And what, precisely, were Cameron's bold remarks? When prodded on the subject of same-sex marriage on Morgan's CNN show, the Christianity-themed movie star and father of six said that "I believe that marriage was defined by God a long time ago…. Do I support the idea of gay marriage? No, I don't." And when Morgan asked if he thought homosexuality was a sin, Cameron hedged a bit, refusing to use the word "sin" but declaring, "It's unnatural, it's detrimental and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization." Maybe "sin" would have been a nicer way of putting it.

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BLITZER'S BLOG: It’s going to get nasty!

By Wolf Blitzer, CNN
(CNN) – If you think it’s been a rough ride for the Republican candidates during this current campaign season, just wait. This will be seen as child’s play once the general election campaign begins.

I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: the war of words between President Obama and his campaign supporters versus the eventual Republican nominee and his supporters will be fierce.

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Grace, the woman who has made an entire cottage industry out of her indignation over Casey Anthony, who paints herself nightly as the avenging angel of poor dead Caylee, has never been one to trade in subtlety -- or, for that matter, facts. CNN had to settle a wrongful death suit after the mother of a missing child killed herself after being browbeaten on her show. (The parties agreed that Grace "engaged in no intentional wrongdoing.") She fearlessly championed the prosecution's side in the Duke lacrosse team rape case, blithely referring to "the victim," and went ballistic over the very notion that the accused might be innocent. (She then conveniently remained quiet on the subject after the case was dismissed.) This, folks, is a woman who has guilt-tripped abduction victim Elizabeth Smart for not playing along with her interview tactics. And even after a jury found Casey Anthony not guilty last summer, she has held on to the story like a dog with a bone, insisting that "I told the truth," luxuriating in descriptions of "the backdrop of 2-year-old Caylee's decomposing body just a few houses down from where Tot Mom put her pillow every night," and excoriating Anthony for – rich irony alert –"generating interest in herself."

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"I know it will probably sound weird," Blitzer begins, "but I admire these politicians who put themselves out there before the American public knowing full well that all their warts will be exposed big time." We have a breaking news alert for you here in the Situation Room: Situation Room anchor Wolf Blitzer admires members of the political ruling elite.

Politicians, you see, should be admired, because even though they are by and large rich, they still work very hard, every couple years. So says Wolf Blitzer in his essay on politicians, "I admire politicians, by Wolf Blitzer."

Most of them already have lots of money. They could easily coast at this point in their lives and sit back and relax.

Instead, they are working hard on the campaign trail.

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In a new video -- ostensibly recorded in October but which did not emerge until Thursday -- a now blond, bobbed and bespectacled Anthony narrates a four-minute "diary" entry about her new life. She says she's "extremely excited" about her future and new computer – being able to Skype, take pictures, and "finally have something that I can finally call mine." What she doesn't mention? The child she used to call her own.

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Morgan edited the Daily Mirror, a competitor to Rupert Murdoch's News of the World and the Sun, from 1995-2004, when he was sacked for printing fake photographs and a hoax story on the front page of the paper. No one alleges that phone-hacking was as widespread at Morgan's Mirror as it was at the News Corp. papers, but Morgan has written of listening to a voice-mail message left by Paul McCartney on his ex-wife Heather Mills' phone, and said, in past statements, that basically "everyone" in the British press listened to celebrity voice mails.

The Guardian helpfully liveblogged Morgan's entire appearance. Asked why the Mirror employed private detectives, Morgan played dumb:

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Burnett, despite her youth, is a relic of a bygone age. She embodies '90s "market populism," to use Thomas Frank's phrase, now still surviving on our airwaves as a zombie idea. The idea of America as a mass "shareholder society" is a sick joke in a nation currently sharply divided between struggling debtors and bailed-out creditors, but the dream is popular enough among the well-off professionals in charge of our news networks that CNN pinned its prime-time hopes on Burnett appealing to a mass audience. (If ratings are any indication, it’s not working.)

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Even the many vile and stupid things he says are repetitive and predictable. He's called Barack Obama a Nazi on multiple occasions, for crimes like "criticizing the insurance industry" and "wanting to host the Olympics." Who can forget the time he idly wondered when citizens would "march down to their state legislator's house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp" over a Washington state proposal to regulate phosphates in dishwasher detergent? That's quality political analysis right there! No wonder CNN hired him!

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And it’s odd that he even still has a career in what we’ll charitably refer to as journalism. As a talent show judge, a history of awful editorial decisions doesn’t much matter. But I’d argue that a news interview show host ought not to have been fired from the tabloid newspaper he ran for being credulous and sloppy enough to put a massive hoax on the front page, as Morgan famously did at the Daily Mirror.

Then there’s the fact that one former Mirror reporter has said phone-hacking was an “accepted technique” at Morgan’s paper, and Morgan has written of listening to a celebrity’s voice-mail message that was most likely obtained through the practice that’s landed other British tabloids in serious legal trouble. Morgan has issued a series of increasingly carefully worded denials.

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Not that a newsreader needs to be brilliant, or even to have a decent grasp of general information. But Blitzer's dimness is all-too-evident on "The Situation Room," CNN's seemingly 16-hour-long daytime showcase for its biggest video screen, which is gamely stood in front of by a gibbering goateed moron.

Jack Shafer demonstrated how once Wolf gets a cliché stuck in his head, he can't stop repeating it, like a baby learning English.

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The news, apparently, is that Democrats have asserted that the ad contains a distortion. Are they correct? Who knows! The CNN story prints the quote from the ad, prints the full quote, prints statements from Democrats saying the ad is dishonest, and prints statements from Romney's campaign saying the ad is not dishonest. Then, having armed the reader with all the necessary and somewhat contradictory information, the story moves on to other issues, like how much time Romney's spent in New Hampshire.

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Sparked by Newt's complaints -- and my own sense that the debate questions were poorly done -- I went back and coded the questions in each debate. I divided them into five categories:

• Basic policy questions, which simply ask the candidates their positions on issues of public policy. For example, Tea Party voter Sandra Jones asked: "What would you do to get the economy moving forward? Do you have a plan? And, if so, what is it?"

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That's what she told the crowd assembled at Women's National Republican Club in New York, where she was apparently booked to speak at the same time that she was booked to be interviewed on cable news by that guy from "The Apprentice." The New York Observer was there:

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Mr. Special Agent Grabby also threatened to break a reporter's arm. The reporter is both Norwegian and conservative, making him the least likely threat to Michele Bachmann alive.

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A good place to start learning the lesson is the Grammy Awards nominating committee. Did they have any problem or pause whatsoever in emptying their cabinet of awards for such a song or such a character?

Did one judge say: "Wait, I think we might be sending the wrong message here"? Or, rather, did they do everything they could to get her to the Grammy Awards even after she was barred from entering the United States? The answer is the latter -- and she appeared for her awards by video feed from Great Britain.

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Morgan got his start in newspapers with Rupert Murdoch. He worked for the Sun and edited News of the World in the early 1990s before moving on to edit the Labour Party-supporting Mirror.

Various people have alleged that phone-hacking was widespread among all the tabloids, and not just at News Corp.'s papers. There has so far been no direct proof of this, though it looks like that will soon change, as the BBC reports that it has "found evidence of possible hacking at the Sunday Mirror, and there are separate claims Daily Mirror journalists hacked voicemails."

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Morgan flatly denied the allegations, which Mensch said were based on statements from Morgan's own diaries, published in 2005 as "The Insider." Morgan insisted that Mensch had not actually read the diaries, in which at one point -- during his editorship of The Mirror -- he wrote:

[S]omeone suggested today that people might be listening to my mobile phone messages. Apparently if you don't change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don't answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages. I'll change mine just in case, but it makes me wonder how many public figures and celebrities are aware of this little trick.

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It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

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8 p.m. now goes to Anderson Cooper. Also getting a show is Erin Burnett, a former CNBC personality and make-believe "adviser" to moron birther Donald Trump on his television show "The Apprentice." She is fine, I guess, despite being the longtime public face of the horrible cable channel that represents the destructive interests of the useless bloated financial sector. Better than Piers Morgan, who is not canceled, despite being awful.

CNN claims Spitzer will still be on the cable news network but Spitzer is apparently looking for work at other networks, according to TV Newser.

Also still not fired from CNN: Wolf Blitzer, the dumbest man on television.

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1. Justin Bieber and Tiffani Thiessen have a creepy crush on each other: As evidenced by the shirts the two wore to Canada's MuchMusic Video Awards, bearing each other's faces. Bieber was born one year after "Saved by the Bell" went off the air.

2. James Blunt's blunder: Put a photo of himself on Facebook in front of a historical building near Auschwitz, then claimed it was his "hotel in Poland."

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