Off the Grid Index
Posts by Caroline Miller

OFF THE GRID is about why the news is the news. Here are the real motivations of both media and newsmakers. Here's the backstory. This is a look at the inner workings of desperate media, the inner life of the publicity crazed, and the true meaning of the news of the day.

And We Thought We Hated Mammograms
Off the Grid | Nov 18, 09 2:43 PM CST
Caroline Miller - 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...

What We Need Is More Bruce Wassersteins
Off the Grid | Oct 15, 09 8:17 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - 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...

Letterman Shows How to KO a Blackmailer
Off the Grid | Oct 2, 09 11:49 AM CDT
Caroline Miller - 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...

Big Media Schmoozes With Wacky World Leaders
Off the Grid | Sep 25, 09 10:29 AM CDT
Caroline Miller - 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...

Armed Patriots Strut Their Stuff Around the President
Off the Grid | Aug 18, 09 4:51 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - 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...

Bill’s Back—and So Are the Bill-Haters
Off the Grid | Aug 5, 09 12:41 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - 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...

Why Pay Journalists? Think of It as a Hobby! 
Off the Grid | Jul 29, 09 4:24 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - 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...

Calling Sarah Palin: Gay Troops Need You
Off the Grid | Jul 28, 09 10:27 AM CDT
Caroline Miller - 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,...

What’s the Matter With the Blue Dogs? Don’t They Like Beer?
Off the Grid | Jul 27, 09 12:22 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - 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...

Can the President Call the Cops Stupid?
Off the Grid | Jul 24, 09 1:53 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - Barack Obama has been taking heat for his off-the-cuff comment at the press conference Wednesday that police acted “stupidly” in arresting Skip Gates on his own front porch. It caused a stir, not just because presidents don’t step into disputes, especially disputes between white cops and black citizens, without exercising extreme...

Why Skip Gates Really Got Arrested
Off the Grid | Jul 22, 09 11:43 AM CDT
Caroline Miller - I keep reading that Henry Louis Gates Jr., the estimable Harvard scholar, has been the victim of racial profiling—arrested by clueless cops on his own front porch —and that this outrageous incident proves that even if the current occupant of the White House is a black male, we can forget "all that kumbaya crap," we are not living...

Disgraced Sanford as Romantic Hero
Off the Grid | Jun 25, 09 9:23 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - Boy, the avalanche of blogs and columns about Mark Sanford’s confession of marital infidelity yesterday have been almost as weird as the governor’s own bizarre, oversharing press conference itself. Sanford not only strayed off the script for politicians admitting they’ve sinned, he turned the script on its head. He said the pro-forma...

Don't Blame Craigslist for Its Killers
Off the Grid | Jun 8, 09 5:18 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - The bad news is that there’s a new Craigslist Killer. The good news—at least for Craigslist—is that it’s not a sexual predator who hunted victims in the website’s erotic listings. This time it’s a baby-crazed woman who apparently listed used baby clothing on the site to lure a pregnant woman to her house, and then...

Kissing Priest Kisses Catholic Church Good-bye
Off the Grid | May 30, 09 1:34 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - The trend towards Americans shopping for religion, more or less the way we hunt for a house or a car—or, say, a pair of jeans that’s a perfect fit—took a strange step forward this week. A rather prominent and popular Catholic priest in Florida, caught canoodling on a beach with a dark-haired hottie, found an appropriately modern...

Susan Boyle Has Plenty of Reasons to Be Pissed
Off the Grid | May 28, 09 12:57 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - Susan Boyle has got a mouth on her. Not just a spectacular set of pipes. For someone who's been living at home with Mum all her life, the frumpy British singing sensation—dubbed the Hairy Angel by indelicate Brits (they meant it as a term of endearment, really!)—may not be quite the angel she’s been made out to be. Thank God. ...

Slumdog Kids Catch a Break—Finally
Off the Grid | May 27, 09 2:58 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - Director Danny Boyle finally came to the rescue of the Slumdog Millionaire kids today—the kid actors that didn’t become millionaires, that is, but went back after dressing up for the Academy Awards to the Mumbai shanty homes they grew up in. The corrugated tin and cardboard shelters, that is, they lived in until they were demolished,...

Pageant Looks Dumber Than Prejean in Topless Photo Flap
Off the Grid | May 11, 09 10:10 AM CDT
Caroline Miller - Carrie Prejean has two chances to be busted this week: Today the Miss California pageant producers decide whether to take away her tiara, and tomorrow Miss USA boss Donald Trump gets into the act, to rule on whether she’ll be stripped of her runner-up title. Hardly seems worth stripping someone of runner up, but then the Donald doesn’t...

Who's Man Enough for the Male Pill?
Off the Grid | May 6, 09 7:55 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - The male birth control pill, for decades the holy grail of sexual parity, is back on the radar screen thanks to some newly published Chinese research . Actually, it’s a shot. Of testosterone. In a 2-year test, more than 1,000 Chinese men were given monthly injections of the male hormone to make them, paradoxically, temporarily infertile....

Fake Boobs Are the New Steroids
Off the Grid | Apr 30, 09 2:38 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - It seems that Miss California, the conservative right’s new standard-bearer for the sanctity of marriage, got an extra assist from the state pageant’s promoters in her recent failed run for Miss USA: They paid for her boob job. Could be in part why they’re so cross that she scotched her chances of winning by declaring herself...

Don't Teenagers Just Love to Get Naked?
Off the Grid | Apr 22, 09 1:42 PM CDT
Caroline Miller - The Supreme Court offered a real eye-opening example of cluelessness yesterday in wrestling with the case of Savana Redding, the 13-year-old strip-searched by high school administrators in search of prescription ibuprofen they suspected her of hiding in her underwear.  The case began when the adults in charge of her Arizona middle...