Some Minnesotans — Rep. Michele Bachmann and GOP Senate District 56 webmaster Randy Brown, among them — are unlikely to mourn its passing: Liberal MSNBC host Keith Olbermann is halting his “Worst Person in the World” feature. The news comes just days after Comedy Central star Jon Stewart lambasted the increasingly negative tone of cable political shows at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington.

Olbermann apparently didn’t like Stewart’s Saturday critique, especially the part where he felt lumped in with all political shows on cable. But he did acknowledge last night that he understands “the tone needs to change” on the show. “The anger in this news hour was not an original part of it, nor was it an artifice we added to it,” he said. Of the “Worst Person” feature, he explained:

Its satire and whimsy have gradually gotten lost in some anger, so in the spirit of the thing, as of right now, I am unilaterally suspending that segment with an eye towards discontinuing it. We don’t know how that works long term. We might bring it back. We might bring back something similar to it, might kill it outright, and next week we will solicit your input.Its just that today, given the serious stuff we have to start covering tomorrow, we think its the right thing to do short term and then we will see what happens. And we’ll also see if anyone else, on tv, or radio, will do something similar.

The segment has featured Minnesotans a few times, but most prominently Bachmann. In October 2006, she merited a mention for telling congregants at Living Word Christian Center that God called her to run for Congress. In August 2008, she was featured for her comment that Nancy Pelosi needn’t worry about saving the planet from global warming because “someone” — Jesus — “did that over 2,000 years ago.”

Brown was the most recent to draw Olbermann’s attention. This August, he posted a video on a district GOP website that compared the attractiveness of GOP women with Democratic women — Helen Thomas, Rosie O’Donnell and Michele Obama, among others — who were shown in unflattering and often photoshopped photos accompanied by the song “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

Said Olbermann: “Just remember it anytime you hear Sarah Palin or anybody else in the GOP complain about sexism or misogyny on the part of the mainstream media or the Democrats.”

Randy Brown

Brown, as MnIndy first reported, posted a video that compares how “hot” women from the Democratic and Republican parties are. The Democrats — represented by Janet Reno (with photoshopped chest hair), a grimacing Hillary Clinton and Rosie O’Donnell’s head fused onto the body of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, among others — are shown atop a soundbed of Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?” Of the video, Olbermann said: “Just remember it anytime you hear Sarah Palin or anybody else in the GOP complain about sexism or misogyny on the part of the mainstream media or the Democrats. Randy Brown of the Minnesota GOP — plus, I understand the group Baha Men is pissed — America’s worst person in the world.”

In another development, Republican Party of Minnesota communications director Mark Drake demanded a change to our story — one that puts distance between the state party and the local SD 56 party unit. Drake called to say he wanted the headline on our initial report on the video changed to reflect that it wasn’t the statewide GOP, but merely a local district group, that chose to embed a video that one of its endorsed women candidates, Andrea Kieffer, dubbed “juvenile.” (The headline now refers to the “SD56 GOP” rather than the “Minn. GOP.”) The video itself, he said, is “wrong and inappropriate.”

(For the record, Olbermann incorrectly called Brown the “webmaster of the Minnesota state Republican Party.” He’s the webmaster of the SD56 site only — or he was: his byline hasn’t appeared since this story broke and since district GOP-endorsed candidate Kathy Lohmer called for his resignation.)

Apparently, we’re not alone in fielding Drake’s complaints. Mother Jones’ copy editor Adam Weinstein tells the Minnesota Independent that Drake called his publication after it ran a story on the SD56 web video and “berated” the magazine’s receptionist. Drake later emailed Weinstein to declare the story to be “completely false” and demanded a retraction. (Gawker contributing editor Jeff Neumann confirms that he was “hit with the ALL CAPS Drake email assault” too for his story.)

The Mother Jones story now has this addendum:

After he placed several abusive phone calls to our receptionist and a frantic email demanding a “retraction” to this “completely false” story, Minnesota GOP communications director Mark Drake berated me on the phone for a good ten minutes. Besides being unclear on the differences between “retraction,” ”correction,” ”clarification,” ”conversation,” “irate braying,” and “pointless screaming,” he made the point that the video was on a district GOP site, not the state GOP’s site, and that he’d never heard of the webmaster before. While expressing regret over the video’s content, he said the 56th district was one of more than 100 autonomous Republican parties in the state, and his umbrella organization wasn’t responsible. He then refused to answer follow-up questions regarding what action, if any, had been taken by the state GOP to make the local group accountable for its actions. Based on the one or two facts he could assert between loud declamations, I changed the ID of webmaster Randy Brown above. Mark, if you’re reading this and want to explain what steps the state GOP is taking besides abusing reporters by phone, give us a call—and try being nice to the receptionist this time.

Watch the section from Olbermann, who undoubtedly will be receiving a Drake call of his own today.

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Screen grab from MoveOn's rejected ad

MSNBC and its parent, General Electric, refuse to air MoveOn.org’s ad calling for a boycott of Target, stating the spot doesn’t “comply with NBC’s ‘Controversial Issue Advertising policy,’ because the ad is a direct attack on an individual business.” (In fact, the ad referenced “Target and other corporations.”) The advocacy group had purchased a week of airtime in Minneapolis and nationally on MSNBC, according to a MoveOn.org release.

The ad accused the Minneapolis-based big-box retailer of “trying buy our elections,” but shied away from mentioning more controversial aspects of Target’s recent political dealings: a $150,000 donation to MN Forward, a PAC that supports a GOP-endorsed gubernatorial candidate known for affiliations with anti-gay figures and opposition to marriage equality. But today’s press release does name Tom Emmer.

“The ad is part of an on-going campaign against Target Corporation for trying to buy elections following Target’s $150,000 donation in Minnesota Governor’s race on behalf of far-right state Rep. Tom Emmer in Minneapolis. Target is one of the very first companies to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing unlimited corporate cash in elections,” it reads.

“According to MSNBC and GE it is alright for corporations, like Target, to attack candidates and buy elections, but it is not OK for citizen organizations, like MoveOn, to fight back. This is the height of hypocrisy,” said Justin Ruben, MoveOn.org’s Executive Director in the statement. “Target Corporation decided to use the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision to try to buy the Minnesota Governor’s election and now GE and MSNBC are protecting them from deserved consumer backlash. It’s good to know that cronyism is alive and well in the corporate takeover of America.”

MSNBC’s refusal Thursday to air the ad keeps the Target boycott — which seemed to show signs of tapering off, slightly, in the public consciousness — in the headlines a bit longer.

On Monday, the national Human Rights Campaign announced that negotiations had broken down with Target over the possibility of the corporation giving an equal sum to pro-LGBT candidates in Minnesota. The campaign then announced that if Target wouldn’t donate $150,000 to equality-minded politicians, it would.

“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America,” Dean said on YCR’s May 15 radio show on AM 1280 the Patriot. “This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”

“If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that,” Dean continued. “That is what you are seeing in America.”

After these words got wider exposure, Emmer praised the group: “These are nice people.”

The affiliation has driven some of the anger by LGBT advocates over Target Stores’ $150,000 donation to MN Forward, a PAC that has supported Emmer through advertising.

Maddow didn’t mention the Minnesota Independent’s reporting on the program, but last night she tweeted a link to our story, praising our coverage.

Watch Maddow’s segment on the Minnesota race:

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The Dayton-McCain moment provides a glimpse into Dayton’s own glory days — and a Gopher State coda to the Al Franken-Joe Lieberman exchange last week that inspired an outraged McCain to claim he’d never seen a senator cut off a colleague after the allotted time for a floor speech.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow makes the most of the shaggy dog story that brought the ancient clip to light. [Via MinnPost]

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While the show will look at “global cover-ups, mind control, secret societies,” as Ventura snarls, here’s one insider’s view that might come as a surprise: He claims he was “silenced” at his last TV gig, the short-lived 2003 MSNBC show “Jesse Ventura’s America,” because he opposed the war in Iraq.

Ventura told the Los Angeles Times yesterday that the MSNBC gig was “awful.” After a bidding war between networks, he wound up with NBC’s cable arm, where he was being “groomed for a five day-a-week TV show.”

Then, all of a sudden, weird phone calls started happening: “Is it true Jesse doesn’t support the war in Iraq?”

After that show ended, his contract prevented him from doing other shows for a period: “So in essence I had my silence purchased.”

Ventura’s not yet entirely sure “Conspiracy Theory” — which will likely cover a recurring Ventura theme, that the government isn’t being forthright about the 9/11 terrorist attacks — will ever be broadcast, he says. Suggesting that the content of the show will be too hot to handle, he tells the Times he’s learned to believe that a Hollywood project will happen only after the check clears at the bank: “I’ve had a gentleman’s bet with my crew that these shows would never air.”

Via Comedy Central’s Indecision.

Reader Kate writes in to ask whether Bachmann — who told O’Reilly on Wednesday, “I don’t need government to be successful” — has ever received any kind of public assistance. One bit of government help we know her family has received is farm subsidies. As Karl Bremer reported at Eric Black Ink two years ago:

A 949-acre Wisconsin farming operation — in which Bachmann owns up to a quarter-million-dollars interest — collected $47,128 in federal farm subsidies between 2004-2005. That same operation—the Bachmann Farm Family Limited Partnership — has collected as much as $127,868 in federal farm subsidies since the partnership was established in 2001…

…On her 2007 Congressional financial disclosure form, Bachmann lists “Bachmann Farm Family LP, Independence, WI,” as an asset with a value up to $250,000, that produced 2006 income of between $2,501-$5,000…

…Paul Bachmann has collected $127,868 in federal farm subsidies since he formed the Bachmann Farm Family Limited Partnership with Michele and possibly others in 2001, according to the Environmental Working Group.

But even if Bachmann didn’t show up on Olbermann’s show, she did get a characteristically feisty reply from the liberal MSNBC host. To Bachmann’s opinion that interest in her by news outlets like MSNBC is “almost like I have personal stalkers,” Olbermann replied:

“Having had an actual stalker myself, I think the Congresswoman needs to apologize to women (and men) whose lives are blighted and ruined by such terror and threat. Not even in the mildest of senses – of journalists whose aggressiveness might verge colloquially into ‘stalking’ – is she anywhere close to being such a victim.”

Watch Bachmann on The O’Reilly Factor:

“Quite honestly I don’t even know anything about MSNBC,” said Bachmann. “It’s not a network that I watch, and most of the American people agree with that assessment. They aren’t watching it either. And that’s why Fox’s ratings — I mean, it’s like, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC combined. I think Fox even exceeded one of the major networks last week. They’re on the ascendency.”

Bachmann praised conservative bloggers for getting out the truth past the filters of the old media. “I didn’t fear my own editorial boards in Minneapolis-St. Paul when I lived there,” she said. “I’m certainly not going to fear the likes of Keith Olbermann.”

Video, shot by the Washington Independent’s Lazar Backovic, after the jump:

Photos: bachmann.house.gov, oberstar.org

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s talk of stopping health care reform by fasting, praying and wrist-slitting has prompted not only lefty pundits but a top Democratic colleague to question what’s going on between her ears. Jim Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, remarked Tuesday: “I don’t think God’s talking to her anymore. I think she’s hearing other voices.”

Bachmann said in 2006 that she was running for Congress on God’s recommendation (video), and last month said she would run for president if she “felt that’s what the Lord was calling me to do.”

It wasn’t a one-off gag line for Oberstar, who earlier called Bachmann “a sweet woman” but had this advice for elderly health care reform advocates in Duluth who were planning to visit her: ”Tell her that there are voices other than God that are informing her.” [Via Tom Elko]

It wasn’t immediately clear whether one of those voices is that of Rep. Ron Paul, who has Bachmann’s ear on financial policy and will appear with her at a town hall in her district this month.

Oberstar’s comments are of the sort more commonly heard from cable TV yakkers like Ed Schultz, whose show featured her “psycho talk” two days in a row, and Dan Savage, who linked God-inspired politics to hate rhetoric of the worst sort:

When you have a party that claims to speak for God or says God is on its side, the rhetoric heats up and the anger heats up, because it’s not just a battle about ideas and positions and what’s good for the country and bad for the country. It’s a battle about what God wants and what God doesn’t want. And it’s easier to demagogue about your enemies and to despise them and to dehumanize them in this really personal and vicious way. And the religious right is fomenting this kind of hatred in this country at our peril. I really do think that the Michele Bachmanns of the world and the Glenn Becks of the world are actively and consciously, or subconsciously, trying to get — I’m just going to say it — trying to get the president killed. This kind of rhetoric — this paranoid style on the religious right, from Birchers to birthers — doesn’t usually end well. And somebody’s got to put the brakes on it. Unfortunately in the Republican Party, there’s no adults left in the room. There are only the Michele Bachmanns and the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs running the show.

Here’s MSNBC video of Savage (via City Pages) and Schultz (via our sister site the Colorado Independent):

That’s the conclusion of Eric Ostermeier, who blogs at Smart Politics for the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Ostermeier counted Bachmann’s appearances on cable shows since she took office in 2007. That first year: zero appearances. Over the past year: 43 appearances.

So by Ostermeier’s reckoning, Bachmann is on national TV every nine days. At that rate, you can set your Tivo for next Thursday and have a good shot at catching the representative from Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District.

And at that rate, isn’t Bachmann proving she could handle her own weekly show, a la Huckabee?

By the way, Ostermeier confirms what you may suspect: Bachmann is increasingly leaning toward right-leaning networks like Fox. She hasn’t, for example, shown her face on MSNBC since Oct. 17, 2008, the day she told Chris Matthews of her suspicions about colleagues in Congress harboring “anti-American” beliefs.

Her latest appearance, as of this writing, was Tuesday, when she told Fox News host Sean Hannity that reforming the nation’s health care system is unconstitutional.

All that airtime is not an accident; it’s by design. Bachmann has mobilized an exceptionally large squadron of public-relations staffers to pursue “an aggressive plan” for more media exposure. Among other benefits, Ostermeier figures that strategy is reaping Bachmann campaign-fundraising rewards.