Current TV

San Francisco-based Current TV's latest cartoon, "The Stupid Virus," is drawing attention for its bashing of conservatives.

It starts with a lab monkey who gets media attention for its belief that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and skewers the birther movement before moving on to its real target, Sarah Palin. ("Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ," she tweets at one point.)

Part of the backlash has to do with the fact that Al Gore is the most visible face behind Current TV. Much of the attention, however, is on the "TWILF" label being applied to Palin during the course of the cartoon.

Although the term has multiple definitions ("tweep I'd like to follow" being one), the more likely implication is that it brings a Twitter twist to "MILF," or "mother I'd like to . . ."

Writes Associated Content: "Since Current TV is run by Gore and other liberal elite, one would think they'd have more clever jokes. For good message, the cartoon listed Palin's Twitter name as 'Gun-Ho.' And of course, calling Palin a Twilf is just another chance for her supporters to attack the liberal, anti-Palin establishment." Describer says that Palin cannot "get a shred of dignity" as she promotes her new book.

On the right, conservative blogger Noel Sheppard calls it "just a lot of conservative bashing in very bad taste, especially the shot of Palin's Twitter page and her astonishingly offensive screen name 'Gun-Ho.' "

On the left, the Huffington Post merely calls the cartoon a "spoof."

What it really does is draw some attention to Current TV for reasons that have nothing to do with layoffs or abducted reporters. Ultimately, the piece makes no pretense of subtlety or nuance, bashing right-wingers over the head with as broad a club as it can muster -- because we all know that subtlety and nuance don't attract angry throngs nearly as effectively as the alternative.

The fact that Palin appears in only 32 seconds' worth of a 6:21 clip, yet has earned most of the attention for her portrayal, says everything one needs to know when gauging the size of this win for Current TV.

Current TV's investigative documentary series, Vanguard, returns tonight with a story on the "growing national epidemic" of painkiller addiction.

Earlier this month, Laura Ling, Current's vice president in charge of Vanguard, inaugurated the new season with a video commentary on the program.

"It's my goal and Vanguard's core mission to bring crucially important but under-reported stories to light," she says. "Often traditional TV news outlets tend to cover the same headlines in a way that makes us feel distant from what's happening. But when you watch a Vanguard investigation, I hope you feel a strong connection to the people, places, and situations that are being covered....

"We at Vanguard believe that journalists have a responsibility to shine light in dark places. Trying to do this can be risky, emotional, and difficult. But leaving such issues ignored can be even more detrimental to us as a society."

Interestingly, Ling makes no mention of her detention in North Korea earlier this year. Not that the whole intro needed to be about it. But the arrest happened while Ling was purportedly trying to cover one of those "crucially important but under-reported stories." The affair consumed the world's attention for the better part of three months, and, as the Los Angeles Times reports today, the start of the show's third season was delayed due to Ling's absence. It seems odd that Ling and her team would choose to ignore it altogether.

Ling's minute-and-half-long commentary comes at the beginning of this video.

NBCBayArea.com is reporting that layoffs might be in the offing for Current TV. The site says the cutbacks may be in conjunction with a plan to either move video production facilities to Los Angeles, or to outsource them altogether. No word yet from the network.

Story: More Layoffs Rumored at Current TV

You know that famous photo of Bill Clinton sitting stone-faced next to the Dear Leader on his trip to Pyongyang to free the two Current TV reporters? Turns out the guy standing second from the right is the associate director of Stanford's Korean Studies Program.

David Straub is a former career foreign service officer who specialized in Northeast Asia and spent 12 years on Korean affairs, including helping to negotiate about North Korea's nuclear program. According to the Mountain View Voice, Straub, who retired from the State Department in 2006, isn't talking about the Clinton trip, other than to say, "they needed someone like me who spoke Korean and could be of some support."

Laura Ling and Euna Lee have finally issued a statement describing what happened on the morning of March 17 when they were detained by North Korean soldiers:

When we set out, we had no intention of leaving China, but when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side. He pointed out a small village in the distance where he told us that North Koreans waited in safe houses to be smuggled into China....

Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran.

We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained.

The thing is, their account comes across as largely opaque and self-serving. A lot about the nobility of the story they were working on. Not a lot about why they decided to keep crossing the river even though their spidey senses surely must have been tingling. The story would have rung more true if they'd simply fessed up: We kept going because, as any hardcore journalist would, we wanted to get a shot of ourselves on the other side and be able to speak to the camera and say, "Here we are, just inside the North Korean border." We'd respect that. We'd get that.

But portraying the North Korean soliders as "determined" and "violent" because they laid hands on you after you, um, illegally entered their country? In what way was their behavior different than how a U.S. cop would deal with a burglar fleeing the scene of a crime? Even if you were set up?

This account leaves us wanting to say: Man up. Either admit you were playing a dangerous game and were in over your heads. Or concede you knew exactly what you were doing, rolled the dice, and lost.

(And beer foul to Current for signing off on this version of the story.)

Current Media is bringing on another industry veteran to help spur growth: Ken Ripley, who is coming on as Executive Vice President of Advertising Sales.

Ripley has a slew of experience managing ad sales in television and digital media, including at in-game advertising company IGA, Discovery Communications, and TiVo.

Current says Ripley will "develop the next generation of advertising products designed to empower consumers to promote brands with innovative peer-to-peer marketing tools and programs on Current Media and its content partners."

Interestingly, he will also be based in New York.

Ripley's appointment follows the announcement last month that former MTV Networks head Mark Rosenthal would become the company's CEO.

Full press release, after the jump.

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Perhaps the most famous sisters of the summer—National Geographic/CNN/Oprah show journo Lisa Ling and Current TV reporter/North Korea detainee Laura Ling—are, not surprisingly, shopping a book proposal, according to the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy.

What is surprising is that it won't focus solely on Laura's 139 days of captivity. Rather, Speakeasy quotes a publisher who has seen the proposal as saying it will "examine the meaning of sisterhood and journalistic ideals."

Also surprising: How quickly the project has come about. Sure, things move fast in this industry. But it was only eight days ago that Laura was still sitting in a North Korean detention facility where she'd been for over four months, sometimes not talking to anyone for weeks at a time and seeing nothing in her future but 12 years of hard labor.

In contrast, Laura's fellow detainee, Euna Lee, seems to be taking her time easing back into the wider world, focusing much of her attention on her four-year-old daughter Hana. "I will wait for the time when Hana truly believes that Mommy's always there for her, then I will be free to share my stories and experiences in North Korea and be able to express how thankful I am," Lee wrote on LauraandEuna.com, a site that had been created to campaign for the women's release.

U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones told David Gregory on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that the North Koreans said the United States had to send former president Bill Clinton to pick up the detained Current TV journalists, or no one at all.

The conversation starts at 3:23 in the video below. Full transcript of the exchange, after the jump.

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Shane Bauer, the freelance photographer/Cal grad -- and one of the three hikers detained after accidentally crossing into Iran -- has two previous video reports posted on Current TV, both on the SLA in Darfur. To see what kind of work he does, see below.