Notes on Pop Culture: Periodical Beach Reading, The Newsroom & Political Animals

I spent the past week on a Cape Cod family vacation where I swam, biked (rode a bike for the first time in many, many years), enjoyed sunsets, fresh seafood and got thoroughly and embarrassingly crushed on a farm-themed mini-golf course. (My 10-year-old handily kicked my behind.)

But when we weren't scanning the seas for seals, the favorite snack of sharks  -- we were a few miles away from that Cape beach where a shark chased a kayaker -- I was gorging on the heaps of reading material I brought along (an academic book and Lord of the Rings, both for a research project I'm working on, along with a bunch of periodicals). Here's what kept me entertained:

New Yorker: For a Boston area resident, I was rather sickeningly Gotham-centric this past week. I got substantial sunscreen and sand all over the July 9/16 issue of The New Yorker and enjoyed the long review of Douglas Brinkley's new Walter Cronkite biography by Louis Menand which included a fascinating debate over whether a Cronkite comment, coupled with the anchor's pessimistic view about American success in Vietnam, prompted LBJ not to run for a second term.
An article that sparked a beach-side conversation was by James Surowiecki about businesses that aren't hiring new employees because, the article asserts, employers are being too picky despite ample options:
"When companies complain that they can't find people with the right 'skills,' they often just mean that they can't find people with the right experience . . . Thanks in part to the sheer number of applications, screening of applicants is automated, with computers evaluating resumes according to pre-set criteria. Fail to meet one of those standards, and your application gets tossed, even if a good H.R. director might have spotted your potential."
How depressing.
Speaking of depressing . . . I was also riveted by "The Hunger Diaries," excerpts from American writer Mavis Gallant's journals written in 1952 when Gallant was literally starving for her art while living in Spain.

New York Magazine: The July 9 cover story, "Does Money Make You Mean?" ignited another lively debate with its provocative accompanying art. Citing various work by researchers who are delving into whether money causes people to be less humane and whether people who seek money share those same traits or whether the entire "less humane" question is bogus baloney, writer Lisa Miller worded her central query this way: "How does living in an environment defined by individual achievement -- measured by money, privilege and status -- alter a person's mental machinery to the point where he beings to see the people around him only as aids or obstacles to his own ambitions?"
New York Times: In between the pages of the Old Gray Lady, I greatly related to a Sunday Styles section meditation, "Friends of a Certain Age," about the challenge of making and keeping friends as we get older:
"In your 30s and 40s, plenty of new people enter your life, through work, children's play dates and, of course, Facebook. But actual close friends -- the kind you make in college, the kind you call in a crisis -- those are in shorter supply.
As people approach midlife, the days of youthful exploration, when life felt like one big blind date, are fading. Schedules compress, priorities change and people often become pickier in what they want in their friends."
In the same section, I found a scary story by Lee Siegel who accidentally sent Linked In friend invitations to all 974 contacts in his address book including deceased people, "lawyers, landscapers, accountants, literary agents, babysitters, window-installers, art dealers, ex-girlfriends, the ex-boyfriend of an ex-girlfriend . . . obstetricians, dentists, ophthalmologists, gastroenterologists, urologists, psychologists, pediatricians, billing offices for all of the preceding . . . my ex-wife [and] two litigious former landlords."

The Newsroom: As for TV, I saw the latest two episodes of Aaron Sorkin's new HBO drama The Newsroom which, I've decided, has officially hooked me with its cutting dissection of contemporary cable TV news. Yes, it can be preachy, annoyingly preachy and smugly sanctimonious as well. The second episode irritated me with its relentless focus on two of the female staffers falling to pieces over their love lives. But by the fourth episode -- "I'll Try to Fix You," which I reviewed here -- that got me.

Political Animals: I also caught the first installment of USA's mini-series (the network is calling it a "limited series event") Political Animals where Sigourney Weaver plays Elaine Barrish, otherwise known as Hillary Clinton had Clinton dumped Bill right after she lost her 2008 presidential bid. It also features a tough reporter, who wrote nasty pieces about Barrish's ex, shadowing Secretary of State Barrish around for a week for a story. The show felt crisp, the relationship between the reporter and Barrish is promising and the political manipulations entertaining (better than the boring, real life presidential race we've got goin' on right now). Looking forward to seeing more of this "limited" event.

Image credits: Amazon and New York Magazine.

Notes on Politics: CNN Boots the Supreme Court Health Care Ruling

 

In a complicated, highly anticipated ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, declared that the massive federal health care law, spearheaded by President Obama and the then-Democratic-led House, is constitutional. It stays. (The nearly 200-page opinion can be found here.)

As I awaited news of the ruling, made myself comfy in front of the TV as I opened my Twitter account, I tuned to CNN, figuring they'd offer up a no nonsense account of the Supreme Court ruling about which on-air reporters were positively giddy given the colossally intense interest of the viewers at home.

Then, in its attempt to be the first with the news, CNN botched its reporting. It got the story exactly wrong. They reported that the Court ruled that the individual mandate requiring people to buy health insurance or face penalties had been ruled unconstitutional. I Tweeted what CNN had said and cited the network as the source, thank goodness.

Within minutes, the Associated Press issued this Tweet: "BREAKING: Supreme Court upholds Obama law's requirement that most Americans have health insurance."

What the what?

This was then Tweeted by the Supreme Court blog, "SCOTUS Blog:" "The individual mandate survives as a tax." Reuters concurred. Conclusion: CNN screwed up. Cue the piling on top of CNN's epic fail as Twitter skewered them, placing the mistake in the same the league as "Dewey Defeats Truman:"

"Looks like CNN got it wrong, which would mean they got this and Bush v. Gore wrong." -- Dan Abrams

"'Al Gore Wins!' -- CNN" -- Tweeted writer Danny Zuker

"I am not turning off CNN until they TELL ME GORE WON FLORIDA!!!" -- Damon Lindelof (one of the guys behind Lost)

"Be right, not first." -- @JournalistsLike

"Women reject '50 Shades of Grey' in droves . . . #OtherCNNHeadlines #SCOTUS" -- @TVMcGee

"CNN staffer emails me: 'Its [sic] shameful'" -- @BuzzFeedBen

Way to strike a severe blow to CNN's reputation as a trusted source of news when something big is happening. I only wished NBC's Brian Williams had been broadcasting live. . .

Image credit: C.W. Anderson via Poynter.

Notes on Politics: Jon Stewart, Anthony Weiner & Bill Clinton; Plus Local News on Decline

'The Wangover’

How is it possible to laugh at this sad, sad Weinter-Gate situation that's so patently and bizarrely insane?

Watch The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart take a stab at what his staff is calling, “The Wangover,” and place the hullabaloo into its surreal context. (Note: Stewart was once a quasi-roommate of Rep. Anthony Weiner's, actually Stewart shared an apartment with Weiner’s then-girlfriend.)

Measly Local News Coverage = More Gov’t Power, Potential Abuses

On a more serious note . . . When I was but a mere cub newspaper reporter and was assigned to cover a small town, I was given this advice: Get to know the people who work in the various departments in the town, particularly the administrative assistants, back then called secretaries. So I routinely checked in with departments and chatted folks up. I made sure to find out what happened at all the public meetings the boards/departments had if I hadn’t been able to attend them in person. In essence, I covered any given town to which I had been assigned, like the proverbial blanket.

That’s no longer the case for newspaper reporters as their staffs shrink and resources are pulled away from local newsgathering. Plus, many local newspapers have shied away from having their reporters write stories about government meetings because they don’t think it makes for interesting reading in a hyper-competitive, 24/7 media landscape.

The result? People don’t necessarily know what the heck is going on inside Town Hall any more. Local elections get barely any coverage and information about candidates for elected offices is sparse while local newspapers’ space for news stories contracts. We, the voters, are left largely in the dark as to what our local elected officials are doing. Think about what happened in the city of Bell, California where, until a Los Angeles Times story last year, its city officials were receiving oversized salaries, like $100,000/year for part-time City Council positions and nearly $800,000 for the city manager. And this was in “one of the poorest cities in Los Angeles County,” the Times reported. If a local news reporter had been covering that city on a regular basis -- scouring proposed municipal budgets and attending budget hearings like reporters used to do -- the public outrage about what officials were proposing would've likely prevented those salaries from being approved in the first place.

Which brings us to a new study from the Federal Communications Commission which found, “Coverage of state governments and municipalities has receded at such an alarming pace that it has left government with more power than ever to set the agenda and have assertions unchallenged,” the New York Times reported.
The paper quoted the study’s author as saying, “The independent watchdog function that the Founding Fathers envisioned for journalism – going so far as to call it crucial to a healthy democracy – is in some cases at risk at the local level.” The FCC report cited the Bell, California case as an example of what happens when regular local reporting is cut.

I heartily concur that the dearth of local reporting will result in an ill-informed electorate and unchecked government power. Maybe folks like a local blogger I know -- who covers her hometown much more thoroughly and in depth than the local newspapers -- will step in and do the job that trained journalists used to do: Providing updates on what’s transpiring at Town Hall.

Why Didn't Geraldine Ferraro's Passing Generate More Media Coverage?

Liz Taylor -- two-time Oscar winner, AIDS activist and philanthropist -- died last week and received a mountain of news coverage as she was considered one of the last great American movie stars from the 1950s/1960s era. And she deserved a great deal of coverage as she earned a special spot in American popular culture history. (I contributed to the coverage here on this blog in and in a column I wrote about Liz, the working mom.)

Then on Saturday, Geraldine Ferraro also died and of the three Sunday newspapers I receive in dead tree form at my house, only one newspaper – the New York Times -- ran a page one story (though it was below-the-fold) about the first female, major party candidate for the vice presidency. The Boston Globe had a page one news blurb mentioning Ferraro’s death and telling readers to turn to page B9 for the obituary, odd given that Ferraro passed away in Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. My local newspaper, the MetroWest Daily News, didn’t even mention Ferraro on page one and ran a modest Associated Press story about her passing on page two.

By contrast, the day after Taylor died, the New York Times ran a large photo and story, above-the-fold on page one, the Boston Globe ran a photo and story below-the-fold on page one and the MetroWest Daily News ran a teaser on the top of the page, with a folder, telling readers to turn to page two for an AP story.

This just didn’t seem right to me. Sure, Taylor was a major American icon, considered a screen siren with Oscar-winning acting chops and a fascinatingly exciting life so it makes sense that she would generate media attention. As for Ferraro, whether you were a fan of her politics or not, she was a major historical figure whose selection as the 1984 Democratic vice presidential running mate “broke” the males-only glass ceiling for a national office. Certainly she deserved more coverage and attention than she received, at least with the papers I read, and on web sites I frequent (which didn't cover Ferraro as much as they did Taylor). There were days and days worth of Taylor coverage but a small fraction, it seemed, devoted to Ferraro.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Taylor's death was the third biggest news story last week, the week running from March 21-27, coming in behind the Middle East uprisings and the events in Japan. Taylor garnered 13 percent of newspaper coverage and 7 percent of overall media attention (cable/network TV, radio, online, newspapers). Ferraro died on March 26, within the period the think tank examined, and she didn't make it onto the list of top stories.
Do you think Ferraro’s death was downplayed, when you compare it to Taylor’s? Is it really all about sex appeal and the allure of the Hollywood celeb culture? 

Image credit: Time via Forbes.

Processing the Tucson/Giffords Shooting

We all want answers but answers might be hard to come by after a reportedly mentally disturbed 22-year-old opened fire this weekend on a public gathering featuring a U.S. Congresswoman and her constituents outside of a grocery store in Tucson.

We all want it to be easy to be able to point to someone, or a group of people, and say, “There! She’s responsible! She’s the reason why this happened!” or “They did it! Their inflammatory signs made the shooter snap!” or “His parents! They must've been bad!”

But sometimes the uncomfortable fact is that there are no answers because there are unstable people who live in this world who will, one way or another, try to hurt others. And as far as the shooter in Tucson, we might not know for some time whether anything could have been legally or morally done to prevent what happened on Saturday. As we get more information, maybe that question will be addressed more comprehensively. We'll have to wait and see on that front.

In the meantime, it’s sickening to see that the folks who reside on the outer left and right fringes of the political spectrum have their index fingers poised in the pointing position and are blaming the people who hold the polar opposite political beliefs than them for the actions of a mentally unstable individual.

When I was at my daughter’s basketball game on Saturday I was keeping close tabs on the breaking news via Twitter about Rep. Gabby Giffords and the folks who came to see her who police said were gunned down by Jared Loughner. And as news reports were flooding in – many of them containing erroneous information – the blaming started right there on Twitter. It was Sarah Palin’s fault. It was the Tea Partiers. It was talk radio. It was Snooki. (Just kidding, no one blamed Snooki, at least for this incident.) They didn’t wait to see what information we learned about the shooter and his background and whether, in fact, his motivation could be discerned at all. They just impulsively blamed their political foes.

Then the folks on the right got angry and said there was no evidence that the shooter was one of them. Then the finger pointing was returned and the likes of Keith Olbermann and left-leaning bloggers were blamed for THEIR angry words.

Enough.

Seriously.

I hate watching people try to score political points while a set of parents is burying their 9-year-old daughter who went to visit her congresswoman at an event at grocery store and would up being murdered, and while a congresswoman had parts of her skull removed so the swelling in her brain, through which the bullet traveled, won't cause more damage. This is not the time to try to "score" political points.

So when I read David Brooks’ column in the New York Times this morning, I finally found something with which I could agree:

“These accusations – that political actors, contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl – are extremely grave. They were made despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that Loughner was part of these movements or a consumer of their literature. They were made despite the fact that the link between political rhetoric and actual violence is extremely murky. They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness.


. . . [T]he political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.”

Brooks seems to share a similar view on how this whole thing has played out as The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, he of the famous “Rally for Sanity,” of which we could use a whole lot more. (See his commentary above.) I especially loved the part where Stewart said in his monologue:

“We live in a complex ecosystem of influences and motivations and I wouldn’t blame our political rhetoric any more than I would blame heavy metal music for Columbine, and by the way that is coming from somebody who truly hates our political environment. It is toxic. It is unproductive but to say that that is what has caused this . . . that I just don’t think you can do.”

I too want to see more political moderation, want to see the end of the political tactic of transforming and dehumanizing those who don’t believe what you believe into enemies who hate America, ascribing to them all manner of evil (which is why something like a No Labels movement appeals to me). But that’s a discussion for another day. Not today.

I think it’s a sad state of affairs when some of the most sane commentary we’re heard can be found on Comedy Central.

Notes on Politics: The Would-Be Book-Burning Pastor & 'Morning Joe'

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I usually have the tiny TV in my kitchen tuned to MSNBC’s Morning Joe as I read the morning newspapers, guzzle down cups of coffee and help the kids get off to school on time on weekday mornings. I love the thoughtful, honest back-and-forth, the appreciation for varying viewpoints and for the fact that people aren’t stock characters right out of Hollywood’s Central Casting, that if you’re a Republican, you always think X or if you’re a Democrat, you always think Y and neither the twain shall meet.

Which is why this morning when I heard that they were going to interview the Florida clergyman who made international headlines by saying he was going to burn Korans on September 11, I was surprised.

Then my surprise morphed into something else after I watched the segment.

Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski introduced Pastor Terry Jones on live TV, then told him that journalist and former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham had a “message” for him. Meacham then proceeded to lecture Jones on the teachings of Jesus and about forgiveness and asked him, one Christian to another, to not burn the Korans. “The course you suggested is going to be incredibly dangerous and [I] would ask you to desist in the name of New Testament theology,” Meacham said.

At which point, Brzezinski replied, “Pastor Terry Jones, we appeal to you to listen to that, and we don’t really need to hear anything else, so thanks.” Then the satellite feed to Jones was taken off screen and the panelists discussed the matter without him.

Some people think this was a good way to “marginalize a media whore,” but I don’t.

Morning Joe's raison d'être is providing analysis on news, politics and culture, conducting interviews and asserting learned, sometimes passionate opinions while trying to fight their way through a thicket of ideas and ideologies to get to some semblance of truth. But inviting a person on your program under the guise of interviewing him, lecturing him then shutting off the camera was too far over the line for me. It felt wrong. It felt unfair and if there’s one thing that Morning Joe usually isn’t is unfair.

If you think the nutty pastor with a flock of a few dozen is damaging the country, is threatening to do something vile and is getting a disproportionate level of international media attention (far too much if you ask me), then you have two choices from an ethical standpoint: Either refuse to give him airtime and attention or give him airtime but pummel him with pointed, yet fair questions and allow him to do the damage to himself.

I don’t like what this pastor wanted to do – or what the Drudge Report is saying other unhinged so-called pastors and other people are planning to do tomorrow at various locations – and don’t see how it’s an answer or solution to anything. It certainly isn’t an apt memoriam for those who were killed by terrorists on September 11.

But what I saw on Morning Joe this morning really bothered me, as a journalist and as a Morning Joe fan.

Morning Joe coverage this morning notwithstanding, what do you think of the way the media has handled this story?

Women Pols -- of Both Parties -- on Receiving End Sexist Attacks

Last week, it was Sarah Palin who Newsweek editors put on the cover of a newsweekly in running shorts to coincide with the release of her memoir, Going Rogue. The editors argued that the photo was the most "interesting" one they could've selected from the thousands of Palin to place on their cover.

The cheap shots at Palin -- which were not about her policy positions -- prompted me to write this column about how powerful women pols like Palin and Hillary Clinton, when she was running for president, have been subjected to sexually oriented attacks which don't get lobbed at their male counterparts. (I also complained that, if you actually go around and tell people that it's wrong for women to be judged by their bodies, make-up, clothing and sexual attractiveness, you're obliged to object when women on both sides of the political aisle are subjected to it.)

Now comes this photographic commentary from Time Magazine: A Photoshopped image of a female Democratic senator with a pretend glob of semen in her hair, a la There's Something About Mary. A male journalist decided it'd be funny satire to depict Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, whose vote is considered pivotal to the health care legislation, looking like Cameron Diaz in the slapstick movie. Broadsheet writer Tracy Clark-Flory wrote this about it thusly:

"On November 19, the image was posted to The Page blog, which is written by Mark Halperin, and ran with the caption, 'Senator Landrieu's latest position on proceeding on health care debate here.'

As Media Matters points out, this only adds to 'a broader, sexist right-wing narrative that the U.S. Senator from Louisiana is, as Glenn Beck put it yesterday, 'a high-class prostitute' engaged in 'hookin' -- all because she lobbied Senate leadership for expanded Medicaid funding for Louisiana in the Senate health care bill in what was characterized by the media as an exchange for her 'yea' vote to proceed with floor debate on the bill.'

. . . So fellas, you've already illustrated her with ejaculate in her hair and called her a prostitute -- what's next? I shudder to think."

Over on the Huffington Post, the response went a little something like this, ". . . Mark Halperin is the worst and should be publicly scorned."

I do, however, disagree with Media Matters when it argues that this "sexist narrative" is applied to women only by conservatives. It's applied to women by women and men from both sides of the political spectrum, and to pretend that it's only conservatives who do the sexist attacking is turning a convenient blind eye.

Image credit: Broadsheet.

'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.

Trashy Celeb Dirt: Kate Gosselin Speaks Out on 'Today'

Enough with the stories about which twentysomething is Jon Gosselin dating today. Now Kate Gosselin, his soon-to-be ex-wife, has taken hold of the PR nightmare that is their divorce and went on the Today Show to provide her side of the story. And the Today Show pulled out all the stops to try to get Kate to cry because crying makes for good TV.

When Meredith Vieria asked Kate why she was still wearing her wedding ring, Kate said, "For them," meaning her children, who she said she's trying to gradually ease into the new situation. Her eyes welled with tears that didn't quite fall down in a shower, though Meredith did pointedly, dramatically, hand her tissue. "I don't want to upset them."

"This is not what any mother sets out for for her children," Kate said of the divorce. "This does not feel like the best for my children, but it's necessary."

Vieria asked Kate about a post-break-up interview Jon had given in which he said Kate was the one who gave up on the marriage last year. To her credit, Kate replied, "Clearly, we both have completely different takes on what happened between us but I feel like the details of that, for the sake of my kids, need to remain private."

"Clearly, his goals are not my goals," she added.

However the heartless Vieria kept pressing -- trying to get Kate to full-on weep perhaps? -- asking Kate how she felt about the fact that Jon was dating the daughter of the plastic surgeon who did Kate's tummy tuck which was televised on Jon & Kate Plus 8. How the heck do you think she felt Meredith? "It's got to be hurtful," Meredith goaded. She then proceeded to ask Kate what she did to contribute to the downfall of the marriage saying, "Marriage is a two-way street. Divorce is a two-way street. What role do you think you played, if any, in what happened?"

I actually felt badly for Kate while watching this interview and got the distinct impression that she was being used to goose up Today's ratings, as the words "Exclusive" were plastered on the screen. This is one reason (among the many) why I stopped watching the Today Show. The interviews started to feel too exploitative.

But certainly Kate knew that this would happen before she set foot on the set. Her live interview had been promoted for days. So perhaps she was simply trying to eek out some sympathy, acquire more people to side with her on Team Kate, as opposed to with her immature husband. Meanwhile, their children are the ones who'll really suffer the most.

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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.

Giving NYT Gold Star for 'No Photoshop' Article

I could've given the editor(s) of the New York Times' ThursdayStyles section a big, fat kiss this morning after I first looked at the newspaper. Normally, I wouldn't have any such smoochy desire. Normally, I'm irked by some story or another in that section because it makes me feel like a schlub because I don't spend $500 on my footwear and am unwilling to spend a lot of time and effort trying to keep up with the beautiful and the fabulous who have mucho disposable income with which to purchase the latest, trendy fashion "must haves."

But when I gazed at today's Styles section and saw that almost the whole top half of the newspaper was occupied by images of actress Reese Witherspoon on three different magazine covers looking like three different women due to the amount of Photoshopping that had been done to her photos, I smiled through my outrage.

While it's true that the web site Jezebel has done a stellar job of chronicling the odious Photoshopping that sadistic magazine editors routinely engage in -- the process of taking already lovely people and digitally altering their images, rendering them inhuman looking -- it's quite a statement by the Times to dedicate the entire top of the Styles section to this soul-crushing, destructive technique which editors defend, as if it's ethical or even good for their readers. (They're wrong on both counts.)

The article began this way:

"Most readers of fashion magazines are aware that all photographs, at least to some degree, lie.

More often than not, images have been altered -- historically with painstaking tricks of lighting and exposure and, more recently, with retouching software that can make celebrities and models look thinner, taller, unblemished, with brighter eyes and whiter teeth. Seemingly perfect. Advances in digital photographs that cover models often resemble weirdly synthesized creatures or, as the photographer Peter Lindbergh described them this week, 'objects from Mars.'"

The paper explained how Lindbergh "stirred the pot by creating a series of covers for French Elle that showed stars . . . without makeup or retouching." Lindbergh told the Times: "My feeling is that for years now, it [Photoshopping] has taken a much too big part in how women are being visually defined today. Heartless retouching should not be the chosen tool to represent women in the beginning of this century."

When asked by the Times about Photoshopping, the editor of Glamour said, "Fashion magazines are always about some element of fantasy but what I'm hearing from readers lately is that in fashion, as in every other part of our lives right now, there is a hunger for authenticity." Just look at those Witherspoon magazine covers above -- from Elle, Marie Claire and Vogue -- and you tell me that editors of fashion magazines will actually give readers "authenticity" on a regular basis, not just in some "very special issues," like the one featuring Lindbergh's natural photos. I seriously doubt it.

I tend to think that the magazine editors don't care a whit about the negative impact these false images have on girls and women because they hawk false fantasy masquerading as something remotely achievable. They'll, sadly, likely continue to carry on with business as usual, as shown in the video below from Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty:



Image credit: New York Times.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Gibbs & the Cell Phones

Being the White House press secretary seems like a cruddy job. You've got to field questions about subjects about which you might not have a firm grasp. You might be asked to subvert the truth, to lie, to pretend you don't know something that you DO in fact know, to try not to cringe when you hear yourself say ridiculous statements like when Robert Gibbs had to, with a straight face, tell us what the vice president MEANT to say when he said he wouldn't want anyone in his family to be in a confined space with the swine flu going around.

That said, I laughed when I saw this video of Gibbs' response to THREE reporters' cell phones going off during a nationally televised press briefing. I only wish he'd been able to snag that last phone from the CBS reporter and chuck it out the door with the other one.

Honestly, don't these folks get that it's respectful to put your phones on vibrate, particularly after one interruption, never mind THREE. If I can figure out how to put my cell phone on vibrate when I'm in a movie theater or at church, certainly White House reporters can do that during a press briefing. Maybe Gibbs needs to run a public service announcement before commencing the briefing: Silence your cell phones. Or else we'll toss 'em out of the room. (Link to the video here.)

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Seriously, What's Up With This Prez. Beefcake Cover?

When I saw the cover of the May issue of Washingtonian Magazine online -- with an artificially glowing, unethically Photoshopped image of the president bare chested and in his swimming trunks -- I was disgusted. How in the heck could the magazine's editors have thought this particular image would be a wise choice, except if they were only seeking a lot of negative buzz? (No doubt the number of hits the magazine's web site has received spiked this past week.)

Certainly the editors, in their "reasons to love Washington" issue, could've used a different, albeit still attractive cover image highlighting President Obama or the photogenic Obama family. They didn't need to resort to the salacious. And they shouldn't have. (Doesn't this simply feed the notion that the media are totally in the tank, Obamified lapdogs?)

This image simply diminishes President Obama, reduces him to some tabloid personality akin to a Hollywood celebrity, an object at which to gawk. (Remember the McCain campaign's "celebrity" ads? This plays into that argument.)

Throw in the fact that the cover was doctored -- a la Time Magazine's infamous OJ cover and Newsweek's Martha Stewart cover, as the color of Obama's swimming trunks was changed, as was the lighting on his chest (see the original photo here) -- and it was just a bad move all around. When I taught a journalism ethics course to undergraduates last year, we dedicated an entire class to the discussion of altered magazine covers and made the distinction between magazines that supposedly abided by news oriented-journalistic ethics (under which I would think the Washingtonian would fall) and those that didn't (like Redbook's Faith Hill cover).

We've got serious problems to address with our economy in a precarious condition and an ongoing two-front war, with troubling stories emerging from Afghanistan. And a respected monthly in the nation's capital put the president on the cover of their magazine while he's in his bathing suit accompanied by the headline, "Our New Neighbor is Hot." What is wrong with this picture?

Image credit: Washingtonian Magazine.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Covering the Obamas

There's nothing wrong with noticing that the Obama children are exceptionally cute. It's also reasonable to suggest that the prospect of seeing the girls playing on the White House lawn with their new puppy Bo or swinging on their new swingset outside Dad's office would be a welcome respite from the dour economic news to which we've been treated for the past several months. More than once I've heard and read political pundits likening the White House photos of 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha to photos from the Camelot days a generation ago of Caroline and John Kennedy.

As long as media coverage is respectfully restrained and the Obama girls aren't hounded and don't have everything that's on or near their bodies catalogued (like tracking down the makers of their clothing, backpacks, toys, etc.). There was a degree of media restraint afforded Chelsea Clinton when the 12-year-old accompanied her parents to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1993, but that was still in the pre-blog days, so I remain skeptical that the media can or will exercise such decorum when it comes to the First Kids.

But what has already exceeded decorum and has veered into the arena of tiresome is the coverage given to Michelle Obama, an Ivy League educated lawyer and former hospital executive, a woman with something substantive to say on many subjects. Last month I examined the type of media coverage Michelle Obama was receiving -- including the odd, fetish-like obsession with her bare arms -- in a column which noted that during the span of two weeks, the First Lady was on the cover of four national magazines.

And that was before the G-20 summit in London and the Obamas' trip abroad. Before phrases such as "fashion faceoff" were uttered and the media pit Michelle Obama with the spouse of the French president, as if the women's clothing was competing against one another. Before so-called news media outlets started running slideshows on their web sites of Michelle Obama's outfits and discussing wearing stilettos versus flat shoes on national NEWS programs.

After a week's worth of fluffy, insipid news coverage, I was steamed. My irritation yielded this week's Pop Culture and Politics column over on Mommy Track'd in which I satirically imagine what it would be like if the male leaders' attire was subjected to the type of media scrutiny that their spouses' duds, where the media pay lavish attention to pumps, not the policies and causes the women try to spotlight. How I wish the media would treat these women as women of substance, not as walking mannequins that they want to dress up in designer duds.

Image credit: Huffington Post.

'Daily Show' Massacre: Jon Stewart as a New Brand of Media Critic

It was so brutal last night, when Jon Stewart absolutely destroyed CNBC's Jim Cramer's will to live during his Daily Show interview that I almost felt badly for Cramer. Thought he'd burst into tears at any moment. He was reduced to a quivering shell. (The first part of the three-part interview is below, link here.)

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Several interview post-mortems have called Stewart a new kind of fearless media critic who's doing the work that the "real" journalists won't do, which is holding pundits accountable for what they say on the air and for the impact of those words on others. In the case of the CNBC analysts (Cramer, et al), Stewart's point was that when they urge people to "Buy! Buy! Buy!" stocks in certain companies, people listen because CNBC bills itself as the place for insightful business news from experts in the field. But when their prognostications go awry, the commentators don't own the responsibility for their words . . . until Stewart skewers them, as was Cramer's case last night. THEN they finally admit that mistakes were made.

The Atlantic's James Fallows, author of a fantastic book on the media called Breaking the News, likened Stewart's interview with Cramer to interviews by the ground-breaking Edward R. Murrow, noting, "I thought Stewart, without excessive showboating, did the journalistic sensibility proud."

The New York Times' media reporter Brian Stelter observed: "Mr. Stewart questioned Mr. Cramer about the perception that CNBC acts as a cheerleader for the investment community. 'The financial news industry is not just guilty of a sin of omission but a sin of commission,' Mr. Stewart said. Mr. Cramer agreed that he made a number of faulty predictions over the years."

The Associated Press described Stewart as "hammering" Cramer and telling the commentator that the fall-out from his and his colleagues' bad predictions was no joke. AP reported:

"Stewart said he and Cramer are both snake-oil salesmen, only The Daily Show is labeled as such. He claimed CNBC shirked its journalistic duty by believing corporate lies, rather than being an investigative 'powerful tool of illumination.' And he alleged CNBC was ultimately in bed with the businesses it covered -- that regular people's stocks and 401Ks were 'capitalizing your adventure.'"

This interview harkened back to Stewart's obliteration of CNN's Crossfire in 2004 where the comedian called the political pundits on the carpet for contributing nothing but negativism and bile to our national political discussions and asked them to just "stop." He was as ruthless then as he was last night. (FYI: The quality of the video below isn't great.)



I'm a regular viewer of political chat shows. Morning Joe. This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Fox News Sunday. Meet the Press (a shell of its former self from the Russert years). Hardball with Chris Matthews. But this particular interview, aired on COMEDY Central, was one of the toughest and on-the-money interviews I've seen in some time, even tougher than Katie Couric's Sarah Palin piece. When I turned off my TV last night, I was still stunned by what I'd witnessed.