Publisher David Bradley's once-esteemed magazine hired celebrity lens-woman Jill Greenberg to snap portraits of John McCain. Greenberg, an outspoken left-winger who goaded children into crying on film and captioned the images with anti-Bush slogans, sabotaged the photo shoot and gloated about it on a photo industry website.

After tricking McCain into standing over a strobe light to create ugly shadows on his face, she then posted vandalized versions of the imagery on her personal website with crude, vulgar labels. One featured McCain with fangs and blood dripping from his mouth -- with the Greenberg-added words, "I am a bloodthirsty warmongerer (sic)." Another piece of her "art" showed an ape (a favorite Greenberg subject) defecating on McCain's head. The highly respected editors at Atlantic professed shock despite Greenberg's notoriety. The name of her blog: "Manipulator."

4. The quote doctors and math-manglers at CNN.

In a botched attack on Sarah Palin, CNN reporter Drew Griffin cited National Review writer Byron York allegedly questioning Palin's abilities and character: "The National Review had a story saying that, you know, I can't tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, or all of the above." York, however, was characterizing the press coverage of Palin.

In a botched tally, CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien proclaimed that an audience poll showed "overwhelming" preference for Joe Biden after the vice presidential debate. A freeze frame of the show of hands, however, showed the audience split. The mathematically challenged O'Brien also claimed that Palin slashed Alaska's special needs budget by 62 percent (which she recycled from the liberal Daily Kos blog), despite the fact that the governor increased special needs funding by 12 percent. Facts, schmacts.

5. Us Magazine publisher Jann Wenner's Obama apparatchiks.

The gossip mag's partisan slime job on Palin and her family ("Babies, lies, and scandal") last September opened the floodgates of Palin-bashing across the mainstream media and was the nadir of the year. Wenner -- a prominent Obama backer who ran countless hagiographies of him in sister publication Rolling Stone and featured the Obamas with the slavering headline "Why Barack Loves Her" on Us Magazine's June cover -- had his media flack e-mail the anti-Palin hit piece to all media in St. Paul for the Republican National Convention: "Might be useful as an illustration of how the news is playing out," the flack wrote.

Indeed, the side-by-side covers of the Palin smears and the Obamas' deification perfectly illustrate the year in Obamedia.