I have now fixed this.
Lindsay Lohan is now amongst They Who Must Not Be Named.
Absent some sort of political activity, such as endorsements, running for office (PLEASE GOD NO!!), or their attempting to assassinate someone, she will not be mentioned here.
And yes, the rumors of a sex tape had much to do with this decision.
One of the things that was interesting in the New York Times profile of Roger Ailes, at least it is if one tries to follow the comings and goings of Rupert Murdoch, his family, and News Corp, is the fact that a member of the Murdoch family, Matthew Freud.
Well, one Murdochologist, Michael Wolff, says that this is the beginning of a process that will have Ailes out in the next 12 months or so:
When Tim Arango, the New York Times reporter who got the statement from Freud, called and said he was doing a story on Ailes’ rising power, Freud would have consulted with the rest of the family. James Murdoch would have said to his father something along the lines of, “this is untenable, this idea that Roger is the center of the company.”
Murdoch, who protects nothing so much as his own primacy at News Corp., and who always likes somebody else to do his dirty work, would likely have said, in his particular patois, “umm…goddamn…grump…son-of-a-bitch…they’re gonna say that? Who put ‘em up to it? Okay, okay, do what you want to do.” By which he would have meant: “Blow a rocket up his ass.”
The process of losing your job at News Corp. takes about a year. They talk about you, and isolate you, and then you understand that you’ve been exiled from the tribe.
I’m hoping that it is true, Ailes is an evil man who has hurt the country more than most, but I’m inclined to believe that it’s not: Particularly during this downturn, Fox News is Murdoch’s money cow, and he can’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
So I really have no strong opinion on what is going on with NBC, with Jay Leno’s 10:00 pm show, an idea that never made sense to me in the first place, being canceled, and NBC now having to juggle Leno and Conan O’Brien.
NBC tried to “split the baby”, by giving Leno the 11:35-12:04 slot, with O’Brien getting the rest of the show, but Conan said no, and so the Jeff Zucker (the head of NBC) clusterf%$# continues.
My reader(s) can debate the relative merits of Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno, I just don’t know.
Conan’s statement is after the break, and it takes the high road:
People of Earth:
In the last few days, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I’ve been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I’ve been absurdly lucky. That said, I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.
Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.
But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.
Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.
So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.
There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.
Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.
Yours,
Conan
The New York Times has a profile of Fox News chief Roger Ailes.
I glanced at it, and was not particularly impressed, but Jonathan Chait teases what I think is a nugget of truth about the media mogul:
Second, Ailes comes through in the article as paranoid (quite possibly in the clinical sense) regarding his own personal vulnerability to terrorism:
National security had long been a preoccupation of Fox News, and it was clear in the interview that the 9/11 attacks had a profound effect on Mr. Ailes. They convinced him that he and his network could be terrorist targets.
On the day of the attacks, Mr. Ailes asked his chief engineer the minimum number of workers needed to keep the channel on the air. The answer: 42. “I am one of them,” he said. “I’ve got a bad leg, I’m a little overweight, so I can’t run fast, but I will fight.
“We had 3,000 dead people a couple miles from here. I knew that any communications company could be a target.”
His movements now are shadowed by a phalanx of corporate-provided security. He travels to and from work in a miniature convoy of two sport utility vehicles. A camera on his desk displays the comings and goings outside his office, where he usually keeps the blinds drawn.
I appreciate Mr. Chait’s eye for detail, but I disagree with his diagnosis, with the obvious caveat that neither he nor I are mental health professionals.
This is not paranoia. This is hysterical unreasoning terror, and, as strange as it souncs, it actually decreases the level of contempt that I feel for him.
I used to think that Fox News was the We’re all gonna die!!!!!!! network (it’s on one of the screens when I ride the exercise bike) because Ailes was trying to score partisan political points, but I was wrong.
He’s not being a hypocrite, he just is a sniveling coward.
H/t Paul Krugman.
A picture of falling page views
As you may, or may not be aware, I am not linking to Associated Press stories.
This applies to both stories at the Associated Press, as well as stories at other venues that carry an AP byline.
It’s not absolute: If I cannot find another source anywhere, and the story is IMNSHO important, I will link, with a preference for not linking directly to the AP servers.
I have spiked comment based on the the fact that I could not find another source on a number of occasions, but generally, Google News has managed to bail me out.
Well, Google and the Associated Press are coming up on the end of their current licensing agreement, and as a result, Google has not included any links to the AP site since December 23:
Through much of last year, the Associated Press threw public barbs and veiled threats at Google, while in private it was renegotiating its licensing agreement with Google News. That agreement is believed to be up for renewal at the end of this month, yet no new AP stories have appeared directly on Google News since December 23, 2009. (AP stories licensed by other news sites such as ABC News or the New York Times do continue to appear, however). So what’s going on here? Is that the end of AP stories on Google News?
I’ve been doing some sniffing around, and it is not the AP that is withholding its content. This conclusion is also supported by the fact that older AP content from before Christmas continues to be available on Google News. If the AP were no longer licensing its articles to Google, those older articles likely would also no longer be available. (The AP has talked about withholding news from certain licensees for a set period of time, but those were measured in minutes and hours, not weeks, and it would operate on a rolling basis. The AP stories on Google News just stop on December 23).
The pucker factor at the Associated Press offices right now must be extreme.
It illustrates how news gathering has been overtaken by the entertainment culture, and that was 27 years ago.
This story is old, I saved it when I was visiting my Mother-in-Law’s, but my sense of this remains the same.
There was a snowball fight in Washington, DC, and some people threw snowballs at a Hummer driven by a Washington, DC police officer, who then drew his gun and threatened the participants.
If it hadn’t been caught on video, and posted to Youtube (included), and the police claimed that it never happened, until, of course the video, and the photographs showed up all over the web.
This is actually pretty standard: Until you have outrageous law enforcement misconduct on tape, the police deny that it ever happened, and so I have very little to say about this.
That being said, I do have something to say about the Washington Post‘s coverage of the incident.
You see, they took the original police story, “Nothing to see here, move along,” at face value, and they did so despite the fact that a Washington Post editorial staffer was at the event and reported what happened:
Washington Post editorial aide Stephen Lowman was at 14th and U on Saturday when the controversial snowball-fight-cum-police-indiscretion went down. He wasn’t there on assignment–he was just taking it all in.
And take it all in he did. He eye-witnessed the snowball fest and the cop waving around a gun, not to mention all the hubbub that ensued.
So Lowman got on the phone to the Post, to give the newsroom a heads-up. He says he was placed in contact with staff writer Matt Zapotosky. Lowman told Zapotosky about the confrontation and the gun. It was just after 3 pm.
………………
Two hours later, at 5:40 pm, the inexplicable takes place: The Washington Post files a post by Zapotosky and Martin Weilrefuting the photographic evidence already on the Web and taking the official position of the D.C. Police Department. Here are some key excerpts:
Assistant Chief Pete Newsham, who leads the department’s investigative services bureau, said it appears the patrol officer acted appropriately, and the worst the detective might have done is use inappropriate language in dealing with the snowball fighters.
So, what we have by the time that the Post covers the story is:
Now the folks at DC’s alternative paper, the Washington City Paper, whose link I am citing in the story, broke this. They had the pictures, they linked to the Youtube, etc., and they, or at least their reporter Erik Wemple, think that this is all about the WaPo not wanting to link to them, because they are a bunch of DFH’s* from the alternative weekly.
I think that they are wrong. I think that what is going on is far more malevolent.
I think that this has nothing to do with the Post dissing an alternative weekly competitor, and it has everything to do with being an upper middle class, and overwhelmingly white institution in a city that is majority black.
Simply put, they went with the police story, because the unspoken bias of the Washington Post editors is that they need to keep the N***ers down. They go with a blatantly false police account of the events for the same reason that they so so aggressively repeat and amply blatantly false Republican spin: They believe that the police and the Republicans are the best way to keep N***ers in their place in the District.
Then again, maybe I am just reading way to much into this, and it’s just a crappy and lazy reporter.
*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.
No, I’m not talking about his bit with Richard Wolffe, where conflates bureaucratic turf wars with a group of Republican moles actively aiding terrorists, I mean his new feature, the 2 short “mini-comments”, each 1 minute long, which will air each show.
Normally, I use the phrase “Jump the Shark,” to describe some sort of gaffe which will forever tarnish the person who uttered the bon mot.
However, in this case, I am referring to the original, and rather more mild definition of, the point in a television program’s history where it’s done, and there is not much more to get out of it.
Regular twice-a-show mini “Special Comments” are an indication that the program has run out its string.
It’s not surprising: Countdown was always more driven by snark, particularly in the early days, and outrage at Bush and His Evil Minions™ and Olbermann is a (very good) sportscaster who tends to see political confrontations in the same sort zero-sum terms of a ball game.
BTW, if one of my reader(s) could rat me out to Olbermann as a “Worst Person in the World“, please do so. I could use the eyeballs.
I’m more of a policy wonk myself, and as such I prefer Rachael Maddow’s show, and I will always be grateful to Keith Olbermann for introducing me to her show.
I’ll still probably watch it streaming on my PC, in the background, which is what I do with both of their shows now, but Keith does not surprise me much any more.
I found it only 8 days ago, and now all I’m getting is that test signal with the colored bars with a Telemundo caption.
I blame Comcast.
[on edit]
It came back up a few days later, no clue as to why.
It was good. I heard it on the repeat.
Well, it took them long enough to realize that by lending her to the partisan political operation known as Fox News, she is creating a credibility problem for the network:
Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.
Liasson refused, because she has a contract, and because, “she appears on two of the network’s news programs, not on commentary programs with conservative hosts,” except, of course that the agendas of these programs is set by those, “commentary programs with conservative hosts.”
See my earlier post, with a spot on Jon Stewart critique of Faux News here.
As to Liasson, she’s not quite as hacktacular as Barbara Bradley Hagerdy, who is literally in the pay of right wing Christo Fascists, but to hear the venom drip when she says the world “liberals,” is enough.
Another reason, in addition to their balls to the wall opposition to low power radio, for me not to give to them at pledge time.
Well, he’s certainly been influential, but so was Typhoid Mary.
[on edit]
Paul Krugman reminds us all what it means to be a cover subject for Time Magazine.
Here he is showing that Glenn Beck is misleading his viewers on gold because he’s paid by gold companies:
Rachael Maddow, does her homework, has the bigot’s books in front of her, and tears him to bits when he lies.
It’s a well spent 17:56.
This rarely happens on the network shows, Jon Stewart excepted.*
It’s interviews like this that have me skipping Keith to make time for Rachael when I have a busy evening.
*Which raises the obvious question: Why the F%$# should we have to rely on a comedian for competently done interviews?
So Tom “The Mustache of Stupidity” Friedman is now describing Afghanistan as a special needs baby. (see below)
Speaking as the parent of two special needs children, I have an urge to tell Mr. Friedman to do something anatomically impossible.
Why does this man have a job?
Phil Hartman, back when SNL was still good.
It turns out that “Going Rogue” is British slang for unprotected anal sex.
Well, that explains a lot.
They have made a selection, it’s Kevin Huffman, who, as the Wonkette notes, is not exactly going to shake things up:
He appears to be nothing more than a composite of all preexisting Washington Post op-ed writers, yet somehow even whiter. Synergy!
(emphasis mine)
Background on my unsuccessful application for the contest here.
If Barack Obama was supposed to be about anything, he was supposed to be about engaging in at least marginal meaningful antitrust and consumer protections, and Comcast buying NBC Eniversal, (NBC, Universal Studios, NBC Universal Television Group, NBC News, USA Network, Syfy, CNBC, MSNBC cable TV, NBC.com, MSNBC.com, iVillage, Bravo, qubo, Telemundo Television Studios, The Weather Channel, and Hulu according to the Wiki) is the antithesis of this.
My guess is that this sale will proceed without any major interference from Barack Obama and His Evil Minions™, because Barack Obama really isn’t about anything.