Keith Olbermann Against the World
Tonight Keith Olbermann returned from vacation and used his "Worst Persons" segment to emphatically rebuff the Times report stating that he and Bill O'Reilly's feud has been muzzled by corporate chieftains. He also addressed the Richard Wolffe situation online. Olbermann kicked off his "Worst Persons" segment by lashing out at Brian Stelter, the Times media reporter who broke the story that on June 1st Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly were told to stop taking each other to the woodshed on the air because their bloody feud had become detrimental to the corporate interests of the parent corporations running MSNBC and Fox News. Olbermann said tonight that he spoke to Stelter twice last week, both on and off the record, and denied to him that anyone had attempted to silence his stinging criticisms of O'Reilly and Fox News. Olbermann claims that the whole thing is all just a "misinterpretation" of an on-air proclamation he made on June 1 of this year following the murder of George Tiller, the subject of frequent inflammatory attacks by O'Reilly. Here's what Olbermann said at the time: Fox News Channel will never restrain itself from incitement to murder and terrorism, not until its profits begin to decline, when its growth stops. So not so much a boycott here as a quarantine, because this has got to stop. That I have a commercial conflict of interest here is obvious. So I'll make the first symbolic contribution to this quarantine. One of my pleasures, obviously, is constantly criticizing him in that Ted Baxter voice. It is the idea of laughter as a social sanction against inflexible behavior. But this is no time for laughter. This is serious. Serious as death. As serious as George Tiller's death. So as of this show's end, I will retire the name, the photograph, and the caricature. The words may still be quoted in the future as developments dictate. The goal here is to get this blindly irresponsible man and his ilk off the air. So it's all a "misinterpretation," you see, though Stelter reported over the weekend that MSNBC and Fox News "lieutenants arranged a cease-fire, according to four people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal." Someone, either Olbermann or a reporter for the New York Times, is lying. Who do you believe? From there, Olbermann, likely inspired by a burning urge to squash any notion that he'd been put on a leash with an exclamation point, turned his attention to O'Reilly, who he affectionately called a "racist clown," and O'Reilly's boss, "corporate jackal" Rupert Murdoch. Here's the complete video of the segment: In regards to the controversy surrounding Richard Wolffe's work as a corporate lobbyist while serving as a Countdown guest host and regular political anaIyst, Olbermann announced on Daily Kos that Wolffe was effectively being suspended from appearing on his show until any and all lobbying conflicts of interest have been fully resolved: As to Richard Wolffe I can offer far less insight. I... MORE >>
Will We Get a Frost/Bush?
Tonight, New York's channel 21 will broadcast the Watergate portion of the David Frost interviews of Richard Nixon. This seems as good a time as any to ask if we'll ever get the equivalent from George W. Bush. Of course, Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment, and Bush left office after completing his second term. Nixon spent two years in seclusion, and then agreed to be interviewed by a man he considered (with ample evidence) to be a lightweight in exchange for $600,000. Bush will probably never be in need of money. Though he will, eventually, have a book of some kind to promote. And once he does, he'll be pushing, as Nixon was, for a public reevaluation of his time in office. So we can dream! British tabloid editor turned reality TV embarrassment Piers Morgan is just one of the current journalists who'd love to reenact Frost/Nixon with Bush. The Nixon interviews are great television (though not quite as HEY DRAMATIC ACTING OVER HERE GUYS as Ron Howard would have you believe). But would the Bush interviews even be worth it? If you asked our former President about torture, for an hour straight, he'd still just say "we don't torture." If you asked him about warrantless wiretapping he'd say he'd do anything to keep America safe. Wouldn't we, as a still broken and angry nation, rather just have someone yell at Bush for two days than hear the same idiotic cliches? Do we judge this man capable of any kind of self-reflection? Nixon had that grand paranoia. Bush is oblivious. Bush has faced "tough" questions before. He gets petulant, but reveals nothing. Nixon was operatic in his self-pity, cunning in his politics, and actually genuinely interesting. Bush is just a dumb shit. A Frost/Cheney might be more interesting, but he would just relentlessly lie until you lured him to the Fortress of Solitude and immersed him in Red Kryptonite. MORE >>
FBI Agent Thinks the Green Party Is a Terrorist Group With Nukes
We like to avail ourselves of the Freedom of Information of Act now and again, because sometimes we find FBI memos about how the Green Party is a terrorist organization because we don't get too many libruls here in Georgia. Asked by the FBI's counterterrorism division to assess "future targets of the animal and environmental rights movements and/or those committing crimes on the behalf of the movements in the Georgia area," some poor local FBI agent complained that he or she would have a little trouble with that one, seeing as how "the animal rights, environmental and anarchy movement activity is relatively low" because "Georgia residents lean toward the views of a conservative nature" and don't offer a "nurturing environment" for libruls. The 2005 memo is in a bunch of documents we FOIA'd a while back about Cold Sun, the FBI's major-case investigation into the Animal Liberation Front and other animal-rights extremist groups. The agency sent a couple hundred pages, which we're just starting to go through. The agent had to write something, so he looked up the Green Party on Wikipedia and identified them as a terrorist group. Of particular interest to to the agent was a Green Party members' writings on "marijuana reform, reparations, civil unions, repeal of the Patriot Act, and homosexual issues." Keep in mind that this is from a memo that was distributed to the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction and Domestic Terrorism Operations Units (see the cover sheet below), which is evidently who investigates people in Georgia who advocate the repeal of the Patriot Act or talk about homosexuals. Read the whole memo here. MORE >>
MSNBC: The Place for Publicists
Richard Wolffe used to be a Newsweek reporter, but now he's a strategist at PR firm Public Strategies. On Friday he guest-hosted MSNBC's Countdown. His first topic: how awesome healthcare reform is. Guess what his clients think of healthcare reform? Glenn Greenwald, Talking Points Memo, and others have taken MSNBC to task for giving Wolffe a platform as a regular "analyst"—and on Friday as guest host—when his day job is as a paid shill for Public Strategies, a lobbying and public relations firm run by former Bush flack Dan Bartlett that "manages public perceptions" for corporate clients. But the complaints are vague unless you can catch Wolffe talking about issues—and therefore managing perceptions—on MSNBC's air that Public Strategies' clients are actually invested in. And it looks to us like he did just that on Friday, when he opened his guest-host gig with a segment on healthcare reform that included a softball interview with White House senior adviser David Axelrod and a segment with the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson. Here's a sample question Wolffe lobbed at Robinson: "[I]f more Americans understood that Medicare was government-run, government-sponsored, socialized, quote-unquote, "health care," could the whole debate look pretty different about now? Wolffe's tenor during the whole segment was pro-reform. Which is fine, and to be expected from Countdown. We know Olbermann supports reform. Hell, we support reform. But nobody is paying us to support reform. Is anybody paying Wolffe? Public Strategies doesn't disclose its clients. But it does have to disclose any clients that it's lobbied the Senate on behalf of, and a check with the Senate's lobbying disclosure database shows that a number of companies and organizations invested in healthcare reform have paid Public Strategies to lobby for them. The Federation of American Hospitals, for instance, paid Public Strategies $20,000 to lobby the Senate in 2003. And lo and behold, the Federation of American Hospitals came out in support of the Senate Finance Committee's proposal last month [pdf]: As a nation, we know we can and must do better. That's why we support today's agreement with Chairman Baucus and the Obama Administration to move comprehensive health reform forward. More recently, a company called Health Integrated paid Public Strategies $40,000 last year to lobby on health care issues—mostly related to Veteran's Affairs and substance abuse funding. Health Integrated markets itself to health plans and insurers as a "cost-containment" firm that sells programs to identify unhealthy individuals and offer wellness services to keep their healthcare costs down. That idea is central to Obama's cost-cutting proposals, and Health Integrated could stand to benefit enormously from reforms mandating the sorts of services it provides. In this May radio interview, the company's president laid out the cost issues facing healthcare and said, "These are things we're... MORE >>
Paul Janka: 'I Pounced On Her But She Didn't Like It'
Paul Janka! Remember him? "Pickup" "artist" extraordinaire, of the most skeevy, nasty sort. He's still alive, in the world, and writing sexy things about "dating" methods! This recent email blast tells of his romantic trip to bone skanks, in Paris. He sent this email to his "subscribers" late last month, teaching them—I'm just deducing this, from the content—the secret to getting away with date rape in foreign countries. Absorb the wisdom, as Paul arrives in heterosexual Pair-ee and meets his first conquest: I was scheduled to meet a Moroccan girl at 9:30, so we had dinner and they said good-bye...(they live on the outskirts of town, the French equivalent of suburbs.) F. was late, but she called my sister to say so and they drove by while I was waiting outside the building. (the next day I got a mobile, my first on this trip, because I'll be in France/Corsica for a few weeks.) F. arrived after 10, and she was adorable! Very cute, with big brown eyes and a beautiful smile. She came up so I could drop off some stuff, and I pounced on her but she didn't like it. She wanted me to slow down, which I did. We left and went for a drink down the street. She's only 23, but precocious and very worldly. I was impressed by the conversation and her general attitude. After a drink, we started making out, but she had to go home because she was leaving for a day-trip to Lyon the next morning, and I was tired. And my leg had fallen asleep at the table, distracting me. We kissed and I walked her to the train. The next day I ran errands, and got a phone, among other things. I had a possible meeting with F. that night, but she was tired, Surprising! Then, of course, Paul randomly meets another heartbroken girl at a cafe, and sleeps with her, and then gets up the next day, and his Moroccan girl is back, and he fucks her under the Eiffel Tower. Say what you want about Paul Janka's methods, at least you know he tells the truth. [Thanks, S!] MORE >>
Wall Street Man-Beast's Disappointing Identity
Last Friday we showed you a blurry photo of an underwear-clad white man draped over the Wall Street Bull, dead to the world. Our first guess: Jesus himself (he's not young any more), serving as a powerful metaphor. But no: He was Peter Killy, a fortysomething actor who was making an indie movie, The Robber Barons of Wall Street. This particular pose was a shot they plan to use for the promotional poster. Is there nothing magical in this world? [Daily Intel] MORE >>
The Time Gawker Put the Washington Post Out of Business
Spurred on by his editor, a Washington Post reporter complained over the weekend that we "stole" his profile of a ridiculous "generational guru" when we blogged about it on this site. Our question: where's your outrage at your editors? To summarize this little media controversy: reporter Ian Shapira profiled Anne Loehr, a consultant who gets companies to pay her to explain the mysteries of Gen Y. Our own Hamilton Nolan wrote an item about it in which he reprinted four of Loehr's most laughable quotes and ridiculed them. After initially being pleased that his metro profile got some play on a widely read blog, Shapira changed his mind when he got an email from his editor: "They stole your story. Where's your outrage, man?" This led Shapira, in a piece for the Post's Outlook section, to conclude that his job is doomed. To quote steal, Shapira wrote: The more I toggled between my editor's e-mail and the eight-paragraph Gawker item, the angrier I got, and the more disenchanted I became with the journalism business. I enjoy reading Gawker and the growing number of news sites like it — the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast and others — but lately they're making me even more nervous about my precarious career as a newspaper reporter who enjoys, at least for the time being, a salary, a 401(k) and health insurance. Shapira is right. Blogs are killing newspapers. But it's not by mindlessly cutting and pasting from newspaper web sites. Gawker would go out of business if that's all we did. The bigger threat is that blogs say the things that hidebound newspaper editors are too afraid to let their reporters write. Rereading Shapira's nearly 1,600-word piece (Hamilton's post runs just over 400), the closest I can come to anything resembling a point of view is a tangled mass of clauses that takes Loehr and her consultant pablum at face value. Again to quote steal: The collective fretting over Generation Y — also known as the millennials — has turned into an industry for entrepreneurs such as Loehr: The former Kenyan hotel executive, based in Reston, is a "leadership coach" and generational guru, one of several who market themselves to corporations, the military, and federal and local governments as anthropologists interpreting today's 70 million to 80 million 20-somethings or early 30-somethings — those who came of age with the kiddie dinosaur show "Barney," high-speed wireless Internet and Barack Obama. Sounds riveting! Hamilton succinctly digested Shapira's piece and gave his post a headline ("'Generational Consultant' Holds America's Fakest Job") and lede ("The fakest job corporate America ever created was 'Branding Consultant' — until now") that probably resembled what Shapira wanted to write but couldn't. It's hard to imagine that in the course of working on his piece — a process that Shapira describes as two hours of sitting in on one of Loehr's courses and what must have been four truly grueling hours of... MORE >>
Click here to safely unsubscribe now from "Gawker: Top Stories" or change your subscription or subscribe
| Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498 |
No comments:
Post a Comment