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Multiple early reports that the Rolling Stones were bleeped by ABC last night during the Super Bowl halftime show appear to be incorrect. According to this Chicago Tribune story, “NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said after the show that earlier in the week Jagger agreed to the NFL’s request that he skip those lyrics” — which included the final word in one of “Start Me Up’s” most familiar lines (“You make a dead man cum”) and in “Rough Justice” (see below). Apparently, Jagger willingly bleeped himself, simply not uttering the offending words (and adding a newer, lamer spin to the video in the post below).

The Tribune points out that the Rolling Stones once changed “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together” — on “The Ed Sullivan Show” — but it’s even weirder than that. Last night, Jagger made a joke that the Stones could have played at the first Super Bowl. Actually (as our own King Kaufman pointed out to me) the date of the first Super Bowl — Jan. 15, 1967 — was the exact same date as the Stones’ appearance on “Ed Sullivan.” Bizarre.

Open Salon interview.

A struggling Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., went nuclear Wednesday, with an ad that tries to ally challenger Bob Casey with North Korea and China. Ah, the acrid smell of desperation in the weeks before a congressional election! Be prepared for even more of these terror-filled spots in these glorious final days of Campaign 2006, all of which carry a little DNA from the mother of all scare ads: The 1964 Lyndon Johnson “Daisy Girl” ad against Barry Goldwater (bottom ad, below).

From Michael Scherer’s piece today: “The GOP seems to believe that Ford’s appeal to its most reliable voters is working. In recent days, the Republican National Committee has attempted to reverse the troubling polls in Tennessee with a television ad that both attacks Ford’s religious credentials and invokes that old standby of American politics, racial fear.”

This National Republican Senatorial Committee ad against Harold Ford sports an early mention of a Playboy connection that the party hopes will rile Christians against Ford.

Salon’s piece on Rep. Harold Ford Jr.’s senate campaign spotlights his appeal to churchgoers, as in the TV spot below.