The NY Post headlines it: PALIN STORY BAD NEWS FOR MAG.

US WEEKLY is feeling the heat for its blatant slam job of Sarah Palin on this week’s cover – with angry readers canceling their subscriptions in droves.

Sources told MSNBC.com from 5,000 to 10,000 subscribers canceled after the mag published its “Babies, Lies & Scandal” story about John McCain’s running mate.

A rep for the mag denied the numbers were that high, but admitted to Page Six 1,000 subscribers had axed their subscriptions. The flack tried to downplay the backlash, insisting: “There has been no impact on our overall total . . . We have added about 1,000 new subscribers” at the same time.

Some insiders wonder whether raking the conservative Alaska governor over the coals in a six-page spread with headlines like “Anatomy of a Scandal” was influenced by Jann Wenner, a rabid supporter of Barack Obama and whose Wenner Media publishes the celeb sheet – and who endorsed Obama in Rolling Stone.

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One mag editor told MSNBC: “When Us went to print Monday night, it looked like the ticket was falling apart. They went to print thinking Palin was dead in the water, and their mistake was thinking everyone who reads Us is a Democrat, when they’re not.”

The Palin blast comes after Us Weekly’s glowing cover, “Michelle Obama: Why Barack Loves Her,” which gushed, “She shops at Target, loved ‘Sex and the City’ and never misses the girls’ recitals. It’s the untold romance between a down-to-earth mom and the man who calls her ‘my rock.’ ”

Some in the media are now pushing the absurd theme that the Republicans are running against them because they lack any other issues to run on. McCain, however, is not the evil genius to have been able to anticipate how the media would react to his pick of Governor Sarah Palin. Some condescension and criticism, sure; but that the major line of attack would involve her children — this was the bi-coastal media elite taking their contempt for middle America to a newly abhorrent depth. And, as Us Weekly is discovering, you can only be so obvious about something before your readers start actually noticing it. The smearing headline of their non-story, which they chose to blare from supermarket displays across the country, along with a photo of Governor Palin, is “Babies, Lies and Scandal.” Well, one out of the three is true. Perhaps that’s good going for the likes of Us Weekly. There are babies in Sarah Palin’s story to be sure, but the lies and scandal are emanating not from her family but only from Jann Wenner and his fellow travelers in the world of left-wing theme-spinning. It is entirely appropriate that those in the McCain/Palin campaign should hit all of the smears and condescension right back at their critics. Indeed, if they did not respond as forcefully and effectively as they have — and this goes especially for Governor Palin herself — they would soon be nothing but dead in the water (which is just what Us Weekly thought they were).

It’s yet another positive by-product of Palin’s nomination that many who were previously not too troubled by liberal bias in the media are now realizing with a bang just how real it truly is.

Keep it going, guys.

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