Conservative-correcting non-profit Media Matters for America wants you to "Drop Fox"—and they're launching their campaign from the bottom up. As in, the bottom of a subway tunnel.

A bevy of advertisements for the campaign against Fox News Channel hit stations across the Metro system last night. Picking up on the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally rhetoric, the ads proclaim that "Fox Keeps Fear Alive" and urge rally-goers to "Restore Sanity, Fight Fox." Media Matters' schtick is that fear-mongering Fox is "is not a news organization, it is a right-wing political operation."

The latest insertion into this weekend's frenzy is described as such:

"Each day, Fox News 'keeps fear alive' with a steady stream of false and misleading attacks on President Obama, progressive members of Congress, and policy initiatives like reforming health care, fixing the economy, and fighting climate change.

Fox hosts like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly play on the fears and prejudices of their audiences and help create a climate of uncertainty, paranoia, and hate. Network contributors like Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, and Newt Gingrich appear as political experts while trafficking in lies and misinformation."

Media Matters will, naturally, be present on the Mall on Saturday. They'll be armed with rally signs, lapel stickers, and t-shirts to gather signatures for the Drop Fox petition.

We don't necessarily know if this campaign is going to work—for one, most of the people coming to the rally probably hate Fox News with a passion already anyway—but hey, can't complain about anything that puts a little revenue in Metro's coffers without another fare increase!

Photo courtesy of Media Matters for America

Really, the good thing about the blowup was that it drew additional attention to Jones, providing further publicity to the allegation that he is a 9/11 Truther.

Here's Jake Tapper:

Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Number 46 of the petitioners from the so-called "Truther" movement which suggests that people in the administration of President George W. Bush "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of "the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever."

He did not explain how his name came to be on the petition. An administration source said Jones says he did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name.

Shoe's on the other foot, right? Believing that your country murdered more than 3,000 citizens in order to fuck with gas prices is very similar in its paranoia and emphasis on imagined facts to believing that Pres. Barack Obama is not an American. What's fascinating is that Obama can hire a 9/11 Truther and not be called a traitor, yet any Senate Republican would be dead to rights if he came within 10 feet of bringing a Birther on staff. You know what the Birthers need? Professors.

Sorry for the short roundup, y'all. It's FALL ARTS GUIDE TIME!

• Health care. Jesus Christ on toast with Marmite, am I ever sick of hearing about health care. Whole Foods—SHUT UP. Public option opponents—SHUT UP. Fox News—SHUT UP. Meanwhile, in British rationing news, I'm horrified to report that my wife's grandmother recently had to wait over an hour to be seen, mostly because the Edinburgh Council moved the Royal Infirmary from right across the Meadows all the way out to Little France, which is as far from the city center as it sounds. This is outrageous and would never happen in the United States, where there is no socialized medicine and never will be—SHUT UP.
• MEDIA NEWS! Battle of the Hottest rages on Capitol Hill. Jayson Blair is a life coach! City Paper's parent company begins its Week of Reckoning today! CEO tells Atlanta Journal-Constitution decision to buy CP and Chicago Reader was thoroughly vetted: "It wasn’t just me running over a cliff."

• THE WORLD OF SPORTS! Nats lose, lose acting GM, sell many seats for Friday night's game for $1. Morning Roundup will be there with eldest son, who will be limited to one dessert item purchase. Also exciting: Washington National Opera sent me a Nats hat and some Cracker Jack to promote its free simulcast of Barber of Seville at Nationals Park on Sept. 12. I may go to that, too! But I'm totally sneaking in the Cracker Jack on Friday. YOW! Also, Nascar full of Republicans. Aussi: Quel dommage!
• ENTERTAINMENT! 2009's worst album title. Weezer Advances. MTV maybe does, too.

Because of security and traffic concerns, most of the news teams' staffers won't be leaving their offices until their inaugural duties are done.

For many folks, that means they won't go home until Wednesday.

One problem with this arrangement.

"There are two showers in the whole building," a C-SPAN producer tells me.

Turns out the only full-service restroom is located in a tiny health club on the ground floor of the media center.

I ask the C-SPAN producer if he plans to spend any time over the next two days standing in line behind Greta Van Susteren and other media types to use one of the spickets.

"Nope," he says.

Van Susteren always looks she just got a whiff of something awful, anyway. Now she'll have an excuse for the grimace: The whole compound could reek like a Port Authority bathroom in no time.

As if the funk wasn't going to be enough with the building just full of its regular tenants, CBS crews from out of town are squatting on the third floor.

As another famous person with a "Van" prefixed surname, the great Ronnie Van Zant, once wrote: "Ewwww! That smell! Can't you smell that smell?"

Yeah. Smells like cable news.

"RESULTS ROLLING IN" over what appears to be a backwoods church, followed by "McCain Wins West Va., Ky; Obama Takes Vermont."

Last Thursday, Barack Obama appeared for the first time on Bill O'Reilly's "The O'Reilly Factor." The Fox program uses a nice bit of that Rotational-Movement-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named to package the interview:

"'Factor' Exclusive," reads the online teaser. "Obama in No Spin Zone for first time." The video splash also identifies the spot as a "Factor Exclusive."

Wouldn't it have been embarrassing if some other news outlet totally scooped the Factor, scoring the first Obama interview with the Factor before the Factor?

Fact: Based on a number of factors, the O'Reilly Factor is still the best O'Reilly Factor of all the O'Reilly Factors.

The O'Bama interview will continue on tonight, tomorrow, and Wednesday. If I'm lucky, O'Reilly will repeat my new favorite line, which I intend to shamelessly appropriate as my own: "I'm asking this as an American as well as a journalist."