Notes on Politics: 'The View' Walkout, Oprah Hearts Jon Stewart & Campaigning While Female

The View Walkout

Today I've found myself thinking about a famous quote from comedian Phyllis Diller: “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.”

I feel the same way about political discourse which, on far too many occasions, devolves into mean-spirited name calling, especially in the internet era. What would improve matters? If someone doesn’t agree with what someone else is saying, responds by making a rational, strong counter-arguments bolstered by evidence. If there’s common ground onto which both sides can stand side-by-side, great, if not, the two people could agree to disagree. (Of course you need two rational people to do this, folks who aren’t calling one another names and who are willing to engage intellectually.)

So when I heard about the dust-up between Bill O’Reilly and some panelists from The View over the controversial proposed mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, I was greatly disappointed to learn that Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar stormed off the stage after becoming enraged by what O’Reilly had to say. It was heartening to see Barbara Walters respond by making the sage declaration, “We should be able to have discussions without washing our hands and screaming and walking off stage.”

People are taking sides on this, about whether Goldberg and Behar were right to leave the stage or whether their behavior was ridiculous. What say you?



Oprah Hearts Jon Stewart

Certainly you’ve all heard about the satirical rallies The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are planning in Washington to mock the extremism that’s been permeating both ends of the political spectrum these days. Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” will face off against Colbert’s “March to Keep Fear Alive” and both were in the news this week after Oprah bestowed upon them her golden touch by offering Stewart’s studio audience transportation to the rally.

Colbert’s response to Oprah favoring Stewart? Not storming off the stage in a huff:



Campaigning While Female

Female candidates running for office this season continue to fend off attacks which appear to be directed at them because of their gender, not because of their stances on public policies.



Over in California, the candidates for governor debated the comments made by an associate of Jerry Brown’s in which said associate called opponent Meg Whitman a “whore.” Twice.

After moderator Tom Brokaw asked Brown about this, Brown gave a half-hearted apology to Whitman, the kind which goes like this: I’m sorry someone got caught calling you, specifically, a whore, but someone from your campaign said members of Congress are whores too, so there. Whenever one's apology is followed by the word “but,” that oftentimes negates the sincerity of the apology. Plus there’s a big difference between singling out one person and lobbing an insult at her -- like “liar,” “crook” or “whore” -- and making a general criticism of a large group of people, like members of Congress. That being said, it would’ve been prudent for Whitman to have at least said that no one should be tossing around words like “whore” in the context of a political campaign.

UPDATE: It was with disgust that I read that the president of the California chapter of NOW told the political blog Talking Points Memo: "Meg Whitman could be described as 'a political whore.' Yes, that's an accurate statement." And people wonder why many folks dismiss the likes of NOW as a liberal/Democratic organization that only supports fellow liberal/Democrats while feeding conservative and/or Republican women to the wolves. So much for the sisterhood.



Meanwhile, a female congressional candidate in Virginia is being haunted by racy photos taken of her at a costume party six years ago when she was 22 and a recent college graduate, which were posted online in an attempt to embarrass and discredit her.

The candidate, Krystal Ball, who cited Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton as political inspirations, told Fox News:

“The tactic of painting successful women, successful politicians as a whore, it’s nothing new. Ask Sarah Palin, ask Meg Whitman, ask Nikki Haley, Christine O’Donnell. Lots of women face this same thing. And so I decided, although I wanted to just sort of hide in a corner and cry, that I couldn’t let these tactics succeed.”

'The View' Panelists (Except Joy) Slam Newsweek's Palin Cover

It was heartening to see that the panelists on The View -- with the exception of Joy Behar -- put politics aside and agreed that for Newsweek editors to put former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on the cover while wearing jogging shorts was demeaning and disrepectful. (The link to a terrible quality video of the segment is here. You have to really punch the volume up to hear it.)

I don't care that Palin originally posed for that photo for Runner's World, a magazine where men and women appear in running attire and in which her photo was in the proper context. She did NOT pose for that photo with the intention that it would be on the cover of a news magazine that parses all things politics and national events. This was just not right and is a naked example of media bias.

Here's the lame explanation offered by Newsweek's editor Jon Meacham:

"We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do. We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard."

Sorry Mr. Meacham, I'm not buyin' it. You wouldn't be doing this to Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama or Nancy Pelosi.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: All Media Smackdown Edition, NYT/Daily Show, Stewart/Scarborough, Letterman/Palin

NYT Gets Slammed on Daily Show

Did the New York Times staffers who agreed to participate in a recent Daily Show segment about the future of the dying newspaper industry realize that the Daily Show is all about SATIRE? Did they not expect wacky questions? Sharp hey-dude-you're-so-toast darts to be thrown their way?

It doesn't appear as though those thoughts crossed their minds when they decided to partake in the piece. Judge for yourself by watching the segment below, a scathing portrait of out-of-touch editors, though Executive Editor Bill Keller's comment about how the Huffington Post can't and doesn't have bureaus in far-flung and dangerous locales because it doesn't have the money to do so was interesting, but only to a limited degree because you know what, the NYT shouldn't be bragging about having more money than anyone else right now, particularly when they're threatening to shutter the Boston Globe (which already eliminated a lot of its foreign bureaus because of costs) because of red ink. That last joke, about what's black and white and red all over: Killer. (Link to the video here):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
End Times
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Stewart and Scarborough Go Mano-a-Mano . . . Through Their TV Shows

I've been monitoring this (manufactured?) controversy between the Daily Show's Jon Stewart and Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough. (For the record, I'm a fan of both guys and their shows.) In a nutshell, Morning Joe recently decided to team up with Starbucks as a sponsor, seeing as though the anchors, Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are conspicuous consumers of Starbucks products during their news casts. This made them big, fat, irresistible targets for spoofing. Cue: Stewart. This resulted in the anchors going back and forth was various and sundry sniping.

Yesterday, in discussing Stewart, Scarborough called him an angry man and suggested he had a Napoleon complex. Stewart responded last night by calling Scarborough "watered down and stupid" and then did a skit which I'd venture to say was funnier in the writers' room than in its execution. Stewart brought out all manner of faux-branded coffee products -- like a box of "Taster's Choice" tissues -- had mascara running down his face while he pretended to cry, fled the stage, asking for his Napoleon hat and coat as he climbed on top of a small horse. When he was "talked back" into returning to the stage, he did so shouting, "Rage on! Rage on!" (Link to the video here.)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jon's Napoleonic Complex
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Did Letterman Go Too Far?

That's the question du jour regarding Letterman's jokes about Sarah Palin's recent appearance at a New York Yankees game, where she brought her 14-year-old daughter along with her. Letterman made jokes about a Palin daughter, including about A-Rod knocking up a Palin daughter during the game, and about keeping a Palin daughter away from disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Why do I keep saying, "a Palin daughter?" Because the 14-year-old daughter was the one in New York at the game with her mom but, apparently, Letterman thought it was the 18-year-old daughter who recently had a baby, the one who was on the cover of People Magazine with her infant. Last night, Letterman explicitly said that he wasn't talking about the 14-year-old. He said he was talking about the 18-year-old. But that's not exactly how it came across when he told the jokes.

Palin got ticked. Told him off indirectly by spouting off to journalists and issuing a statement, which resulted in Letterman issuing a caustic clarification last night which, I guess in a comedian's world, constitutes an apology of some sort. During Morning Joe this morning and later on The View, the question was raised by Brzezinski and by Elisabeth Hasselbeck as to whether Letterman would've gone after Palin's teenaged kids if she were a Democrat instead of a very conservative Republican. Barbara Walters added during The View's discussion that politicians' children should be off the table as far as lampooning goes, unlike panelist Joy Behar who said that because the Palins "traipsed" her pregnant daughter out in public, the family deserves what it gets. (See The View debate here.)



UPDATE: While listening to various folks discuss the Letterman/Palin situation this afternoon, I heard a local radio commentator make an interesting analogy: Invoking the suspension of MSNBC's David Shuster in 2008 after he suggested that twentysomething Chelsea Clinton was being "pimped out" by her mother as she went out on the campaign trail talking up Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy, the commentator asked why Shuster was suspended for making a comment about an adult and used the words "I apologize," while some folks are brushing off Letterman's comments about a 14-year-old daughter of a Republican vice presidential nominee.

Was Phoenix Doing a Comedic Bit . . . Or Something Else?

I've seen excerpts on cable news of the Joaquin Phoenix interview on David Letterman last night and thought that perhaps some of the interview was taken out of context. I didn't see it live. After watching Lost last night -- it was fantastic by the way -- I went directly to bed and promptly dreamt about Lost all night long.

Then I watched the whole interview on YouTube. The TV excerpts perfectly captured the weirdness of the Phoenix appearance. (Link to the video is here.)



The beard, the hair, the mumbling, the spaced-outness, it HAD to be an act, right? Phoenix certainly wasn't like this during the promo of Walk the Line.

After watching this, I was reminded of how Letterman deftly handled the tenseness of this awkward interview with a recalcitrant, potty-mouthed Madonna in the mid-1990s.

What do you think, was this a bit or something else?

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Catchin' Up, Caroline, Blago, Corp. Jet$$

I'm just getting back into the swing of things after having spent the week with my family and parents in the grips of the magical world of Disney, where, in addition to enjoying the worst Florida cold snap in many years, I was told by a Disney World "cast member" in a Goofy hat that I could not watch the inauguration at Epcot because Disney is about "fantasy, not reality." Therefore, I trudged to an ESPN bar with my dad to watch President Barack Obama's inauguration speech and hear the inaugural poem. So other than skipping some Epcot rides with my kids in order to catch the tail-end of the inauguration, I've been out of the news loop for the past week (radical, I know, to be unplugged!), so I've got some catching up to do:

Another Senator Kennedy? Not So Fast!

So Caroline Kennedy pulled out (was pushed out?) of contention to be appointed to the U.S. Senate. New York Gov. David Paterson named another female -- younger -- to fill Hillary Clinton's seat. And then we were treated to conflicting reports about why Kennedy did an about-face and whether she truly had "personal issues" which prevented her from seeking the post. The New York Times portrayed sniping and excuse-making on both sides, describing Paterson as of the belief that Kennedy wasn't ready for the job.

Now 42-year-old Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand, a two-term centrist Democrat from upstate New York, has been tapped for the post. She has a 5-year-old and a six-month-old baby and, according to the Times, worked up until the day she gave birth, causing House members to give her a standing ovation . . . which is prompting several to compare her to fortysomething mother of an infant Sarah Palin, some positively and some negatively.

Senator Oprah?

Good God. Rod Blagojevich is spending today basking in the bright lights of the New York City media circuit, rather than in Illinois where his impeachment trial is commencing. He's doing the rounds on the TV networks pleading his case and categorically denying attempting to sell Obama's U.S. Senate seat, while complaining that he can't bring his witnesses to defend him.

In an interview on ABC's Good Morning America, he said he considered asking Oprah Winfrey if she wanted to fill Obama's seat, saying, "She was obviously someone with a much broader bully pulpit than other senators."

On The View -- where Barbara Walters bizarrely conducted the interview from Los Angeles while Blago was in New York, and Walters appeared on stage inside a little TV located next to the seated Blago instead of opting for a split-screen -- he said the case against him has been sensationalized by the media and that the conversations captured by federal wiretaps were taken out of context. "I'm an innocent man who hasn't done anything wrong," he said. ". . . I'm going to fight to the finish."

Blago resisted Joy Behar's attempts to goad him into doing a Richard Nixon impersonation and doing "I'm not a crook." Surprisingly, Blago declined the offer.

Corporate Jet$$

Someone -- hello?! -- needs to put an end to the wild orgy funded by taxpayer money intended to help rejuvenate the American economy not provide luxury items for a few people who ran their companies into the ground. CitiGroup got $45 billion in federal bailout money -- your money and my money -- and just wasted $50 million of it on a 12-seater luxury jet, reports the New York Post:

"Even though the bank's stock is as cheap as a gallon of gas and it's burning through a $45 billion taxpayer-funded rescue, the airhead execs pushed through the purchase of a new Dassault Falcon 7X, according to a source familiar with the deal.

The French-made luxury jet seats up to 12 in a plush interior with leather seats, sofas and a customizable entertainment center, according to Dassault's sales literature."

Where are the D.C. fiscal watchdogs? We should get that money back. Pull a Palin, and put the jet up on eBay. Stuff like this should not be allowed to stand.

Image credit: Rep. Gillibrand's web site.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Sewer Madness

One has admitted to trying drugs when he was a youth, attended a church where the head pastor had spouted hate-filled rhetoric, and attended charity board meetings and a fundraiser at the home of a person -- now a professor whose associates include the mayor of Chicago -- who did horrific things 40 years ago.

One was considered a hell raiser when he was young, left his first wife after she had a car accident that left her disfigured and coping with disabilities and married a younger, richer woman, and was later caught up in a savings and loan scandal.

Another cheated on his wife with, according to media reports, several women, and tried to get out of being sent to fight in Vietnam when he was a college student.

Another used to drink too much alcohol, had a hell raiser past and had his military service in Vietnam was questioned.

The aforementioned men -- Barack Obama, John McCain, Bill Clinton and George Bush -- have flaws. We all have flaws. And histories. And lessons learned. Name a person who doesn't have some kind of story in his or her past that raises eyebrows or never made some bad decisions, and I'll show you someone who hasn't lived life or gleaned any wisdome from it. People grow and evolve and are distinctly imperfect. Expecting people, especially our elected officials, to have flawless lives is unreasonable and inadvisable (who wants someone holding office who's never learned from her mistakes?).

As we enter the last month of the presidential campaign, the sewage has starting flooding the airwaves in earnest. The U.S. and world economies are in crisis. People's confidence has been shaken as they worry about whether they'll still have their jobs by Christmas and whether they'll be able to pay for their retirement. Meanwhile, the presidential campaigns -- for two men who, under normal circumstances, are honorable people with interesting life stories -- have turned negative because negative sells and sways voters. Back when I was doing graduate work in political science in D.C., I took a course on campaign management run by veterans of several major political campaigns. When we came to the unit on campaign advertising, the message was loud and clear: Negative works.

That doesn't mean, however, that we, the voters, have to like the big nasty turn this presidential campaign has taken. Not from McCain. Not from Obama. Words and phrases like "liar," "pal around with terrorists" and "dishonorable" shouldn't be thrown into the mix at a time when the economy is tanking, our country is at war on two fronts and some of the folks at AIG who received $85 billion from the taxpayers in an attempt to help jump-start the economy, days after getting federal approval, blew $440,000 on a week-long retreat "at a luxury resort and spa," spending $150,000 on meals and $23,000 on spa services, according to ABC News. This, as ordinary New Englanders are talking about how they'll pile on blankets and sweaters this winter and not turn on the heat often because home heating oil is so expensive.

Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who, because of the tightening of credit right now, is asking the federal government for an emergency loan to keep his state afloat -- has had enough. "Look at what the presidential campaign has reduced down to: They now are accusing each other of things that have nothing to do with the economy, that have nothing to do with health care, that have nothing to do with the environment, that have nothing to do with, you know, how we deal with foreign countries," Schwarzenegger said, according to the Associated Press.

Over on The View -- which is quickly devolving from smart, quirky, real gal commentary to a caricature -- Barbara Walters has been likewise pleading for civility, both in the campaign and during her own show's "Hot Topics" discussion.



McCain and Obama are better than the campaigns they're running in these last days of the presidential race. The win-at-all-costs political consultants are doing us no favors by taking their clients' campaigns and running them through the gutter in order to get to the White House. But I suppose, the campaign team that wins in the end will feel as though all the mud-slinging was worth it. For the rest of Americans who are witnessing character assassination, smears involving old scandals that have no relevance to voters' lives today or on what kind of job either man will do in office, they are the ones who lose.