heat over his advertising boycott could die down.

When a company does business with the likes of Glenn Beck, the saying "What you see is what you get" could not be more appropriate to the situation.

That's only because "Crazy is as crazy does" really isn't a saying.

Some of the show's sponsors are learning that lesson a little late in the game now that they have started pulling their ads from Glenn Beck's Fox News show in the wake of comments he made regarding President Obama's rampant racism.

It seems the never-ending feud between Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly has become a kangaroo boxing match. The worst thing you can do is get in the middle of it.

That's exactly what the parent owners of Fox News and MSNBC tried to do when they arranged a "cease-fire" between them and their top-tier shows' "lieutenants."

The cease-fire, however, didn't last long. It's another case of the ol' Rufus T. Firefly conundrum for peace. Either side might be willing to do whatever it takes to end this war, but they've already paid two months' rent on the battlefield.

There have been a lot of uneasy vibes floating around the offices of TV Squad HQ about the elevation of Family Guy to Best Comedy status by this year's Emmy nomination committee. I'm not speaking for the entire group, but it does feel a little out of place earning a nomination that even The Simpsons couldn't score in its 20 year history. It's like giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Michael Jackson for writing "Heal the World" and completely snubbing Nelson Mandela.

But no one is more unhappy about the news than pop culture's official lifeguard, Bill O'Reilly.

He called out Seth MacFarlane's cavalcade of cartoon pop culture for winning the nomination during his "Reality Check" segment.

Walter Cronkite's passing didn't mark the end of an era in the TV news business. The era he helped produce and prolong died long before he did.

It's hard for me to ever imagine a time when people considered a major network news anchor as America's most trusted source for anything. Claims of bias and political persuasion being injected into every story with a meat syringe created a thick fog that made it very hard to cover anything with a modicum of honesty.

Cronkite, however, was the man people turned to when something blew up, exploded, imploded, launched, landed or any other number of descriptive verbs, because his goal wasn't to make news every time he stepped in front of a camera. His goal was just to report it.

If anyone in the press should ever ask you, "What were you doing when you heard the great Michael Jackson was dead?", be sure to answer with: "Reading one of your stories on what a lowlife you thought he was just prior to his death."

There are times when I'm ashamed to be a part of the media. The 48 hours after Michael Jackson's death was just such an epoch. I chose that last word carefully because the endless, maudlin, self-congratulatory coverage the major news networks wallowed in following Jackson's death was as long-winded as it was embarrassingly dramatic.

While that coverage is sure to continue throughout the memorial services, unavoidable custody and estate battles and forthcoming autopsy reports, none of that will compare in sickly sweet sensation to what CNN, Fox News and the others lowered themselves to just following the singer's death.

Normally I don't look forward to doing posts on The View or Glenn Beck because it makes people think that I watch them on a regular basis.

Both, however, collided together to make a tasty train wreck sandwich when Beck appeared on a recent episode of The View.

Co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters took the crying giant to task for characterizations Beck made of them on his radio program. Beck's subsequent chair squirming was so great, it shifted the tectonic plates and almost created a second earthquake on the Northeastern seaboard.

When Jon Stewart announced before a studio full of deafening cheers and Stephen Colbert's deafening silence that Barack Obama would become the 44th President of the United States, the show seemed to be in an interesting pickle.

Could the show be just as funny as it had been under an administration that didn't blur the line between setups and punchlines? Could Stewart and friends find the funny in a president who inspires more love and fear in people than a teddy bear with a switchblade?

So let's grade The Daily Show's first 100 days under socialism President Obama report card.