Last week, it was the use of the KKK in an ad. This week, it's Adolph Hitler.

We get it: Copywriters are clever.

But please, someone, find us a branding expert that says, "Attaching your brand to something so widely considered putrid is a wise move."

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Know what? 2009 is looking like a much better year to release that movie about the attempted assassination of Adolph Hilter. After all, there are only about seven months left in 2008, and who wants to rush such a masterpiece to theatres if the climate isn't right?

So goes the story of United Artists' Tom Cruise and partner Paula Wagner, who are yanking the Bryan Singer-directed Valkyrie from a 2008 release, putting a hefty amount of distance between the World World II flick and the studio's previous release, the bomb Lions for Lambs.

If you ask MGM distribution chief Clark Woods, the decision was an obvious one: "When an opening became available for Presidents Day weekend, we seized the opportunity." Who knew Presidents Day weekend made for such a blockbuster premiere date?

Or maybe it's the fact that Tom Cruise knows Valkyrie is going to underperform, and he hasn't taken care of that little matter of securing his career's future just yet.

Dan Abrams last night premiered his relaunched show Verdict, and while the name changed, one of our favorite segments, "Beat the Press," remains. It's Dan's chance to pick playground fights with the competition — always a dangerous game, since MSNBC will undoubtedly have slip-ups of its own. (Not that it keeps Jossip from playing that game.) But risks aside, it'd be impossible to pass up an opportunity to call out Fox News' Ainsley Earhardt championing Adolph Hitler, prove Bill O'Reilly dead wrong, and make a CNN talking head sound like a tweenager.

Well this can't be good for a quarterly report.

The Walt Disney Co., whose stock has been performing modestly over the past half decade, now has to figure out what to do about something they can't exactly control: reports that everyone's favorite mass murderer, Adolph Hitler, had a little hobby drawing Disney characters during World War II.

That's the claim by a Norwegian war museum after its director, William Hakvaag, found drawings of Bashful and Doc from 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a copy of which Hitler owned, as well as one of Pinocchio, from the 1940 film, hidden in a painting Hakvaag bought at auction.

Hitler fancied himself an artist, and even tried to make a living from it, before setting his sights on taking of the world and eradicating it of any non-Aryan blood. Which doesn't confirm these drawings are legitimately his, but even the possibility presents some bad press for Mickey Mouse's owner.

There's not much Disney can do here except issue a carefully worded, one-line press release acknowledging and dismissing the matter, and hoping it'll pass. Or they could go the legal route, claim copyright infringement, demand the works be turned over to them, and drum up the worst kind of publicity to move a few DVDs.