CNN has thrown in the towel and hired a screamer, a right-wing flame-thrower, a guy who traffics in flamboyant political trash-talk. Why are they doing that? Not to add a “conservative voice,” as they say, but to beef up on the outrage and insult-flinging that has become the porn of the news business. The fact is that more and more of what passes as news is actually people saying offensive, shocking, ridiculous things just so that news outlets and bloggers and sharers and tweeters everywhere will propagate them. And we are more than happy to oblige. At Newser we spend many...
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No one likes to get a mammogram. Still, it’s hard to find a woman anywhere who was pleased to hear the new ruling that women in their 40s don’t need to endure the annual indignity of baring their breasts to the radiologist after all. That’s because it’s hard to find a woman anywhere who believes that the federal panel changed its recommendation for her benefit. It’s not that the decision doesn’t make sense: It costs a lot to screen women for breast cancer in their 40s, and very few actually have it—something like 1.4%. At the same time,...
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I know it’s a little odd to eulogize someone who fired you, but I can’t resist: I think it’s very important that Bruce Wasserstein be remembered not only as a Wall Street genius but as the patron of New York magazine. There aren’t enough Bruce Wassersteins: rich guys willing to pour millions into media properties instead of nerd-porn yachts or silly chalets in Switzerland. People willing to lose money, for a long time if necessary, on publications that are worth saving, don’t get enough credit: Si Newhouse and the New Yorker, for example, or...
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David Letterman drove a stake into the heart of the blackmail business last night. He not only blew the whistle on a would-be extorter, choosing instead to confess his dalliances with staffers on national television, he made fun of the guy. He told the story brilliantly, keeping the audience laughing as it slowly dawned on them that this was not a joke. Or that it actually was a joke, but the joke was on the extortionist. “Hinky” is the word Letterman used, a couple of times, to describe the scheme, and the perpetrator. Perfect putdown. He did, indeed, have...
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As if the United Nations hasn’t been enough of a circus this week, with a parade of world leaders granted the microphone to fulminate, babble, and explode, the big-time media has been offering a sideshow of its own. In a series of sit-downs with some of the wackier heads of state, they’ve been giving these guys a chance to do the opposite—show their soft side. First the Washington Post and Newsweek got up close and personal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who appeared “relaxed and confident” and “bantered” with journalists hours...
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OK, the dozen or more guys casually packing assault weapons (or whatever their personal choice of firearm) at Obama events in Portsmouth and Phoenix have succeeded in getting our attention. We’re officially alarmed, even if the Secret Service isn’t. They’re scarier than the furious crazies yelling in the faces of congressmen trying to conduct town halls on health care, even if, as they say, they have no intention of firing said weapons. That’s not just because they’re basically stalking a charismatic and controversial president (albeit without hope of getting...
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How cool was it this morning when Laura Ling, back on US soil after nearly 140 days in a North Korean jail, tearfully described the moment , 30 hours earlier, when she and Euna Lee were led to a meeting by her captors, and saw Bill Clinton standing there. "We knew instantly in our hearts,” she said, “that the nightmare of our lives was finally coming to an end." There was something else coming to an end, too: Bill Clinton’s wandering in the wilderness in the wake of his disgraceful behavior during Hillary’s campaign against Barack Obama. It was a...
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Chris Anderson is at it again today on Salon, gleefully poking his finger in the eye not only of news organizations everywhere but all the journalists who work for them by saying that in the future the media may well be a hobby , not a profession. There, he’s said it. The author of Free and the editor in chief of Wired isn’t wringing his hands over newspapers losing their sources of income because he doesn’t think it matters to the commonweal if people get paid to report and write. There are, he says, other rewards for the Work Formerly Known as Journalism...
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Everybody’s been worrying about what Sarah Palin’s going to do, other than rebuild the family bank account, now that she’s on the loose. It’s hard to say whether the GOP is more worried that she’ll continue to be very, very visible, or that she won’t. When she promised, shortly after announcing her early retirement, to devote some of her time to stumping for fellow conservatives, a number of Republican candidates were quick to say they didn’t need her help, thank you very much. When she clarified, shortly thereafter, that she’d be happy to work...
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Now that Obama has taken the sting out of the big racial standoff of the summer by inviting the parties to the White House for a beer , we can’t help wondering why the same personal touch hasn’t worked on the Blue Dogs. Who are these supposed Democrats who seem not only immune to the charm offensive but determined to derail the Obama express? In case you haven’t already gone to Wikipedia yourself, the Blue Dogs are descendants of the Yellow Dog Democrats (Southerners still punishing the GOP for the behavior of Abraham Lincoln—ie, they would "vote for a...
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