Chickaboomer

2012-08-14T05:44:00.002-04:00

On my annual August vacation! Will return soon!

NYT's Bill Keller Has Hard-on For 'Romney Package'

2012-08-13T07:16:00.003-04:00

Bob Schieffer flew to High Point, NC Sunday after scoring the first interview with "The Romney Package" for 60 Minutes. CBS News Huff Post NYDN

Demoted NYT ex-exec editor now columnist Bill Keller kvetches on what you'll get if you buy "The Romney Package" which Keller whines is nothing more than a "conservative turnkey project." Number six of six:

THE TEAM OF RIVALS Just as Obama recruited Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden into his administration, a victorious Romney would reach out to Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain ... just kidding! Santorum does have a speaking slot at the convention, and he needs a job (secretary of health and human services would be a horrifying sop to social conservatives), but the Republican also-rans are most likely to play the role of visible and ornery watchdogs. I expect their only personal contact with President Romney would be in the green room at Fox News.

Related: Huff Post apologizes after falsely fingering Fox News for "doctored" Romney Ryan announcement gaffe. (H/t Johnny Dollar)

Fox's Carl Cameron Stiffs CNN's John King On Romney VP Pick

2012-08-11T16:48:00.000-04:00

Poor John King. The CNN ferret failed in the Romney veepstakes pick as Fox's Carl Cameron got it first Friday night at 11:03 ET.

FOX News:
23:03 Breaking news alert with Carl Cameron phoner (broke into O'Reilly Factor) calling VP Pick now imminent, announcement tomorrow at 9 am. Cameron says “All signs point to likelihood of Paul Ryan,” but cautions, “We don't know for certain.”

23:32 Second breaking news alert Carl Cameron repeats, "All indications Paul Ryan will be the nominee.”

00:28 Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes phoner saying prominent Republicans were instructed to prepare the case for Ryan candidacy.

01:03 Fox News cites AP report quoting GOP official saying Romney chose Paul Ryan as running mate.

CNN:
23:33 Breaking news update (Broke into Erin Burnett show reporting on Louisiana sink hole). Gloria Borger phoner saying Romney will announce Saturday 9 am. They call Paul Ryan "a leading prospect."

00:47 CNN reports several prominent Republicans sources saying Ryan is the pick.

MSNBC:
23:29 Breaking news update (Broke into Lockup prison documentary series) Romney will announce tomorrow at 9 am. Peter Alexander, travelling with Romney campaign in Norfolk VA, cites Fox News as making the call for Paul Ryan.

00:01 Chuck Todd cites three NBC News sources saying Paul Ryan is the pick.

This week the Huffington Post's media scribe talked up King "who has broken more VP picks than anyone over the past quarter century."

CNN hauled in King Saturday as well as the A-Team like the other cable networks.

Huff Post: NBC was the first to break the news of the Ryan pick on television, as Chuck Todd fortuitously found himself in a studio to announce his scoop. He was followed within minutes by The Huffington Post's Jon Ward. (Fox News' Carl Cameron had earlier said that "all signs" pointed to the Ryan pick, but he did not concretely say that Ryan would be picked.)

The networks began switching over to wall-to-wall coverage of the VP news. NBC broke in with a special report, as did ABC. CNN International began simulcasting in the US, with Wolf Blitzer and John King calling in over the phone.

Fox Business Network was the lone live voice on the business channels as CNBC and Bloomberg stuck with canned infomercial spam.

Related: How Ryan nearly foiled the media in a CIA-like exfiltration Friday whisked from Wisconsin to North Carolina. NBC News BuzzFeed.

Paul Ryan's High School Yearbook Media Smear

2012-08-11T13:22:00.003-04:00

Newsweek's partner in slime, The Daily Beast, trolls Twitter for titters: high school shots of Romney's VP Paul Ryan. A lot of them with the subhead:

Mitt Romney's new running mate was voted 'biggest brown-noser' by his senior-year classmates. See the hilarious photos from his yearbook being passed around on Twitter.

Daily Beast: "Paul Ryan was voted prom king (he's the one on the right)."

Apparently Obama's school scrubbers weren't available having suffered the same fate as Jimmy Hoffa.

Daily Beast media maven and CNN media watchdog Howard Kurtz suggests the recent Ryan buzz may have been planted by the Romney campaign:

Romney aides made known that he reached his decision on Aug. 1, right after returning from his foreign trip. That means the recent conservative media campaign on Ryan’s behalf, led by The Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard, did not sway the candidate but might have been encouraged by Boston headquarters.

Ex-CNN Anchor Campbell Brown's New 'Star Power'

2012-08-11T07:41:00.000-04:00

Two years after bagging CNN over bad ratings, ex-anchoress Campbell "No Bias, No Bull" Brown has found her voice. Exposing teacher sex predators protected by powerful public school teacher unions.

Brown started a Twitter campaign last month.

NYT: The posts began to draw the attention of Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, who wrote on Twitter, “Union protects against false allegations,” which elicited this comeback:

“Then how do u explain teacher asking child for striptease and not fired?”

The author of these missives was not a mayoral operative or a city education wonk. It was Campbell Brown, the 44-year-old former CNN anchor and mother of two young sons, who from her home in Lower Manhattan had begun to insert herself into an uncomfortable political fight in a conspicuous way.

The posts were just a part of it. Ms. Brown also spoke about teacher misconduct at a July 26 appearance in the Bronx before Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s education reform commission and in a July 30 spot on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” She also wrote an op-ed article on the issue that was published by The Wall Street Journal.

Then Ms. Brown became the story, at least on Twitter, when Ms. Weingarten reposted a message that pointedly raised Ms. Brown’s marriage to Dan Senor, who is Mitt Romney’s senior foreign-affairs adviser and, more to the point, is on the board of StudentsFirstNY, an education policy group close with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

This escalated the fight. Ms. Brown said she took the post as sexist, though she stressed that she still desired Ms. Weingarten’s help. “Disappointing that @rweingarten thinks I hold my views b/c im married to repub. Always thought she was great role model for women until now,” she wrote.

A local union operative then called any claim that the union defends sexual predators “equivalent to a blood libel,” a term frequently used in reference to an anti-Semitic accusation dating from the Middle Ages that Jews use the blood of non-Jews in ceremonies. The Anti-Defamation League called the statement “inappropriate and over the top,” and the union official apologized.

But the public spat made it clear: Ms. Brown had transformed into the most recognizable face of the combustible school-reform fight and in so doing had injected star power into a campaign the Bloomberg administration has been waging for months.

Romney: Ryan's Hope

2012-08-11T07:06:00.002-04:00

Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan 2012.

Maybe the media will stop harping on Romney's hair. "Desperation into disaster" NYDN. "Bold" Wash Post. "Joe Biden has a lot of debate prep ahead of him." Ezra Klein Wash Post. "Terrible" Newsweek's Michael Tomasky.

The leak came after midnight. Romney rolls out Ryan this a.m. in Norfolk, Virginia.

Related: "Mitt Romney's rivals didn't have to wait long for the first gaffe of the new GOP ticket" NYDN.

Obama made the same gaffe four years ago. Politico

CNN's Fareed Zakaria Caught Plagiarizing, Suspended

2012-08-10T08:09:00.001-04:00

Is CNN's Fareed Zakaria guilty of plagiarism? You be the judge.

Zakaria, host of CNN's Global Public Square (GPS) and TIME mag editor-at-large, seems to have snatched someone else's ammunition in this August 20th anti-gun diatribe. Hang him high in the global public square!

Late this afternoon TIME announced Zakaria's column is suspended "for a month pending further review." Politico

CNN also suspended Zakaria: "We have reviewed Fareed Zakaria’s TIME column, for which he has apologized. He wrote a shorter blog post on CNN.com on the same issue which included similar unattributed excerpts. That blog post has been removed and CNN has suspended Fareed Zakaria while this matter is under review.”

NewsBusters: Here’s a paragraph from his Time piece:

Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA, documents the actual history in Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. Guns were regulated in the U.S. from the earliest years of the Republic. Laws that banned the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813. Other states soon followed: Indiana in 1820, Tennessee and Virginia in 1838, Alabama in 1839 and Ohio in 1859. Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas (Texas!) explained in 1893, the "mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man."

Compare that in its organization to this paragraph from a Jill Lepore New Yorker article from April:

As Adam Winkler, a constitutional-law scholar at U.C.L.A., demonstrates in a remarkably nuanced new book, “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” firearms have been regulated in the United States from the start. Laws banning the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813, and other states soon followed: Indiana (1820), Tennessee and Virginia (1838), Alabama (1839), and Ohio (1859). Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas explained in 1893, the “mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man."

Update 4:18 p.m. Friday: Zakaria's CNN New York office in an email: "Media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my Time column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore's essay in the April 23rd issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time, and to my readers."

Ali Zelenko, SVP, Communications for TIME: TIME accepts Fareed's apology, but what he did violates our own standards for our columnists, which is that their work must not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well. As a result, we are suspending Fareed's column for a month, pending further review.

A TIME spokesperson's earlier reax via email: "TIME takes any accusation of plagiarism by any of our journalists very seriously, and we will carefully examine the facts before saying anything else on the matter."

It's not the first time Fareed has been fingered for the same moral and ethical violation. Paul Farhi Wash Post.

Ann Curry's Clothes Line

2012-08-09T17:58:00.001-04:00

Did whining victim Ann Curry lose the Today show gig over flaming frocks and failure to wear f**ck-me stilettos?

Huff Post: "One day I wore a multicolored dress and someone asked if I was trying to be Toucan Sam. But I chose it because I thought, This will perk up America. I'm encouraged by my bosses to wear these ridiculously high-heeled shoes because women say, 'I love your shoes!' So if it makes women happy, I'll wear them. But I'm still going to be me... I've tried to wear clogs and flats on TV and it hasn't gone well with my bosses."

Curry's August Ladies Home Journal cover story was in the can before she was canned.

(H/t Vinney)

Al Gore Anchoring Current TV's Presidential Convention Coverage

2012-08-09T09:33:00.001-04:00

Weighing anchor: Gore gets a piece of his own network's action.

Al Gore news anchor? The former presidential candidate, Nobel Peace Prize and Oscar winner joins Current TV's presidential convention anchor team.

TV critic David Zurawik: This promises to be cartoon convention coverage -- a bunch of ideologues acting like they are "covering" these historic rituals of the election process.

Is there anyone else out there who remembers the glory years of CBS or NBC News when being part of the convention coverage team was one of the high honors of American journalism? Now it's Joy Behar and Eliot Spitzer and the guy who owns the channel.

Has Zurawik already forgotten MSNBC's biased, abysmal, deplorable coverage of the 2008 Republican convention anchored by Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews?

Premature Evacuation: NYC Shuts Down Trojan Free Vibrator Hotdog Carts

2012-08-09T08:55:00.001-04:00

Thursday update: Trojan's good vibrations are back with four thousand anticipating packing meat after getting free vibrators in NYC's Meatpacking District.

NYDN

NYC police interrupted a Trojan free vibrator giveaway Wednesday claiming the condom company did not have permits for the swelling crowd. Trojan set up hotdog carts where the lines grew long and many $30 and $40 vibrators (sold at Walmart and chain drug stores) were handed out before cops showed up.

Stimulus package.

NYP: "Thousands" were told to "buzz off." More like hundreds.

One lady left hanging "after walking 20 blocks" told the Post: "There’s a lot more important things the city should be worried about than a free vibrator giveaway. [NYC Mayor] Bloomberg doesn’t want anyone to have fun. You can’t have a giant soda. You can’t have a vibrator.”

Anticlimactic.

Trojan had planned 10,000 vibrator giveaways Wednesday and Thursday in locations including the Meatpacking District. Business Insider.

The event was even previewed by the New York Times.

NBC 'Today's' Matt Lauer Hides His Nuts From 'The Flying Squirrel'

2012-08-09T07:50:00.000-04:00

The new TV Guide survey of How Much TV Stars Make finds NBC's Today star Matt Lauer ranks #3 behind David Letterman (#2 $28 mil) and Judge Judy (#1 $45 mil).

Did NBC insure Lauer's aging bod with Lloyd's of London before he attempted Greco-Roman wrestling with Team USA's Ellis Coleman?

Lauer makes the mistake of asking how Coleman got the name "The Flying Squirrel." Watch.

CNN's John King: King of Presidential VP Picks

2012-08-08T07:26:00.001-04:00

Michael Calderone Huff Post: In July 1988, CNN's John King was camped outside the home of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis when he got a sign the Democratic presidential nominee had just picked a running mate.

King, then a 24-year-old Associated Press reporter, noticed that top Dukakis adviser Paul Brountas looked more relaxed as he left the house than he had on previous nights King spent waiting out there. So King raced back to the AP's Boston bureau around 10 p.m., worked the phones all night, and confirmed that Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen was the vice presidential pick just in time for the network morning shows.

"It was a career-changing, life-changing break for me."

Finger in the wind. Short and tweet.

Will King, "who's broken more VP picks than anyone over the past quarter century," score again?

Related: If the veep falls in CNN's forest, will anyone hear it? Prime-time ratings hit a 20-year low last week. Deadline

NBC's 'Today' Turns Ratings Lead Into Gold

2012-08-07T09:55:00.000-04:00

Once the morning show gold standard but tarnished by rival GMA in the ratings, Today gold diggers are riding the coattails of NBC's Olympics coverage, mining big ratings. David Bauder AP

Obama Robbin' Hood: The Dark Knight Raises...

2012-08-07T08:03:00.002-04:00

...maybe two mil in the aggregate between a hotel fundraiser and Weinstein's $15.5 mil mansion where Obama had the balls to brand Mitt Romney's tax plan "Romney Hood" -- "Robin Hood in reverse." ABC News Connecticut Post

NYT's Peter Baker: President Obama finished an evening of fund-raising at a star-studded event at the Connecticut home of the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein on Monday night, and even offered his personal review of the latest Batman movie.

Mr. Obama, who has made Mitt Romney’s wealth a signature issue during this campaign season, had no problem hobnobbing with wealthy New York and Hollywood figures who joined him in the spacious house in Westport complete with swimming pool and badminton court within sight of Long Island Sound.

Two gold Oscar statues sat on shelves as Mr. Obama addressed 60 donors who forked over $35,800 each for the privilege. Among the guests were Anne Hathaway, who played Catwoman in “The Dark Knight Rises,” the new Batman film; Jerry Springer, the talk show host; Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue magazine; Joanne Woodward, the actress and widow of Paul Newman; Aaron Sorkin, creator of television shows like “The Newsroom” and “The West Wing”; and Gov. Daniel P. Malloy of Connecticut.

Mr. Obama made sure to single out Ms. Hathaway, who was wearing “a silver dress with puffed sleeves gathered from the elbow to the shoulder, and a tight bodice,” according to a pool report by Dave Boyer of The Washington Times. “She’s spectacular,” Mr. Obama said. “And I did get a chance to see Batman. And she was the best thing in it. That’s just my personal opinion.”

Mr. Obama also mentioned Mr. Sorkin, “who writes the way every Democrat in Washington wished they spoke.” And he paid tribute to Ms. Woodward. “Joanne and Paul were not only I think what was best about American film but also just embodied the American spirit in so many ways,” he said.

Mr .Weinstein, who hosted the event along with his wife, the fashion designer, Georgina Chapman, cast Mr. Obama as the leading man. “You can make the case that he’s the Paul Newman of American presidents,” Mr. Weinstein said.

Presumably, he didn’t mean Mr. Newman as Butch Cassidy, who didn’t do so well in his last election.

Related: Romney's money edge. Does it matter? Wash Post

Fox News Anchor Asserts Sikhs Are Jews

2012-08-06T07:53:00.000-04:00

Greg Jarrett, a Fox News anchor wrangling the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting Sunday, queries a puzzled Sikh source on if there had been "any anti-Semetic [sic] acts" against the temple.

Earlier Jarrett quoted a local newspaper claiming turbaned Sikhs are "often mistaken for Muslims."

Same thing at CNN. BuzzFeed

Update: Monday on CNN's ratings death row morning show Starting Point the clowns came back from a break after a Sikh temple shooting segment with Billy Joel's Only The Good Die Young.

The Wrap: The song includes the lines, "Well, they showed you a statue/told you to pray/They built you a temple and locked you away/But they never told you the price that you pay/Things that you might have done/Only the good die young."

The song was selected from "Starting Point" panelist Hank Sheinkopf's playlist. Sheinkopf is a Democratic political consultant who in this case had a tin ear.

"We aired a song from a guest’s playlist on the morning show following a three-minute commercial break and before a segment on presidential politics, unrelated to the Wisconsin shooting," the network said in a statement. "Given the news of the day, this was regrettable and we apologize to our viewers.”

Last week's Pink's Stupid Girls under a Sarah Palin Chick-fil-A visit was ruled -- by CNN -- as "unintentional."

Sure.

Why Obama is Avoiding Big Media for Local Yokels

2012-08-06T07:14:00.002-04:00

Huff Post zeros in on the obvious:

"Local media is much better strategically," said Mark McKinnon, global vice chair of Hill + Knowlton Strategies and chief media adviser for George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns.

"Because they are generally so thrilled to have the access, local media [is] more likely to ask friendlier and easier questions," McKinnon continued via email. "Much better chance of controlling your message. Bottom line, you can usually drive local media like a truck."

U.S. Twit in Snit Over Brit Olympics Gold Gush?

2012-08-05T12:27:00.000-04:00

UK Daily Mail

How would Slate's David Sirota spin BBC Olympics commentators' euphoria as Mo Farah becomes the first Brit to win the gold in the 10,000 meter?

Sirota went public a few days ago advising his fellow travelers troubled by "liberal Americans' Olympic dilemma: how to root for their countrymen without appearing jingoistic."

Spoiler alert: "Don't chant U.S.A!" was Sirota's solution:

In a world of “asymmetrical” threats and shifting geopolitics, Olympic fandom is a haven for the simpleton in all of us. That Old Glory icon next to an athlete’s name distills the games into the good-versus-bad terms that are so elusive in the real world.And yet, as I’ve grown older, I find my “U.S.A.!”-chanting reflex increasingly interrupted by pangs of discomfort, and not because I’m ashamed of our country or our Olympians, but because the relationship between American nationalism and the Olympics has been slowly infused with a different — and politicized — meaning. In short, chanting the initials of our nation seems less like it did in 1984 than it has since 1992.
Those two Summer Games were the formative events of my — and so many others’ — Olympic fan psyche.

Sirota, permit me to direct you to Hitler's "politicized" 1936 Berlin Olympics Nazi triumph -- and another runner, Jesse Owens.

Watch the BBC crew celebrate British nationalism:

What's Worse? Obama Hijacking Wedding Gifts or an Assault Rifle Raffle?

2012-08-05T07:33:00.000-04:00

"Gravy boat." They're called "boats." Left-leaning Politico attempts to negate the negatives over Obama's desperate fundraising schemes, e.g. instead of wedding gifts, ask suckers to donate the dough to Obama's campaign, by fingering other pols' funny fundraising antics:

A “deli throwdown” competition to benefit New York Democratic Reps. Steve Israel and Jerrold Nadler.

The raffling off of an AR-15 assault rifle by state Rep. John McCaherty (R-Mo.).

Hunting gators with Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) or shooting doves with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

Chowing down on Chunky Monkey while slugging Magic Hat No. 9 with Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), or tasting Irish whiskey with Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.).

Tailgating on Capitol Hill with Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.).

Going skiing with Utah Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch.

Singing along to show tunes on Broadway with House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)

"Need not be present to win."

"Raffle for a semi-automatic assault rifle" is in the first sentence of Politico's "The lighter side of raising cash."

Newsweek's Romney 'Wimp' Writer Now Pimps Obama 'Landslide'

2012-08-04T17:58:00.000-04:00

The same liberal hack who brought you Newsweek's cover story on "insecure wimp" Mitt Romney, delivers -- a week later -- divination of an Obama "landslide."

It's in the bag.

Michael Tomasky crows: It's beginning to look like Obama can lose the big Eastern four—Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida: all of ’em!—and still be reelected.

"Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one." Clint Eastwood The Dead Pool 1988

NBC Olympics Gym Nasty

2012-08-04T09:00:00.000-04:00

NBC's Bob Costas: "Much of America has fallen in love with Gabby Douglas. Also safe to say that there are some young African-American girls out there who tonight are saying to themselves, 'Hey, I'd like to try that, too.'"

NBC then segues to a TV show pimp for the new series Animal Practice with the star -- a monkey -- swinging on gymnastics rings:

NBC: "No offense was intended." Huff Post

Related: Stupid cable news Olympics coverage "spoiler alert" tricks. Jon Stewart on NBC's gym dandy: "Only Brian Williams can pull off a news vault with such a high degree of difficulty."

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Rush Limbaugh Gets The Last Laugh On Fluke Advertiser Interruptus

2012-08-04T08:38:00.000-04:00

The head of a company that pulled spots on Rush Limbaugh's show after the Sandra Fluke brouhaha admits the move cost the company big time. "It turned out to be a bigger hole in our revenue than we had thought."

NewsBusters nails Carbonite CEO David Friend's "spin" that "things would've been worse" had he not bailed, while Huff Post headlines the quote.

On August 1 Carbonite released its 2d Quarter 2012 results, the first full quarter after dropping Limbaugh in March. The results shocked Wall Street, as Carbonite did not meet its growth targets, causing multiple analysts to drop the target price. The stock dropped 15% in a day. William Jacobson Legal Insurrection

Jon Stewart: Chick-fil-A 'Irritable Fowl Syndrome'

2012-08-03T08:32:00.000-04:00

Jon Stewart on the "Million Mouth March": Oh, and what better way to stand up and say I oppose gay people's rights to get married than to head down to a Chick-fil-A, grab ahold of two buttery buns, split 'em open and gobble down some of that hot, greasy cock. Special sauce all over your face. You don't want to swallow but you gots to. It just feels so good to be politically active.

But seriously, folks.

Stewart on the big city mayors who flouted the First Amendment by vowing to blocking Chick-fil-A stores in their cities: The right's always complaining about the government persecuting them for their beliefs. In this case I'm pretty sure they got something. Pretty sure you can't outlaw a company with perfectly legal business practices because you find their CEO's views repellent. I'm not sure what amendment covers that, but it's probably n the top one.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Conservative Columnist Chastises Romney Gaffe Press Police: 'Seriously, we send people to journalism school for this? Why not outsource the work to Media Matters and be done with it?'

2012-08-02T09:04:00.005-04:00

Shovel-ready. TIME August 13, 2012 cover: "A Rich Man's Game."

National Review editor and Fox News talking head Rich Lowry in Politico: Imagine if a cadre of journalists were recruited to cover the Obama campaign from 100 devoted Rush Limbaugh listeners living in the 230-mile corridor from Midland to Amarillo, Texas. Imagine they were overwhelmingly traditionalist on hot-button cultural issues and heavily evangelical, owned five firearms each and largely socialized with one another and other conservative Republicans. They could try their damnedest to be fair to the president whose politics they disdain. Still, their own predilections would inevitably show through. In the real world, journalists tend to have the opposite of all these qualities, and on top of them are usually self-important and willfully blind to their own biases. It’s a wonder they aren’t told “shove it” more often.

CNN's Hocus-Pocus Focus: 'Fixing' a Ratings Hole

2012-08-02T08:11:00.001-04:00

“To be clear, we are not satisfied with CNN's ratings and we are focused on fixing it.” The Hollywood Reporter quoting Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes Wednesday massaging analysts in the quarterly earnings conference call.


Mr. Fix-It: CNN in peril. Period.

“We’re going to do a better job putting on programming that will hold viewers. We see a strong demand for objective, comprehensive, non-partisan views. We need to do it in a more compelling, more engaging way than we’ve been doing of late. So that’s what we’re going to focus on next.”

“I think as we all know, it is a great brand.”

Branded Anderson Cooper and "cume" are CNN's only bright spots in the ratings.

Forbes sniffs Bewkes offers nothing more than "vagaries" in outlining "Time Warner's New Strategy for CNN: Find A New Strategy."

Chick Fillets Media, Pressures Presidential Debate Organizers To Pluck Female Moderator

2012-08-02T07:22:00.001-04:00

. Period. Lean backward. To go forward. Huff Post putting pressure on the presidential debate Powers That Be to name a woman moderator:

When ABC News' Carole Simpson was hired as the first female and African American presidential debate moderator in 1992, it never occurred to her that two decades would pass without another being chosen. But in the years since she slung questions at candidates George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, not one woman has been chosen for the role.

The Commission on Presidential Debates, the organization in charge of selecting debate moderators, has chosen only one woman besides Simpson since it took over the debate process in 1987. PBS's Gwen Ifill presided over the vice presidential debates held in 2004 and 2008. The lack of female voices in the presidential debates highlights an issue that continues to plague American media: Men do the vast majority of the talking, even on issues of particular import to women.

Simpson says the reality that men controlled the media was never more clear to her than in 1998, when Viagra first hit the market. "ABC News was mostly middle-aged men, so we had Viagra stories up the kazoo. Every night, we did a story about Viagra, and all the women are like, 'Enough already!'"

Now that women's health issues are at the forefront of the political discussion in 2012, the timing seems ripe for a female moderator. The Change.org petition, which has nearly 120,000 signatures, suggests a few possible contenders: Gwen Ifill, ABC News' Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric, CNN's Christiane Amanpour and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.

None of the candidates mentioned by the petition, in Simpson's opinion, are quite perfect for the job. Amanpour, she says, is "fabulous on foreign issues," but not as experienced on domestic ones. The others are too closely tied with one political party or the other. Simpson says her picks would be PBS's Judy Woodruff or CNN's Soledad O'Brien.

Soledad O'Brien? The Aaron Sorkin Newsroom dip chick would be filleted . . .