Umm ... CNN?

[UPDATE]:

Via Doug at Balloon Juice:

I would not be shocked if Palin eventually makes up some crazy story about an attempted attack on her, maybe along the lines of the Ross Perot story about how the Viet Cong tried to put a hit on him.

And her appearance on Hannity on Monday will be the perfect opportunity for her to tell us how oppressed and beleaguered she is by the big, mean liberals.

---------------------

Predictably, CNN Correspondent Erick Erickson hated on the President’s speech in today’s column. No big shocker there. But he really wallowed in the mud on this one:

Out there somewhere is someone who would love to kill Governor Palin. God forbid they do it. But you and I both know there is some crazy MSNBC watcher and Media Matters reader who even now is dreaming of doing so.

And should they try, we can be equally sure of something else. The left will be divided into two camps: (1) bitch deserved it and (2) not my fault.

It is unfortunate. I hope it never happens. But you and I both know the reality in which we live.

Wow. Way to go, buddy. You really topped yourself this time. Way to take the whole “civil discourse” stuff to heart. As if Sarah Palin were even important enough to bother with. Well, maybe in her own mind, but really. Can you imagine? Most of us ignore her, except when the mainstream media insists on shoving her latest ghost-written Tweet or Facebook post in our faces. Then we point fingers and laugh. Not quite the same as assassination but then again, maybe it is to people like Erick Erickson.

I think those three paragraphs say a whole lot more about Erick Erickson than they do about the Left, Media Matters or MSNBC. And I can't help but wonder why this hack still has a job on CNN.

Adding .... Mr. Beale heard that Erickson thinks some MSNBC watcher "would love to kill Governor Palin" and cracked: "Wait, I though none of 'em have guns?" Which reminded me: I'm always amazed at the right's two completely contradictory characterizations of us liberals, which they seem able to hold in their minds at the same time. We're either weak-kneed surrender monkeys who are "soft on defense," want to offer therapy and understanding to our enemies, and can't be trusted to keep the nation safe OR we're the whacked out anarchists rioting in the streets and fomenting civil unrest.

Cognitive dissonance much?

Dude You HAVE No Seduction!

[UPDATE]: Folks are wondering if this in any way
violates his three-years probation related to the Landrieu case. Good question.

And Digby wonders if this wasn't a blackmail set-up. Another good question. Whole thing is very bizarre.

-------------------------------------------

I’m sorry but the utter lack of self-awareness of this dweeb James O'Keefe -- he of the hyperinflated ego and underdeveloped maturity level -- is astounding. The guy who supposedly took down ACORN and got busted trying to tap Mary Landrieu’s Louisiana Senate office just scored another major fail trying to punk award-winning CNN investigative journalist Abbie Boudreau.

Read more about it here, and watch the video:



I love this part:

CNN obtained "a 13-page document titled 'CNN Caper,'" which elaborated on the prank in hilarious detail. For example, here is the equipment list:

Equipment needed


a. Video
1. hidden cams on the boat
2. tripod and overt recorder near the bed, an obvious sex tape machine

b. Props
1. condom jar
2. dildos
3. Music
a. Alicia keys
b. 80s romance songs, things that are typically James
c. avoid Marvin Gaye as too cliche

4. lube
5. ceiling mirror
6. posters and paintings of naked women
7. playboys and pornographic magazines
8. candles
9. Viagra and stamina pills
10. fuzzy handcuffs
11. blindfold

Hey what girl isn’t turned on by Alicia Keys and 80s romance songs? This is O'Keefe's idea of how to seduce a woman?

Bwaaahaaaahaaa!!!!

Seriously, who thought Abbie Boudreau would shuck her clothes on the floor at the mere sight of the studly James O’Keefe and a jar full of condoms!

Bwaaahaaaahaaa!!!!

How absolutely humiliating -- for O’Keefe. This is the right wing’s idea of journalism? Of a prank? Of a seduction? Grow the fuck up, dude.

Media Matters has more:

The Most Trusted Name In News

My friend and fellow writer Hugh Ashton calls out CNN for peddling a floating hotel concept fairy tale as real news:

Incredibly, this nonsense got taken up by the mainstream media, for example, the Daily Telegraph, which shows the “docking concept”, and, possibly the worst offender of all, CNN, who report that although the design is a “concept” and only a “feasibility study”:

designers have developed a detailed and achievable technical plan for the craft that could allow it to be built in the future

The point is that there are no technical plans available in the release. Materials, propulsion, hard calculations (other than gross lifting force) are totally ignored. Moreover, the headline: “Could we soon be staying in floating hotels in the future?” completely ignores the weasel words buried in the rest of the article. Many journalists, myself included, are sometimes guilty of this to a degree, but this seems to be a particularly egregious example.

I try to keep off politics in this blog, but it is worth noting that CNN is often regarded as being trustworthy and unbiased. When faced with something like this, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that many half-truths and biased points of view on the political front have been packaged as “fact” by CNN and others. Readers of the blog are left to provide their own examples, but the implication is relatively obvious–read past the headline and look for the fnords.

Of course we are well acquainted with the numerous half-truths CNN and other media outlets parade as fact: Saddam had WMD; Dems refused to let anti-choice Gov. Robert Casey speak at the 1992 Clinton convention; angry liberals turned Paul Wellstone’s memorial into a Republican hate fest; hippies spat on Vietnam veterans. You know the drill. They’re called zombie lies over here (though I love the “Fnords” idea) and as Atrios says, they never die.

What’s truly weird is that an outfit like CNN would distort a story that really doesn’t matter. Were they so hard up for news that day that they needed to embellish someone’s quirky dream project by adding words like “achievable technical plan”? Isn’t there enough real cool stuff happening in the world?

Hey, CNN: head over to Fast Company; it’s like the “Reader’s Digest” of cool stuff.

We American viewers are used to this stuff. Hugh lives in Japan and (though I haven’t asked) probably gets to watch CNN International, which is far superior to our domestic version; no doubt he also gets to watch the “real” BBC as well (we just get BBC America here, which is mostly lame reality shows like Cash In The Attic and How Clean Is Your House?). Sad to learn the media sucks internationally, not just at home.

Of course, some would say this is by design. In a piece that’s now a few years old, Thom Hartmann quoted Vice President Henry Wallace’s answer to the New York Times, which had asked him if fascism could take root in America:

"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."

Here's a scary thought: The news media sucks because it’s meant to.

Putting CNN In The Shame Corner With A Dunce Cap

This morning CNN’s Ed Lavandera gave us this stunning report on “warning signs” missed in the case of Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan:

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Nidal Hasan's family describes him as a good American, but several people who knew Hasan in his years at this Maryland military university say the high-ranking Army officer expressed extremist Islamic views. One says Hasan openly pledged allegiance not to the United States but to the Quran, and when asked of the constitution was a brilliant document simply responded no, not particularly.



Our sources asked not to be identified because of the ongoing investigation, and the investigators wouldn't comment on the details they offered.

(The online story is here.)

Wow. I’m just stunned. This is what passes for news on CNN these days? I think it goes without saying that Nidal Hasan is public enemy number one, he opened fire on a military base and murdered a lot of innocent people. But the fact that the “most trusted name in news” is now trying to determine if the Ft. Hood shooter was a “good American” and is using his religious views as a barometer is just jaw-dropping.

I wonder how often CNN asked that question of Scott Roeder, James von Brunn or George Sodini?

Did Hasan have extremist views? Well, duh. Opening fire on a group of innocent people is by definition an extremist act. But are someone’s religious views or opinions about whether the U.S. Constitution is “brilliant” extremist? How responsible is it to report snippets of someone's "remembered" conversation--someone you won't even identify? That's the sleaziest tabloid trick of all.

For shame, CNN. For shame.

Here’s a question for CNN and Ed Lavandera. How many times have we heard conservative Christians say they put God before country? Is this extremist?

Or this?

The problem with CNN and Ed Lavandera’s piece is that it’s hearsay and gossip. We are given no context for these snippets that someone remembers Hasan saying. The where and when and why are kinda relevant here. Was he wielding a Molotov cocktail when he said his allegiance was to the Koran? Or was he professing his faith, like those Christian homeschoolers who recite their daily Pledge of Allegiance to the Bible? There's a huge difference between the two scenarios.

CNN’s piece was shockingly unprofessional. It’s an affront to religious people of all stripes: the idea that you cannot espouse a religious view without being labeled an extremist is offensive. If you can't give us context, if you can't give us more information, then just don't run it at all. It's worse than irrelevant, it's inflammatory. And it’s appalling.

Hot Air

[UPDATE 2]:

Today's tone deaf award goes to CNN's blog which has just offered Balloon Boy: The Beginning.

Shoot me now.
-----------------------

[UPDATE]:

Octopus has more. Seems like CNN milked this for MORE than it was worth.

-----------------------
I can think of no better demonstration of the American news media’s general suckitude than yesterday’s wall-to-wall coverage of “balloon boy” Falcon Heene. Network and cable news alike were consumed by this latest “Timmy’s in the well” story, but no one milked this non-story for more than it was worth than CNN.

Wolf Blitzer’s coverage was typical. He interviewed “hot air balloon expert Craig Kennedy”, who quickly observed:

But, doing some rough calculations with our friends at the SuperiAire balloon port here in Albuquerque, that balloon probably contained about 2,000 cubic feet of helium, which would, at our altitudes in that Fort Collins area, give the equivalent of roughly 100 pounds of lift. 

So, I think it was a pretty good bet that this child did not actually get lifted by this balloon. So, the question is, where is he?

At which point Blitzer said something to the effect of, “oh yeah great point maybe he’s in the house or something but now walk us through this process here ....”

To which Kennedy responded a second time:

It wasn't stable in its flight, like it had a payload below it. So, for that reason, I think, fairly early on, we felt like there was no child aboard, that there was nobody on board that balloon.

And the next complete sentence out of Blitzer’s mouth was:

BLITZER: Well, let me just ask you this question. If the little boy was on the balloon, but fell out in the course of these two hours where it was simply flying around, that would have been obvious to those who came upon the balloon once it landed, isn't that right?

Gah. Then Chad Myers weighs in:

MYERS: Tom, I just -- or I just wonder, of the lift that this thing had and the size of this payload, there was never supposed to be anyone in this. I mean, this was not supposed to be even for a small adult or anything. This was not for a human flight, correct?

Oh fer crying out loud, people. Are you even listening to your own guest? Kennedy makes his point one more time, with feeling:

So, this little tiny balloon of 2,000 cubic feet with a lift of only 100 pounds, I don't see how it ever lifted a child in the first place.

Got it now? There was no child in the balloon! CNN Correspondent Tom Foreman replies:

FOREMAN: You know, and it's an interesting point you're raising here.

I want to look at this graphic for a minute. You're saying, if I understand you correctly, that, basically, the upward lift of this from the beginning was only about 100 pounds. If you had a child in here who was 50 pounds, you're already stressing the lift.

Yes! Yes! Praise the lord and pass the microphone, someone in the Situation Room finally got it. No child was on that balloon! Ever! It was scientifically UN-possible!

But Blitzer couldn’t let it go. After subjecting Kennedy to more questioning, to hearing an interview with a neighbor, etc., he breaks down:

BLITZER: And, so, just to be precise, Craig -- and you're -- you're the balloon expert for us -- if you had to make a conclusion on all of the information you have seen so far, you would conclude that there was -- the little boy was never in that balloon?



KENNEDY: I would hope that that child was not in the balloon. And I would say physically, it -- it is possible that perhaps the child made a very short flight. 

I'm certainly hoping that that's not the outcome. But seeing no hatches open that would have suggested a departure, I don't think that child was ever aboard that -- that machine.

Well, anything’s possible. Jesus could have swooped down on a white cloud and ushered young Falcon off the machine. I mean, seriously.

Blitzer and his producers at The Situation Room were given plenty warning that this was likely a hoax of a story, but with another hour and a half or so to fill and only Evander Holyfield’s reaction to President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize in the sidelines, they couldn't drop it and move along to something else. With dogged determination they stuck with their story, dammit. It was painful to watch.

Of course, the ultimate embarrassment of the entire American news media came later last night with this moment on Larry King Live:

In a later interview with CNN's "Larry King Live," Falcon said he heard his parents call for him from the garage.

When asked by his father on-air why he didn't respond, the boy replied, "You guys said we did this for the show."

Ah, “the show.” Apparently the Heenes have been featured not once but twice on the ABC reality series “Wife Swap.”

Did CNN and the rest of the news media just get pwned by some reality show publicity chasers? Oh, noes!

Or ... and here's a scary thought, did American viewers just get pwned by CNN, who blanketed their programming with wall-to-wall coverage of a non-story, then revealed it was in all likelihood a hoax later on their own cable network.

Either way, we all lose.

Can CNN Survive As Lou Dobbs Ups The Crazy?

After Lou Dobbs thoroughly embarrassed the “most trusted name in news,” which is how CNN still has the cojones to refer to itself, the network’s top brass has told Dobbs to cool it. It seems CNN president Jon Klein got the network's researchers to contact Hawaii state authorities and get answers to the question about Obama’s birth certificate (apparently in 2001 the state of Hawaii went paperless). In an e-mail Klein instructed Dobbs staffers to

be sure to cite this during your segment tonite. And then it seems this story is dead - because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef.

Thx

At which point Dobbs promptly ignored Klein’s request to drop it, ignored the evidence the researchers provided, and went on to question why Obama hasn't presented every crackpot in America with a copy of his birth certificate.

Meanwhile, today the Southern Poverty Law Center called on CNN to take Dobbs off the air. The letter from the SPLC president to Jon Klein reads, in part:

As he has in several other instances, Mr. Dobbs, in taking up the birthers' claims, is adopting an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that originated on the radical racist right. As Gawker.com has reported, this particular conspiracy theory was first developed by an open anti-Semite and circulated by right-wing extremists who cannot accept the fact that a black man has been elected president of the United States. Among its adherents was neo-Nazi James von Brunn, the alleged murderer of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., this June. Von Brunn had helped spread the birthers' claims on the Internet and attacked the "dishonest & conspiratorial Media" for not taking them up.

This is not the first time Mr. Dobbs has pushed racist conspiracy theories or defamatory falsehoods about immigrants. We wrote you in 2007 to bring to your attention his utterly false claim that 7,000 new cases of leprosy had appeared in the United States in a recent three-year period, due at least in part to immigrants. (The real number, according to official statistics, was about 400. Mr. Dobbs took his spurious information from the late right-wing extremist, Madeleine Cosman.) In addition, Mr. Dobbs has reported as fact the so-called Aztlan conspiracy, which claims that undocumented Mexican immigrants are part of a plot to "reconquer" the American Southwest. He has suggested there is something to a related conspiracy theory that claims the governments of Mexico, the United States and Canada are secretly planning to merge into the "North American Union." He has falsely claimed that "illegal aliens" fill one third of American prison and jail cells. And Mr. Dobbs has routinely disparaged, on CNN's air, those who have had the integrity to point out the falsity of these and similar claims.

Respectable news organizations should not employ reporters willing to peddle racist conspiracy theories and false propaganda. It's time for CNN to remove Mr. Dobbs from the airwaves.

The SPLC has a point. Lou Dobbs and his ilk have mainstreamed extremist thought. It’s one thing to blather like an idiot on your own wingnutty radio show, but his position on CNN--“the most trusted name in news”--lends a gravitas and legitimacy to his extreme right-wing views. You know, if the most trusted name in news is going to repeat this BS, maybe there's something to it, eh?

It's not a matter of right vs left, it's a matter of fact vs fiction, with a poltiical motive behind it. That just sucks five ways to Thursday.

I’m sure this is why CNN has gone to so much effort to debunk these ludicrous lies, but when one of your own hosts is ignoring the obvious, you gotta wonder if CNN’s own credibility might not get sullied in all of this. Frankly, I haven’t trusted CNN in a long time, anyway. I wonder how much longer other folks will, too?

CNN first got itself into hot water when they hired Glenn Beck. It seems they've got another wackadoodle they need to hand over to Fox News before they lose all credibility. And hey, Jon Klein: ask Lou to take Nancy Grace with him.

(BTW, just wondering: does Vanderbilt’s Carol Swain still want to draft Lou Dobbs for president?)

Ditch Cheney

GOP congress critters, including at least one from here in Tennessee, want Dick Cheney to go back to his secret, undisclosed location:

Rep. John Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.) said, “He became so unpopular while he was in the White House that it would probably be better for us politically if he wouldn’t be so public...But he has the right to speak out since he’s a private citizen.”

Another House Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity said he wasn’t surprised that Cheney has strongly criticized Obama early in his term, but argued that it’s not helping the GOP cause.

The legislator said Cheney, whose approval ratings were lower than President Bush’s during the last Congress, didn’t think through the political implications of going after Obama.

Cheney did “House Republicans no favors,” the lawmaker said, adding, “I could never understand him anyway.”

I have given some thought to this “he has a right to speak out” stuff. Since Cheney is now a private citizen, it’s curious that this “right to speak out” includes the massive megaphone that is an appearance on CNN. Private citizens aren’t usually given that kind of platform.

So far it doesn’t appear CNN’s attempt to out-Fox Fox News has paid off in the ratings.

And Now A Word From Our Sponsor

Obama’s Surgeon General pick Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been a veritable fountain of bad advice during his tenure at CNN. But the only time I ever blogged about him was to question his recommendation that financially-strapped viewers cut their prescription pills in half.

At which point an astute reader pointed me to this article outlining Gupta’s financial ties to Merck. Apparently during the time Gupta was on CNN promoting Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil and dismissing the dangers of Merck’s Vioxx pills, he was co-hosting an integrated marketing program sponsored by Merck called AccentHealth.

This strikes me as very bad form for a journalist, but of course Gupta is not a journalist, he’s a television personality, and of course he doesn’t know any better. This is the problem with modern broadcast news, which eschews journalists for the so-called “experts” who supposedly know more than any real reporter could.

CNN is the real culprit here for allowing this situation to exist in the first place. This opens the door wide to corporate hegemony, or what the article describes as

the growing tentacles of a corporate agenda that seeks to control every message pertaining to its corporate brands in every venue visited or medium viewed by a consumer.

We are left with questions surrounding Gupta’s judgment and whether his ties to corporations like Merck influenced his news coverage of that company and its products. We’ll never know if Gupta dismissed the risks of heart attack associated with Vioxx out of ignorance or avarice, but we do know Vioxx got yanked off the shelves and Merck settled an avalanche of lawsuits related to the product.

This does not mean to say I am out-and-out against the appointment of Gupta to U.S. Surgeon General. Seems to me that job is mostly about PR and communication, and Gupta has proved himself adept at that. But I do think most of the media snickering over Obama’s pick misses the point. “Judge Judy for the Supreme Court?” Ha ha very funny, Jay Newton-Small. The point is not that Gupta is a television personality who may be appointed to public office--have you nitwits forgotten that Ronald Reagan was a television personality, for crying out loud?

The point is to look at what it means to be a television personality in this day and age. Oftentimes it means being a shill for corporate advertisers. Someone should be looking into this, because I’m not sure we want the U.S. Surgeon General to be on Merck’s payroll.

Just a thought.

The Most Trusted Name In News?

[UPDATE]:

CNN's transcript page now shows they covered the story once on Dec. 28. The incident took place on Dec. 22.

Thanks to a commenter for alerting me. And thanks CNN. I think America's Liver® deserves better than that.
------------------------

When I say CNN’s coverage of the Tennessee ash sludge spill has been dismal, here’s what I’m talking about. I perused their transcripts and noted how many times they covered the story:

Sunday, Dec. 28: zero
Saturday, Dec. 27: zero
Friday, Dec. 26: twice
Thursday, Dec. 25: zero
Wednesday, Dec. 24.: zero
Tuesday, Dec. 23: zero
Monday, Dec. 22: zero

Meanwhile, on Saturday the Santa shooting rampage in Covina, CA was covered five times, and then seven times on Friday. Yes I know, if it bleeds, it leads. Still, this is a bigger environmental disaster than the ExxonValdez--1 billion gallons of toxic sludge vs 11 million gallons from an oil tanker. You’d think that would register as more than a blip on CNN’s radar.

I know it sucks that this happened right before Christmas but I don’t recall CNN skimping on its coverage of the Indonesian tsunami, which occurred Dec. 26, 2004. Or Hurricane Katrina, which happened right before Labor Day.

Oh, I know, I know. If it bleeds it leads! Silly me.

I think I’ve figured out what the problem is. Here’s an excerpt from one of Friday’s two stories. The reporter is weekend anchor T.J. Holmes:

HOLMES: Yes. Just whatever you want to call it, it's nasty stuff. The TVA says clearing the railroad tracks is the priority because that's how they get the coal into the plant.

Ummm ... the priority is to get more coal into the plant? Really? Holmes didn’t think that was a little ... odd? Ooooo-kay ....

Here’s the interview with Holly Schean, whose home was destroyed in the sludge spill:

HOLLY SCHEAN, SLUDGE VICTIM: I don't have a home anymore. It was moved 40 feet into the road. Everything in my home was destroyed. It's gone -- all of my clothing, but son's stuff. Three and a half years of renovations that my father has done on this house is completely gone. There's nothing left. 


HOLMES: Ms. Schean, that is horrible to hear, certainly right now around the holiday time. 

How did you get warning? I guess this is not really some rushing stuff, not so much fast moving that you can't get a warning and get out of there. But I guess, how did it go that you knew something was up and that you needed to get out of there?

Now, how did he know this was “not really some rushing stuff”? I think Mr. Holmes was operating on some assumptions. Maybe he was confused by the word “sludge.”

But back to our transcript:

SCHEAN: Well, I actually wasn't in the home. My father was the only one home at the time. 

I received a call a few minutes after the dike broke from my son's football team mom asking me if we were OK. I had no idea what was going on. It's been -- she informed me that there was one man trapped in a house. She didn't know the address. I then called dispatch, and that's when they informed me that it was my father that was trapped.

So Schean’s father was trapped inside their house by the sludge spill, which T.J. Holmes assumed was such slow moving gook that people could receive ample warning in order to escape.

I don't think Mr. Holmes has ever been in a mudslide.

I think I know what the problem is here. I think T.J. Holmes, and by extension CNN, simply doesn't get it. I don’t think they understand the magnitude of what happened, the longterm environmental effects, or the fact that dozens of sites around the country are equally at risk.

Maybe they just don’t know any better.

Then again, maybe I’m being naive. There could be another reason. There could be a reason that all three of CNN’s presidential debates were sponsored by the coal lobby yet not one question about global warming was asked at any of them.

Maybe there’s another reason John Roberts touted "making gas from coal” and Ali Velshi pushed "very, very clean coal.”

Maybe it has something to do with those "great ads” on CNN and CNN.com.

I dunno. What do you think?

Memory Hole, Clean Coal Division

Ah, remember when coal was clean, and CNN didn’t waste an opportunity to tell us so?

Good times, good times:

Coal Industry Sponsors CNN, CNN Praises Coal

CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velshi has been promoting coal-to-liquids technology and praising “clean coal, 99 percent clean” for an entire month. On Tuesday, CNN held a no-holds-barred coalfest, promoting coal-to-liquids and coal gasification technologies, calling coal “seductive,” and criticizing “blogs” who “go nuts” and “environmentalists” who “want to get rid of coal.”

What’s motivating CNN to closely mirror coal-industry talking points?

One hopes it has nothing to do with this:



The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is a $45 million front group for over 40 companies in the coal industry.

CNN’s response to the coal story has been anemic, at best. Two days after the disaster there was no coverage whatsoever, then links to local coverage.

I’d say it’s long past time for CNN to airdrop Ali Velshi at ground zero to remind us how clean coal really is.

RIP, Good Riddance, Don’t Come Back

Yet another legacy of the Bush Years is headed for the door: the dreaded news crawl:

After rolling it out on 9/11, 22 minutes after Fox, CNN is retiring the crawl to give its screen "a less cluttered look," reports the Times.

Unfortunately, the article goes on to state that the “crawl” will be replaced with the "flipper,"

which will be a line of text, usually related to whatever's on the screen. The text might "flip" over to show new information, but in a way CNN claims "doesn't give viewers a headache."

"Flipper,” eh?

You really want to call it that, CNN? Really?

Can’t wait to see what The Daily Show and Colbert Report do with that one.

Paging Dr. Gupta

I actually heard Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's physician-in-residence, say this on my TV this morning:

Finally, and a lot of doctors may not tell you this, but you can actually break a lot of pills in half. In fact, a lot of them are actually scored down the middle. Again talk to your doctor about this, but if you can break it in half, you get double the number of pills for the same amount of money.

I have a suggestion: how about some freaking universal prescription drug coverage so I don't have to game the system and make my doctor an accessory to insurance fraud just to afford my medication?

Hmm?

CNN: Serial Offender

Memo To CNN: young women are not bimbos. Get it, learn it, spray paint it on your newsroom walls.

I just saw morning anchor Tony Harris perform the most sexist, condescending interview of two intelligent young women I've ever had the displeasure of witnessing. I really don’t want to see anything like this again.

The young women were high school students who had posed questions to the Republican candidates for tonight’s YouTube debate. Rebecca Durr asked about homeless Iraq War veterans. Hilarity ensued (I’m transcribing this by hand but will post a linked transcript when it becomes available):

TONY HARRIS: Becka let’s start with you, you’ve been watching the debates I understand, and you feel you know where the candidates stand on the issues that are important to you.

Rebecca Durr: Well I feel that it’s important for the public to be able to ask the questions that they want to ask to the candidates and declare issues that are on their mind. So the questions that we asked were important to us, and we did want to hear the ans-

TONY HARRIS: (interrupting) Look at you there all strong and poised! Very nice! Okay!

Gee, thanks Mr. Harris! Golly! But that didn’t end the trainwreck:

TONY HARRIS: Annie one last question for you, has the internet participation, CNN/YouTube debate, has it made the debate process more interesting, more compelling for you?

Annie Ulizio: Definitely. I think it’s really a way for kids that can’t vote yet to get involved, you know, because people are on the internet a lot, people hear about the YouTube debate and it’s just a great way to understand where the candidates are coming from on different policies so people can really be comfortable with what they’re voting for in November and really know what they’re doing.

TONY HARRIS: Boy, so smart! So poised! Both of you! How great is that!

How condescending! How sexist! How unprofessional! And no, Tony Harris, it’s not great. Had the students interviewed been young men, not women, I doubt the interview would have descended into verbal pats on the head.

But of course, it’s CNN. And we all know that CNN thinks young women should ask more appropriate questions, of the silly ”diamonds v. pearls” variety.

Atrios, Is It Time For A Blogger Ethics Panel?

Watching CNN’s coverage of the whole Alberto Gonzalez thing just now, I heard CNN Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin casually mention that he once interned for Dept. of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, back when Chertoff was a prosecutor.

I did not know this.

I’m waiting for CNN to post this morning’s transcript, and will link to it when they do. In the meantime, I’m thinking it would have been nice of Toobin to mention this back when he interviewed Michael Chertoff about the UK terror bombings and illegal immigration on July 1. But I see no mention of that.

Toobin might also have mentioned it during the Samuel Alito confirmation hearings, when he incorrectly claimed that a then-judge Chertoff ruled with Alito that it was OK to strip-search a 10-year-old girl in Doe v Groody. In fact, Chertoff wrote the majority opinion in this case, that the strip-search violated the Fourth Amendment.

However, his history with “Mike” did come up on a January 11, 2005 appearance on Paula Zahn’s show:

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Hi, Paula.

ZAHN: I don't know if this will make you feel really old or really young, but the fact that you were actually interned for Michael Chertoff at one time, what were your impressions?

TOOBIN: It was 1986. It was a summer job for me. And he was in charge at a young age of the famous commission case, which was the prosecution of the heads of the five families who ran the Mafia in New York City. And Paula, I've got to tell you, I don't think it was just because I was a naive young law school graduate, Mike Chertoff is just about the smartest lawyer I have ever encountered. The guy is just absolutely superb.

ZAHN: But in spite of how smart he is, you heard a number of people in Jeanne Meserve's piece saying, smart is one thing, this is a guy who doesn't have a resume to suggest he could actually run a bureaucracy as unwieldy as this department is.

TOOBIN: Well, I think if you had told me a year ago that Mike Chertoff would wind up attorney general of the United States, I'd say, of course, that makes a lot of sense. That seems to be how his career has been pointed. Homeland security is completely new. In fairness to Mike, and I suppose anyone, it's not clear that anyone can run this department, given its vast size. But most of Mike's career has been as a lawyer, a judge, and a little bit as an administrator, and now, it's mostly an administrative function, as you point out.

ZAHN: And it seems to me the president was sending a clear signal, given the fact that this man has been confirmed three times so far by the Senate, he views this as almost a sure shot.

Is that the way you look at it?

TOOBIN: II think it is. You know, The only person voted against him consistently as attorney general and as a judge is Hillary Clinton, who, of course, was the subject in large a part of Mike Chertoff's Whitewater investigation. Which was, I think it's fair to say, not a high point of Chertoff's career. That was Al D'Amato's investigation in the Senate, which really didn't go anywhere. It made -- it made Mike some very good connections in the Republican Party and his career has flourished. But I don't think that was particular success of his.

ZAHN: But I wouldn't say that was a real high point from him. You can't blame it all on Al D'Amato. What share of the blame does he take for the tone of that investigation?

TOOBIN: I think, you know, when I've spoken to him about it, he sort of screws up his courage and says, well we did the best we could. I think he's a lot more comfortable. He -- I did a profile of him for the "New Yorker" when he was head of the criminal division. And that was job he really loved. He was in charge not only of the post 9/11 investigations but all of the post Enron white collar investigations. Chertoff did the Arthur Andersen case. He was basically single handedly responsible for putting Arthur Anderson out of business. Now, you can argue whether that's a good thing or bad thing, but that's the world he has so far been much more comfortable with, much more than politics and Whitewater or homeland security where he has next to no experience.

I’m sure if Michael Chertoff does become the new Attorney General (and that’s a big if, of course), Jeffrey Toobin will recuse himself from covering the AG’s office.

Ha. Good one, I know.

[UPDATE]: The CNN Transcript is up:

TOOBIN: Well, I have to confess a certain bias about Michael Chertoff. In the summer of 1986, right after I graduated from law school, I was Michael Chertoff's intern in the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan. And you know, I've known Mike for a very long time. He was a wonderful prosecutor.

Again, I did not know this.

[UPDATE 2]: CNN reporting Chertoff will replace Gonzalez and Clay Johnson will replace Chertoff. (h/t, NiT).

Note To Media: We’re Frustrated With You

Three guesses who said this in a Washington Post interivew this week:

I was in an airport [last Wednesday] when that whole Paris Hilton interview was going down. I was watching "The Situation Room" and they were talking about this interview that hadn't happened yet and then counting down to it. I'll never watch CNN again.

I mean it. I think something's happened to news and entertainment. News has become entertainment. They don't give you what you need, they give you what you want. And entertainment has taken a turn, too. People aren't much interested in virtuosity. They just want to feel better when they watch something and that changes it all. So I don't know, maybe that's why Broadway was so great and I'm going to Vegas.

If you answered Tony Danza, of “Who’s The Boss” fame, you’d be correct.

Tony freaking Danza. I'd say if you've lost Tony Danza, you've lost that last shred of the American public that wasn't already thoroughly disgusted with what passes for news these days.

Tony Danza is only half-right on this one: they aren’t giving us what we want, they’re giving us what they think we want. According to this week’s Entertainment Weekly, Larry King Live’s interview with Paris Hilton drew a paltry 3.2 million viewers. If that were a show on a non-cable network, it would have been cancelled long ago.

Tony Danza, from the mouths of babes (and I mean that in every positive sense of the word imaginable).

Mitt Romney Flop-Flips

Back when I was a single, I had a girlfriend tell me that if you just listened carefully enough, a guy would tell you everything about himself in the first two hours.

She was absolutely right. So often we hear what we want to hear, not what a person is actually saying. Once I learned to actually listen, I found my wonderful husband.

I think choosing political candidates is very similar. Let’s look at Mitt Romney, shall we? Here’s a tasty bit from his interview with CNN’s John Roberts yesterday:

ROBERTS: You have said or at least intimated that, look, I changed my mind, people should move on. They should allow me to change my mind.

ROMNEY: No. I'm saying, I changed my mind, and you can look at my record as governor, and you can see in my record as governor that I have consistently been pro-life. Every piece of legislation that dealt with life...

ROBERTS: Even though you were effectively pro-choice?

ROMNEY: You know, as governor, all the decisions I made as governor and all the bills that came to my desk were -- I came down on the side of life. So when I ran for office, I was effectively pro- choice. I didn't call myself pro-choice, but I said I would keep the law the way it was. But the first time as governor that I saw a piece of legislation that dealt with life, I came down on the side of life.

Got that, kids? Mitt is saying that he ran for Governor as a pro-choice candidate, but once in office, his actions were anti-choice. In other words, for those of us listening, he’s telling us he will say whatever is necessary to get elected.

So those of you who are anti-choice, better pay attention. Those of you who are pro-choice Republicans--and I do believe you are out there, in the millions--better pay attention. We don’t know what Mitt Romney believes about abortion or any other issue because as he just told us, he will say whatever he thinks he needs to say to get elected.

Stuff like this is what gets Democrats labeled as opportunists and flip-floppers. I eagerly await the return of the flip-flop sandals distributed by the Bush campaign and MSM stories like CBS’ ”Kerry’s Top 10 Flip-Flops”--this time directed at Mitt Romney.

Oh, wait, I forgot, IOKIYAR.