February 2008 Archives
There was this show called “Scrubs.” It was a comedy about wacky doctors and oddball patients and an extremely peculiar janitor. People liked it just fine. They shot it in an abandoned hospital in the Valley, where they offered cast and crew members money to spend a half-hour on a body tray down in the morgue.
It did OK. But NBC threw it around the schedule a lot and then it did less OK. But still, 6 or 7 or 8 million people were watching it and ABC, who has comedies like “According to Jim” which is watched by about 5 million people and “Carpoolers” which gets about 4 million people to tune in, looked at it and thought to itself, “Hey, 7 or 8 million viewers is pretty good, in our book” and so they asked “Scrubs” if they wanted to do a season for ABC, which produces the show in the first place.
And then NBC, who was pretty much going to cancel the thing, said, “Whu---? Waitasecond, buddy, that’s our show!”
Yes: NBC, which has waited until the last second before renewing the show and has used it as a midseason replacement and was dragging its feet about whether or not they’d even allow “Scrubs” to produce a series-finale episode, is suddenly is all about their “Scrubs.”
I have a dog. He’ll be like totally ignoring a cow’s hoof and then I’ll pick it up and then he wants that cow’s hoof more than anything on the planet. NBC’s like my dog: They’re both house-trained.
It turns out that the reason reporters write about NBC’s woes is not because after years of complete and utter dominance thanks to a schedule boasting a lot of smart, urbane shows, the network is in a disturbingly spectacular freefall and is trying to turn itself around with breathtakingly stupid reality shows and stuff they found while trolling around on the Internets! No, the reason reporters write about NBC’s woes is because it relieves them, if only momentarily, from the heartbreak that is their own industry crashing and burning.
And how do I know this? Because NBC CEO Jeff Zucker said so himself, that’s how.
Zucker said: “The thing [reporters] want is for the [TV-news] business to die faster [than the newspaper business], because that’s what makes them feel better.”
[Envision a hilariously wacky, overly broad double-take, maybe even a spit take if that’s the way you roll, along with a whimsical “boooiiiinnnnngg” sound effect.] Whu-----?
Gee, that’s so impressively boneheaded and mean-spirited I’m surprised someone in the White House didn’t say it. As newsrooms across the country are emasculated on a daily basis (and many are already geldings to begin with), stories about diminishing news coverage aren’t some sort of Schadenfreude but a kind of where-will-this-all-end plea for sanity to be restored.
People need and even sometimes want to know what’s going on in the world, and as journalists are increasingly offered buyouts of one Starbucks gift card for every year of service (maximum eight gift cards) and a cyanide capsule, the losers in all of this aren’t just highly trained professionals forced to head hat in hand to the nearby Wal-Mart for a greeter’s job but everyone, anyone who won’t learn something that directly affects them until too late.
And Zucker instead posits it as a your-industry’s-dying-faster-than-my-industry p!ssing match. Ouch and more ouch.
“On Tuesday, the NBC premiere of ‘quarterlife’ marked the network's worst time-period performance in the 10 p.m. hour in at least 17 years, averaging a 1.3 rating/4 share among adults 18 to 49 and 3.1 million viewers. The premiere numbers prompted the show's co-creator Marshall Herskovitz to question the show's transition from online phenomenon to broadcast series.
“‘It never should have been a network show,’ Herskovitz told a group at a Harvard Business School conference Wednesday. ‘It's too specific ... from the first three minutes, I knew it wasn't right.’”
If that’s the case, why did he sell it to them in the first place?
This weekend on:
* “Torchwood:” The gang investigates a series of murders in which the victims have had their blood systems “erased.” This leads them to Pharm, a cutting-edge biotechnology firm dabbling in curing incurable diseases with lethal alien parasites who enter their patients’ blood streams. “Doctor Who’s” Miss Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) helps the team out on this one. As usual, a single episode of “Torchwood” boasts enough crazy inventiveness to fuel a season of most shows.
* “Dirt:” Season Two begins after a kind of rocky season one got bogged down in an overly serious, apocalyptic tone that didn’t really hew to what the show’s about. (Courteney Cox’s Lucy Spiller, the editor of the gossip rag Dirt Now, was the FX anti-hero who had the least fun even though her life was by far the easiest.)
They’ve changed the show quite a bit, lightening the tone (though it could still stand to have a few more really funny lines) and reimagining it as “Law & Order” meets TMZ.com, with storylines ripped from the tabs. If this had been what the show was all along, it probably would’ve fared better last year.
Sunday’s premiere offers a mashup between Anna Nicole Smith and Alexander Litvenenko (the Russian spy killed with Polonium-210), a cocktail so curious as to be inspired, and a rather inevitable character who’s equal parts Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears. The March 9 episode, demurely entitled “Dirty Slutty Whores,” riffs endlessly on Paris Hilton (here dubbed “Milan Carlton” and played by an actress who fairly resembles the star of the box-office megabomb “The Hottie and the Nottie”), giving her a comeuppance we can only dream about.
Yet it also tries to couch her in a sociological context: “She’s all of us,” says Lucy’s favorite photographer Don (Ian Hart). “We’re a nation of spoiled rich people. Milan is so extreme that it makes us feel better by comparison. But really she’s just the part of ourselves that we loathe. That’s why we need her, to make ourselves feel better.”
The subplot involves Alec Baldwin and David Hasselhoff’s love child. Even moreso than “Law & Order,” “Dirt” makes absolutely certain you get the references, faithfully aping the original viral videos that rained such mortification down upon the celebrities referenced. They probably don’t have to be so on-point.
And good news for Don: His meds have finally been worked out so he’s no longer talking to his cat or hallucinating dead starlets in love with him. He speaks for us all in this exchange:
Lucy: Are you feeling good?
Don: No, but I’m feeling normal.
* “Breaking Bad:” Walt (Bryan Cranston) goes all bad-ass on us, even with his incapacitating cancer. Though he instructs his meth-slinging colleage Jesse (Aaron Paul), “No violence” in his business dealings, he pretty spectacularly breaks his own rule by episode’s end. Fulminate of mercury gets some pretty righteous product placement: By episode’s end, everyone with a score to settle is going to want some.
Chemo’s taking its toll, and Walt’s DEA-agent brother-in-law finds a clue linking a crime scene to chemistry equipment at Walt’s school, resulting in blowback that leaves Walt rueful for a few minutes.
Walt and Jesse take a rather perilous journey toward locating a new distributor for their wares. Snorting a little of Walt’s meth, the unhinged operator sputters, “This kicks like a mule with its balls wrapped in duct tape!” Which means, in case you’re wondering, that it’s really good.
That would also be a really good pull-quote for this show. So, here you go, AMC: “This kicks like a mule with its balls wrapped in duct tape!” – David Kronke, Mayor of Television.
* “Aliens in America:” We’ve previously discussed the likely fate of The CW, and this modest sitcom’s likely going to be residual damage. The show, about a Muslim foreign exchange student in a small Wisconsin town, returns with new episodes on Sunday. Oddly enough, the main characters cede center stage to Dylan Taylor, whose recurring character, Trey, gets the episode’s best laughs. Taylor transforms him in this installment into the most polite and empathetic bully ever.
On the downside: The other storylines aren’t particularly inspired, Scott Patterson’s role has essentially been reduced to that of a bystander, Amy Pietz’s character has gotten a little one-note and the following week’s “Rent”-inspired episode should trigger a moratorium on “Rent” jokes. In a nicer world, “Aliens in America” might’ve won itself a bigger audience. But there is no nicer world.
- “Torchwood:” 9 p.m. Saturday, BBC America.
- “Dirt:” 10 p.m. Sunday, FX.
- “Breaking Bad:” 10 p.m. Sunday, AMC.
- “Aliens in America:” 8:30 p.m., The CW Channel 5.
(A review of “Oprah’s Big Give” will appear in Sunday’s paper.)
Fox, apparently having noticed how much hot dogs look like phalluses, will be promoting its upcoming sitcom about disastrous dating misadventures, “Unhitched,” this weekend by giving away free hot dogs at Pink’s, 709 N. La Brea in Hollywood, on Friday and Saturday beginning at 9:30 a.m. The first 500 people to show up will be treated to a Pink’s dog on both days, and while I’ve never considered hot dogs to be breakfast fare, the earlier you get there the better your chances of scoring free grub. Pink’s offers such delicacies as the “Martha Stewart Dog” (including sauerkraut and sour cream) and the “Rosie O’Donnell Long Island Dog” (also with sauerkraut) – make of that what you will.
“Unhitched” is executive-produced by the Farrelly Brothers (who directed the pilot), so you can rest assured that the characters will be routinely humiliated. In fact, the first bad date ends in an act of monkey sodomy (or something uncomfortably close to that neighborhood), so that gives you an idea of what you’ll be getting yourself into.
Herewith, outtakes from an upcoming story in Sunday’s paper on the show:
Bobby Farrelly: “Everyone’s willing to be the brunt of a joke. It’s just our style. Everyone’s got to be willing to take a bit of a beating.”
The Farrellys didn’t create the show, but signed on after reading the pilot script: “The monkey sodomy on page three is what won us over. Right from the opening bell, these guys were going for it and that’s what we like to do, too, go for broke. These guys were real aggressive with it and we thought it worked.”
Craig Bierko, who plays Gator, who’s on the receiving end of that monkey attack: “That was the one day my girlfriend visited the set – that was humiliating. That happens five minutes into the pilot, and you realize, ‘Oh, that’s the Farrellys planting their flag.’ You’re playing by their rules now.
“You know, I miss the little bugger, Archie. He doesn’t write. When he left the set, he was signing something to me, and his trainer suggested that I get a security guard.”
Rashida Jones, who plays Kate, the nominally level-headed character of the bunch: “The entire writing staff and the Farrellys would really get into trying to make it as humiliating as possible. There’s a scene where I’m covered in food and the writers kept saying, ‘More food! More food! More food! Cover her! Make her stink like garlic!’ I stank like garlic for two days.”
On coming between Jim and Pam in “The Office:” “I don’t think I knew what I was stepping into. And it kind of occurred to me a couple of weeks before the first episode aired, and I started to have anxiety about it because I figured people would hate me. They would hate me no matter what because Jim and Pam are so beloved and their relationship is so beloved that it didn’t matter how much people tried to like me, the fact was they don’t want to like me. So the fact that I broke through at all, that there were some people who liked my character at all, was a huge point of pride for me. And was a huge credit to the writers.
“I was only supposed to be on for six episodes, so it was a compliment they kept me around for an entire season. But I always knew it was finite. I was never officially written out. Karen still officially works for Dunder Mifflin, so I’d love to be back on that show.”
Chris Pappas, co-creator: “I would say that 90% of the stuff we came up with (in the show) is off personal experiences. There hasn’t really been a show out there that has embraced bad dating.”
Alas, Pappas declined to say which member of his writing staff has been sodomized by a simian.
Of course ABC refused to comment. Most people accused of heinous crimes don’t talk to the press until they lawyer up.
According to the Book of Revelations, the next step is the rapture.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go scream a lot of obscene words.
While NBC’s travails in recent years suggest that the network’s name stands for Never Been Competent, the network is watching yet another potential disaster rolling its way in slow-motion: Jay Leno’s handing the “Tonight Show” baton over to Conan O’Brien in 2009.
NBC, in order to keep O’Brien from defecting to another network, signed him to a deal a few years ago that promised him the “Tonight Show” in 2009, and if the network reneged on the offer, it’d have to pay Conan a penalty of some $45 million. May have seemed like a good bet at the time, or at least deferring one more headache for another day. But despite delivering somewhat hackneyed product, the avuncular Leno has been dominating late-night ratings – he even managed to beat David Letterman during the writers strike, despite the fact that Letterman’s show had its full contingent of writers and Leno (ostensibly) had to write all of his material on the fly. Meanwhile, just at the time when he should be gaining momentum, Conan’s begun to face some stiff competition from Craig Ferguson over at CBS. And there’s the question of how comfortably Conan can ease into the new timeslot: He may be too quirky to appeal to as many viewers as Jay does seemingly effortlessly, but if he rounds some of his edges off, his current fans may not be appeased. On the other hand, NBC’s in no condition to p!ss away $45 million these days, so not handing the job over to Conan is extremely unlikely.
NBC has already begun building O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” set in Universal City and sweet-talking Leno about continuing at the network in some other capacity. But Leno has insisted that his current late-night slot is the only one he’s interested in, and that he doesn’t want to move from his Burbank studio (NBC is in the process of selling its Burbank lot and leasing it back).
Which brings us to this New York Times report that even though no one is officially supposed to be approaching Leno about his post-2009 plans at this point, in fact plenty of people already are. ABC is so anxious to become a bigger player in late-night that it’s willing to jettison “Nightline,” Fox wants to finally establish a late-night beachhead and Sony Pictures Television wouldn’t mind cozying up to Jay, either, and their deal would likely be the juiciest and most lucrative.
But: Is Jay in it for the money, or to stick it to NBC and prove just how stupid they were for forcing him to walk the plank just to hold on to Conan? One executive told the Times, “I expect money will play a secondary role to revenge and Jay will look to prove to everybody that NBC was wrong.”
So: Let’s mull Jay’s options for him, shall we?
* ABC: The Times puts its chips here. This would be the only deal that would guarantee that Leno would go directly head-to-head against and pulverize O’Brien into a puddle of pale pulp, if that really is his overriding motivation. And ABC’s sensibility is more in keeping with Jay’s than Fox’s. The downside, however, is that there would be some negative ink regarding Jay’s killing off the respected “Nightline,” a consideration that had a hand in Letterman opting to say thanks but no thanks to ABC and stay with CBS a few years ago.
* Fox: The network is desperate to establish a late-night presence, if only to wash away the bad taste left in its mouth from previous abject failures featuring Joan Rivers and Chevy Chase. Jay’s mainstream, Main-Street-Middle-America persona would be less of a fit with Fox’s edgier fare. And, again, the timeslot consideration – Fox’s show would begin at 11 p.m. – might conflict with Leno’s bloodlust for O’Brien’s head. “Another performer would find getting a jump at 11 an advantage,” a Fox executive told the Times. “But probably not Jay, who will want to be head to head against NBC.”
* Sony: Syndication made Oprah Winfrey an extremely wealthy woman, and could easily make Leno the uber-Oprah of late-night. On the face of it, this would seem a no-brainer: Leno’d get to own not only his show but a prospective series following his (just as Letterman also owns “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson”). The Times says Sony would also offer Leno $40 million annually (he currently makes $25 million), making him far and away the highest-paid late-night performer (Letterman makes $30 million). They’d also put Jay’s name on a new theater on the Sony lot and even throw some more coin his way when Sony music artists would appear on his show.
Essentially, Sony’s offering Jay the ability to add every car on the planet to his already sizable auto collection. And with the networks’ market share shrinking on a second-by-second basis, Leno’s syndicated show would be able to cater to the strongest channels in every local market. The lone downside would be that they probably wouldn’t be able to guarantee that Jay gets that NBC-bludgeoning 11:30 p.m. timeslot in every market. And, again, if revenge is the chief motivator, there wouldn’t be a daily overnight ratings report comparing/contrasting Jay v. Conan: Syndicated numbers are issued on a weekly basis.
* Sticking with NBC: Conceivably, Leno might stick around at the network that stuck the shiv in his back and do occasional primetime specials or an opening monologue in lieu of a news update on the “Today” show. The network insists it wants to keep him around, but probably only so he won’t turn up somewhere else and underscore what a mistake showing him the door in favor of Conan was. But that seems about as likely as NBC offering me the job to replace Conan in the 12:30 a.m. timeslot.
So: You’d want to be Jay in this little skirmish. You wouldn’t want to be Conan, and you certainly wouldn’t want to be an executive at NBC.
NBC’s repurposing of the online series “quarterlife” tanked last night. It lost nearly 60 percent of its lead-in, and a full quarter of its already dinky viewership bailed after the first half hour. Which means it averaged about 3.86 million viewers.
So: It’s supposed to settle into its permanent timeslot on Sunday. Will it last that long?
Otherwise: “American Idol:” 28.5 million, “Back To You” returned with 12.3 million (which would be great had “American Idol” not been its lead-in, but it was, so it’s only so-so), and an ABC newsmagazine (7.64m) beat “Jericho” (6.9m). MSNBC's coverage of the debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton outscored most network fare on Tuesday, with 7.8 million viewers, an all-time high for the cable news network.
In sum: A paltry 18.4 million people – or, 6% of the population – tuned into the broadcast networks last night at 10 p.m. Why are they still called broadcast networks?
OK, now I’m pretty sure people are just yanking me: There’s an effort to save “Las Vegas,” for chrissakes. NBC cancelled the show after the writers strike ended, but still about three seasons too late. I saw an episode recently and am pretty sure no one lifted a finger to ensure that the thing made sense.
Here’s a good measure of NBC’s enthusiasm for the show: It was cancelled even though the last episode shot was the first part of a two-part cliffhanger. Clearly, NBC thought anyone who was actually watching this show would’ve forgotten all about it by the time the writers strike ended. (It’s not exactly going to help sales of the season 5 DVD, everyone knowing there’s no closure whatsoever.)
Nonetheless, according to an Email, “a fan-based campaign has begun to save the series,” which is pretty funny, given that the Email came from a PR firm.
“I just looked at the numbers and I looked at where we were in the season and I know how much it would've cost to start us back up. I told my writers ahead of time, ‘If there's a strike, it's going to be shows like ours that get hurt the most.’ … It's going to take us six to eight weeks to strike that casino [set]. It's already happening. The body wasn't even cold.”
If Thompson saw the writing on the wall, then why didn’t he work harder to prevent the final produced episode from ending in a cliffhanger?
We’ve discussed in the past the folly of these resurrect-a-show campaigns particularly in light of “Jericho’s” disappointing ratings after CBS succumbed to fan hysteria, but Gawker goes absolutely apoplectic over the notion of zealous fan bases lobbying to save a low-rated show rather than finding something else to watch or, better still, getting a life:
“I officially hate these campaigns. They're boring and useless and almost always are focused on some bad show that deserves to be canceled no matter what. Their clamoring never represents any actual viewer appetite for a particular program, just a few crazies with too much time on their hands. Whether it's an effort to be young and with-it or if it's just some perverted altruism, the networks simply need to stop paying attention to the Internet.”
Tonight, NBC debuts “quarterlife,” the online series from “thirtysomething” creators Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, who apparently have still not learned that the SHIFT bar on their keyboards capitalizes letters. The show was initially developed for ABC, who rejected it; they then produced it as a series of eight-minute episodes for the Internet and, in the middle of the writers strike, NBC picked it up as stopgap programming, despite the fact that the New York Times reported that within its first month, “quarterlife” went from getting a million viewers to somewhere around 100,000. NBC’s no doubt preparing makegoods for advertisers as we speak.
“quarterlife” concerns a clutch of twentysomethings revolving around Dylan (Bitsie Tulloch), who has her own blog (named “quarterlife”) and uses it to transmit urgent dispatches to the outside world on the current state of her navel. Of course, plenty of people have blogs like this, but Dylan’s, against all odds, becomes something of a phenomenon, thanks largely to her blithe willingness to humiliate her friends.
And so, to commemorate NBC’s launch of “quarterlife,” we herewith offer our own “quarterlife”-style blog entry.
Hi! It’s me! I think I’m an interesting person and am sure everyone else will think so, too, so I’m sharing all the intimate details of my life, like how deep I am and all the quirky things that I do! Like, none of my favorite music that I get from iTunes is from a major label and when I go to the grocery store, I only buy organic stuff that’s not in recyclable packaging!
Almost as important as me are my friends! They’re crazy, too! Except for Charlie, who’s kind of quiet and keeps to himself and when you go to his house you hear this buzzing grinding sound but when you knock on the door he’s all “Oh, I’m not doing anything,” but the place has plastic wrap everywhere and he bought these medical props from the movie “Dead Ringers” off of eBay and there’s this weird tincture smell and all the doors are locked and there are a lot of open holes in his backyard. Charlie’s kind of boring, really.
Also, there’s Trish, who even though she has all these icky pockmarks on her blotchy skin somehow manages to keep getting pregnant. I tell her if she’d take one or two of those to term, Angelina Jolie wouldn’t have to go all the way to Africa to adopt all those babies, but she blames it all on her dad. I don’t get it, though – he seems kind of dull. He’s a government contractor and he’s totally like the kind of contractor my parents hired to build their deck – he always disappears for months at a time just at a crucial point in the job. He says he has all these overseas assignments and when he comes back, he has all these cool human skull thingys, but if you ask him where he got them, all he says is, “Clients.”
Anyhoo, the other night a bunch of us went to this cool club and there was this bitchen DJ who was kind of cute and I was feeling it until she segued from Lupe Fiasco into Buckcherry – I mean, who does that? I practically did a spit-take with my Absinthe Drip Frappé!
My friend Josh always tells me that there’s a whole big world out there, but I’ve never seen any evidence of it.
- “quarterlife:” 10 tonight; thereafter, 9 p.m. Sundays; NBC Channel 4. (Alas, the review’s not up on the website or else I’d link to it; but I get it – who online would want to read about a TV show about a blogger?)
The Internets have been like that monster in “Cloverfield,” destroying old media like newspapers, radio and the music industry casually and remorselessly. And now, according to the Wall Street Journal, Google and YouTube are preparing to do the same thing to Television:
“Americans watched more than 300 million videos on Google's YouTube in December alone, and the amount of time spent watching video online grew 34% last year.
“While that's not been entirely at the expense of television viewing, the growth sends shivers down network executives' backs. Worse, Google's new plans to wring advertising revenue out of online video could eventually cause broadcasters a lot of pain. …
“If Google succeeds in marrying advertising to online video, broadcasters could find themselves in a bind similar to newspaper publishers. The latter suffer from declining circulation, higher production costs than their digital brethren and advertisers that are switching to cheaper, more effective online distribution.
“Broadcasters already face variants of the first two problems. Google's initiative might complete the trifecta. The cost of reaching a thousand viewers online is about one-fifth the average cost of doing so via a major broadcaster. And the fact that users click on ads that interest them means a campaign's efficacy can be measured more accurately.
“The roughly $80 billion annual market for television advertising has held up remarkably well over the past several years. It might now be in for a big challenge.”
This might be a little hyperbolic: After all, I don’t think anyone’s really figured out how to marry advertising and content when it comes to short films. A five-second spot before a parody news item on the Onion News Network scarcely makes an impression, while sitting through a 30-second spot before a 90-second or two-minute news story at ABC.com or CNN.com is worse than watching regular TV and is just irritating enough to make you think twice about watching anything else on their sites.
ABC has been successfully testing this new service in Orange County, where it found that 93% of those using fast-forwarding disabled VOD considered the advertising acceptable in exchange for gaining free access to the shows. 20% of the users went with On Demand rather than their DVRs, and ABC also found that 27% of those surveyed said they wouldn’t have watched the shows at all without the convenience and ubiquitous availability of On Demand programming.
So ABC’s not only reaching out to casual viewers but getting them to sit through commercials, to boot. So maybe they don’t have as much to fear from YouTube – well, yet – as the Wall Street Journal seems to suggest.
As spectacles go, ratings for the 80th Annual Academy Awards were less than spectacular. The ceremony averaged 29.16 million viewers Sunday evening, down distressingly from the 40.17 million who watched last year. And the show lost nearly 7 million viewers over the course of the 2.5 hours it was on the air in prime time on the East Coast.
By contrast, “American Idol” averaged 28.84 million viewers last Tuesday, and without having the likes of George Clooney, Jack Nicholson, Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman on hand.
The prior low: 2003’s 33 million viewers.
What accounted for the severe dropoff? Let’s take a look:
5:30 p.m.: Show begins with Jon Stewart’s opening monologue: 32.27 million viewers.
6 p.m.: Sigh … another montage, of past Best Supporting Actor winners. Down to 30.7 million.
6:30 p.m.: They’re handing out the Oscars for Live-Action and Animated Short Films. 630,000 more viewers bail out, leaving ABC with 30.07 million.
7 p.m.: Kristin Chenoweth’s overstuffed production number, “That’s How You Know,” sends nearly 3 million more audience members fleeing. Also, everyone on the East Coast switches over to CBS to watch the diluted version of an 18-month-old episode of “Dexter.” Down to 27.34 million.
7:30 p.m.: Some old guy gets an honorary Oscar, causing more viewers to wander off: 25.42 million are still hanging in there.
Numbers for the rest of the evening weren’t available, but it seems likely that the only people watching by the time “No Country For Old Men” won Best Picture were those live-blogging the show.
We discussed last week that New York Times article intimating that John McCain may or may not have been dallying with a lobbyist; we’re not sure but maybe and if so – well, hey, right?
Naturally, the piece came under intense fire from many sides – readers, both pro- and not-so-pro-McCain, the liberal-media-hating-right, even other journalists and, yesterday, from the Times’ own public editor, Clark Hoyt. He wrote:
“But in the absence of a smoking gun, I asked (Times editor) Keller why he decided to run what he had.
“‘If the point of the story was to allege that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist, we’d have owed readers more compelling evidence than the conviction of senior staff members,’ he replied. ‘But that was not the point of the story. The point of the story was that he behaved in such a way that his close aides felt the relationship constituted reckless behavior and feared it would ruin his career.’
“I think that ignores the scarlet elephant in the room. A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide.”
It’s hard to believe that a paper like the New York Times did not learn anything from CBS News, who got thumped and hard thanks to its story about George W. Bush’s time (or lack thereof) in the National Guard. Locating a single mistake in Dan Rather’s story, a falsified document, Bush’s champions managed to discredit the whole shebang, even though there seemed to be compelling evidence that the President didn’t actually serve his full tour of duty.
And so, with the Times and McCain: Though the bigger issue is whether the Republican Presidential candidate’s relationship with lobbyists compromises his reputation as a reformer, dropping that titillating bombshell in the second paragraph utterly clouded the point they were trying to make.
The offending line in the Times story read, “Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself…” The same point could have been made, and less salaciously, had the line simply been rewritten: “Concerned by perceptions that might arise over the lobbyist’s ubiquity around McCain during his campaign…”
As Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz points out, “The hardest thing in journalism is to spend months on a story and then admit you haven't got the goods. There is, instead, a tendency to dress the thing up with fine writing and larger themes in an effort to demonstrate that it's not just about sex, when of course that is the only element most readers -- and the rest of the media -- will focus on.”
Not like the media needs any more lousy news or bad press at this point. Newspapers are hurting, in case you hadn’t heard, and investigative journalism is one of the costliest things a paper can invest in: Assigning reporters to weeks and even months on one story isn’t exactly cost-effective, particularly when an expose on corporate malfeasance may not even get as many hits on your website as photos from Oscar’s red carpet. So if your best efforts blow up in your face, well, your trigger finger’s going to get a little hesitant (has CBS News broken a big story since its bloody nose from the National Guard story?). And if people in positions of power understand that there are fewer watchdogs out there, they’re going to make people like Enron’s Ken Lay and Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski and Blackwater’s Erik Prince look like pillars of ethical resoluteness.
And then, of course, we’re all doomed. But you knew that already.
“Late Night with Conan O’Brien” is taking NBC’s Green Initiative seriously: They’re recycling their jokes from night to night.
Consider these punchlines from last week:
* “Yesterday the U.S. Department of Agriculture recalled 143 million pounds of beef. Experts say this is the largest recall of beef since Star Jones had liposuction.”
- and –
“The Pentagon says it successfully shot down an old satellite over the Pacific Ocean. According to the Pentagon, this is the largest object to be shot down since Star Jones was fired by ‘The View.’”
* “The founders of Ben & Jerry's ice cream are endorsing Barack Obama instead of
Hillary Clinton. Which makes sense - because ‘Ba-rocky Road’ is a catchier name
for an ice cream than ‘Pantsuits 'N Cream.’”
- and -
“Yesterday the founders of Ben and Jerry's announced that they are endorsing Barack Obama instead of Hillary. Apparently Ben and Jerry decided not to endorse Hillary after they realized that nobody would buy a flavor called ‘Nutbuster Crunch.’”
* “The Spice Girls say they want to play at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday party. When he heard this Mandela said, ‘Thanks, but I'd rather go back to prison.’”
- and -
“The Spice Girls have offered to perform at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday party. When he heard this, Mandela said, Thanks, but I've already made plans to enjoy myself.’”
* “Kirstie Alley has left Jenny Craig and announced that she is starting her own weight-loss program. Apparently, under the program, every time you feel like eating something, Kirstie Alley comes to your house and eats it for you.”
- and –
“Kirstie Alley said her split with the Jenny Craig diet company was amicable and they both decided to go in ‘a different direction.’ The direction Kirstie went was towards the cookie aisle.”
Good thing to see the writers earning their paychecks with such fresh material.
8:41 p.m.: Martin Scorsese, presenting the Best Director Oscar, which he calls “an award that will – trust me – mean so much to the recipient.” Joel and Ethan Coen shock the world by predictably winning the trophy for “No Country for Old Men.”
“I don’t have a lot to add to what I said earlier,” Ethan says, referring to his nearly non-acceptance acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay, and kind of glibly belying what Scorsese said about the award meaning so much to the winner. Joel, on the other hand, recalls shooting a movie when they were kids called “Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go” and adds, “What we do now doesn’t feel all that different from what we did back then.” I’d kind of like to see “Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go.”
8:45 p.m.: Denzel Washington shocks the world by predictably giving the Best Picture trophy to “No Country for Old Men.” Producer Scott Rudin smiles, something he’s not known for doing around his assistants, and thanks his partner: “Without you, honey, this (Oscar) is just hardware.” What is it with him?
8:51 p.m.: And now, the evening’s final montage: A collection of the best closing-credits scrolls in Oscar history.
Final thoughts: Nicely done, Jon Stewart; in this "green" production you scarcely left a carbon footprint but still proffered plenty of one-liners. But if I ever see another awards-show montage, there really will be blood. No doubt my own.
8:06 p.m.: You know, even though he’s not nominated for anything, here’s betting Barack Obama wins something tonight. Because, you know, he’s just on such a hot streak.
8:09 p.m.: “Atonement” gets one. For Best Original Score.
8:12 p.m.: Soldiers in Baghdad present the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject to “Freeheld.” The soldiers aren’t on hand to present the Best Documentary Feature, probably because so many of the nominees are critical of the war. “Taxi to the Dark Side” wins. Which naturally gives us our first political acceptance speech of the night: Who’d’ve ever thought that it’d be considered provocative to speak out against torture?
8:23 p.m.: "Movies are made of ideas and pictures and words,” Harrison Ford informs us.
8:25 p.m.: It’s now official: Diablo Cody will be the first person in history whose obit will include the phrase “former stripper/Academy Award winner.” She’s been gabbing it up all over the place, and has become something of a divisive character splitting those who find her a charming free-spirit and those who find her a manufactured irritant, but how many screenwriters manage a cult of personality? And winning the Oscar seems to have silenced her a little bit and elicited a genuine emotional moment. Each of the Best Picture nominees has won at least one Oscar at this point.
8:33 p.m.: Daniel Day-Lewis shocks the world by predictably winning the Best Actor Oscar for “There Will Be Blood.” He thanks the Academy for "whacking me with the handsomest bludgeon in town."
7:29 p.m. It’s a “Bourne Ultimatum” sweep! The film just picked up its third Oscar, for Best Editing. It would’ve won, too, had the award been for Most Editing.
7:31 p.m.: Nicole Kidman is giving out some Lifetime Achievement Award to editor Robert Boyle. She laughs at the idea that someone could actually be 98 years old. Though I’ll wager a good three-quarters of those in the Kodak have never heard of the guy, they give it up to him with a standing O.
7:41 p.m.: Jon Stewart introduces Penelope Cruz as a woman who speaks four languages, “and she taught me the phrase ‘I’m calling security’ in all of them.” Austria’s “The Counterfeiters” wins Best Foreign Language Film.
7:44 p.m.: “The versatile and handsome” Patrick Dempsey introduces “So Close” – the final Best Song nominee from “Enchanted.”
7:50 p.m. As we surmised, “Falling Slowly” takes the Best Song Oscar. “Make art, make art,” co-winner Glen Hansard implores the crowd, apparently forgetting who he’s speaking to.
7:57 p.m.: Jon Stewart automatically ensures he’s going to get rave reviews for his hosting duties tomorrow when he brings back Best Song co-winner Marketa Irglova to give the acceptance speech the orchestra had previously denied her. How many people do you figure bought their song off iTunes immediately after their performance?
8 p.m.: Cinematography trophy goes to Robert Elswit for “There Will Be Blood.” Elswit promises to slice the thing up and give 80% of it to production designer Jack Fisk, leaving him with the head and the base.
8:02 p.m.: CelebrityDeathwatch 2008© montage, or, as it’s better known, “The pool from which Daniel Day-Lewis is picking whom to dedicate his next award to.” Heath Ledger wins the coveted “most applause” award.
7:02 p.m.: Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill get into a debate over which of them is more like Halle Berry and which is more like Dame Judy Dench. That’ll no doubt become a topic of debate for weeks to come in dorm rooms pungent with the smell of marijuana.
7:03 p.m.: Best Sound Editing goes to “The Bourne Ultimatum.” The winners blank out and just start sputtering out names at random. Mercifully, the orchestra play them off. “Bourne Ultimatum” wins Best Sound Mixing, too. These guys actually have their stuff together, even making a joke: “Is it all right to kiss Halle Berry, now?”
7:09 p.m.: What does it say that the most emotional moment in this year’s show is the clip of Halle Berry accepting her Oscar at the 2002 ceremony? And yes, that came during yet another tiresome montage. Couldn’t they’ve hired a few more writers to cook up some more material or just gone for a short ceremony? As Samuel Johnson said of "Paradise Lost:" "No one wished it any longer."
7:12 p.m.: Hey, another upset: Marion Cotillard is Best Actress for “La Vie en Rose,” and we get a live, not canned, emotional moment. Cotillard's acceptance speech (apparently, her life is officially rocked) is in broken English, but it says volumes more than any of those prior. She exults, “It is true: There (are) some angels in this city!” Nah, but you haven’t been in town long enough, so we’ll give you a pass on your endearing naïveté.
7:19 p.m.: Just based on the response “Once” gets at its mere mention, it’s safe to say Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova will win the Best Song Oscar for “Falling Slowly.”
7:22 p.m.: Bulletin: Jack Nicholson confesses that he loves the movies. He says the word “humanity,” then cackles ominously. Oh, Jack – they’ve pimped you out for yet another montage?
6:25 p.m.: Eleven-year-old Jamia Simone Nash steals the show from an entire choir during the performance of the gospel-tinged Best Song nominee “Raise it Up” from “August Rush.”
6:29 p.m.: Owen Wilson gives the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film to “Le Mozart Des Pickpockets.” More acceptance speeches have been given in broken English during this ceremony than not.
6:31 p.m.: If you hadn’t gotten sick of Jerry Seinfeld’s ubiquity while promoting “Bee Movie,” this pretty much sealed the deal. “Peter & the Wolf” is named Best Animated Short Film.” Winner Hugh Welchman brings his date – his little Peter puppet – onstage with him.
6:37 p.m.: Dark-horse nominee Tilda Swinton wins an Oscar for “Michael Clayton.” She thanks George Clooney for wearing his Batsuit with the nipples every day on the film’s set. No, really – I wouldn’t’ve thought to make that up.
6:44 p.m.: Jessica Alba, who, it’s safe to say, will pretty much never win an Academy Award, gets some face time with the camera. Now we know what starlets like her are good for: Hosting the technical awards and pretending to care.
6:46 p.m.: How is it that Josh Brolin and James McAvoy’s banter introducing the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay is so badly written?
6:48 p.m.: Is the sweep beginning? The Coen brothers grab the Best Adapted Screenplay trophy for “No Country for Old Men.” But they better have better acceptance speeches should they win for editing, directing and/or Best Picture.
6:50 p.m.: Geez, the Academy is hellbent to bore us silly: They’re offering a short film explaining the voting process. Did you know Academy voters actually go to theaters to see the films? And then they vote on ballots? That might’ve been a little too inside-baseball for the rest of the country.
6:52 p.m.: Again, Stewart’s just as underwhelmed as we are: “Wow. That was amazing.”
6:55 p.m.: That’s more like it: An over-produced and –choreographed production number! Kristin Chenoweth and a cast of hundreds perform “That’s How You Know,” also from “Enchanted,” and also phoned-in.
6:14 p.m.: Boyoboy, they’re wasting a lot of time on these montages from Oscar ceremonies past. I guess they went to the trouble of cooking all these things up before the writers strike was resolved, and they’re gonna use ’em, dammit, no matter how little the rest of us care. The latest: A bunch of shots of Best Supporting Actor winners, including Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s ecstatic acceptance speech, that magical moment that propelled him to those underwear commercials he’s doing today.
6:18 p.m.: Javier Bardem shocks the world by predictably winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “No Country for Old Men.” He thanks his mother in Spanish, saying, translating roughly, “Mama, I promise I’ll never wear that haircut again.”
6:22 p.m.: Jon Stewart corrects my translation: “I believe he told his mother where the library is.”
6:23 p.m.: At least Stewart is dumping on the montages, as well: He introduces “Oscar’s salute to binoculars and periscopes” and “Bad Dreams: An Oscar salute.”
5:54 p.m.: “Ratatouille” shocks the world by predictably winning the Best Animated Feature Oscar. Brad Bird accepts by slagging high-school guidance counselors everywhere.
5:56 p.m.: Ladies and Gentlemen, we have avoided the ignominy of forever having to refer to “the Oscar-winning motion picture ‘Norbit:’” Best Makeup Oscar went to “La Vie en Rose.” The orchestra plays the winners off almost as soon as they hear the words “I have a lot of people to thank.”
5:59 p.m.: “Enchanted’s” Amy Adams performs “Happy Working Song,” one of the Oscar-nominated tunes. I didn’t even know there was a category for Most Phoned-In Ditty.
6:09 p.m.: “The Golden Compass,” that movie that allegedly dissed God, wins an Oscar for disseminating its blasphemous message throughout the world, preventing us, for the moment at least, from having to refer to “the Oscar-winning motion picture ‘Transformers.’”
6:11 p.m.: “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” wins Best Art Direction without having to threaten anyone with a straight razor.
Host Jon Stewart did much better this time around, keeping it short, sweet and pretty much on-topic for the crowd he’s playing to:
“What an exciting night. These past three and a half months have been very tough … but the fight is over, so tonight, welcome to the make-up sex.”
Noting that Vanity Fair had cancelled its Oscar party “out of respect to the writers:” “You know how they could show respect to the writers? How about inviting them to the Vanity Fair Oscar party?”
Championing “all the Oscar-nominated psychopathic-killer movies – does this town need a hug? “No Country for Old Men,’ ‘There Will Be Blood:’ All I can say is thank god for teen pregnancy.”
On “Away from Her:” “A woman who forgets her own husband. Hillary Clinton called it the feel-good movie of the year.”
“Even ‘Norbit’ got a nomination, which I think is great. Too often the Academy ignores films that aren’t good.”
“Diablo Cody used to be an exotic dancer and now she’s an Oscar-nominated screenwriter. I hope you’re enjoying the pay cut.”
On Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton: “Normally when you see a black man or a woman President in a movie, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty.”
5:42 p.m. Best Costume Design: “Elizabeth: The Golden Age.” A less-than-rousing way to open the ceremony, handing a trophy to a movie no one saw. Oh, wait: Hardly anyone saw any of the nominees.
5:43 p.m. A stroll down memory lane: Barbra Streisand winning her Oscar. Followed by the first montage of the evening: Another stroll down Oscar’s memory lane. Uh, how about ditching the nostalgia and get to this year’s trophies?
Regis Philbin, hosting the network version of the red carpet show, noted he first (and last) covered the red carpet back in 1979. “To show you how good I was, every 30 years they invite me back,” he says. Apparently he wasn’t that keen on the joke: He then asked, “Are the writers back?”
Then Philbin spoke to George Clooney, telling him, “Once upon a time, everyone wanted to be Cary Grant. Now they want to be George Clooney.” Clooney, not missing a beat: “That’s because he’s dead and nobody wants to be dead.” Well, I guess it depends on how much red-carpet coverage one watches. Clooney then gobbles up valuable network time chatting up Notre Dame basketball with Reege.
Of her dress, Helen Mirren tells Reege, “I’m (currently) playing the madam in a whorehouse in Nevada and the character is rubbing off on me.” You and the whole town. Queen, madam - this late in her career, Mirren's finally been typecast.
Apparently, the red carpet is lacking for celebrity firepower, because Reege has been consigned to interviewing fans who have lined up along the red carpet. “I didn’t sign up to talk to plebes,” he then announces (or something), storming into the Kodak Theatre, where he’s assured to speak to real stars like Jack Nicholson.
It was with some reluctance that I tuned into the Oscar pre-game show, as I had already watched a couple of hours of NBC’s upcoming “quarterlife” and had pretty much had my fill of self-important boobery. But no sooner was the set on than Channel 7’s George Pennacchio was achieving his trademark brand of fawning fatuity, telling “The Savages”’ Laura Linney, “As always, I think that you’re fearless, and you show every emotion on your face, which I would think is difficult to do, especially in a film.” Actually, George, that’s pretty much the job description.
Pennacchio’s co-hort, Richard (“I’m not a movie critic but I play one on TV”) Roeper, asked “Atonement’s” Saoirse Ronan the question on everyone’s mind: “Did you get a good night’s sleep?”
Pennacchio did not disappoint. He asked Marion Cotillard, “This dress is really beautiful; I imagine it took a lot of time to make.” As if she had a hand in making it. He had a follow-up: “Are they going to hire you for a lot of roles now where you make us cry?” Which is pretty much what any serious actor dreams about – getting typecast.
Tommy Lee Jones told Pennacchio of “No Country for Old Men,” “It’s a good representation of the work of our best living prose stylist.” Apparently unaware that Cormac McCarthy wrote the book upon which the film is based, or perhaps not sure what a “prose stylist” is, Pennacchio merely nodded mutely for a couple of seconds, and Jones escaped.
Near the end, he was resigned to generic queries, asking “Michael Clayton’s” Tilda Swinton, “If you could only thank one person tonight after you win, who would it be and why?” She couldn’t bother to come up with an answer. Rubbing it into “Eastern Promises”’ Viggo Mortenson’s face that he had virtually no chance of winning any hardware, he asked, “What is your grand plan for tonight? What is your big hope?”
Despite dire forecasts, the rain went away. Boy, does that Gil Cates has some muscle or what?
Like a police officer assigned with the tragic task of informing family members of the death of a loved one, the sad duty of live-blogging the Academy Awards© ceremony has come to this site. We will keep you apprised of Jon Stewart’s monologue, the inevitably execrable song-and-dance numbers, the memorable acceptance speeches (provided there are any) and, of course, how swiftly Earth tilts off its axis and plunges toward the sun should “Juno” pull off an upset Best Picture win.
Depending on how bored we are ahead of time, we might venture into some of the blithering red carpet coverage in what should be a fairly fruitful search to locate particularly idiotic questions. After all, in attendance will be the black hole of stupidity: George Pennacchio, still star-struck after all these years.
As always, all this pageantry only if the blog server can keep its wits about it. And only a fool would count on that. So if you have nothing else going on at the time, we’ll be setting up shop no later than 5 p.m. Sunday. And if you do have something else going on at the time, you really need to realign your priorities.
With only three episodes of “The Wire” left, it’s not too late to jump in and catch up.
Well, actually, it is. That train left the station a couple of seasons ago. But for those keeping track, the show pays off handsomely.
Sunday’s episode was written by crime novelist Dennis Lehane (who developed the story with series creator David Simon): Thanks to McNulty’s (Dominic West) fictitious serial killer, Baltimore’s finest are being carte blanche – the city has even arranged for rental cars to replace those stranded in the city garage awaiting repairs. The downside: One cop jokes, “Bad news, gentlemen: We’re actually going to have to catch this motherf@(&er.”
The Feds create a psychological profile for McNulty’s killer, and it describes McNulty to a T: His job frustrations; his dissatisfaction in general; his being a functioning alcoholic and how it fuels his actions. After hearing it, Greggs (Sonja Sohn) asks him, “So, what do you think?” He deadpans, “They’re in the ballpark.”
Meanwhile, McNulty’s relationship with Beadie (Amy Ryan, Oscar nominee for “Gone Baby Gone”) inches closer to dissolution, inspiring this exchange:
McNulty: Bunk once told me I’m no good for people. Everyone around me, he said.
Greggs: Was he drunk?
McNulty: Yeah, but still.
And Freamon (Clarke Peters) is closing in on Stanfield (Jamie Hector), as the mystery behind the images of the clocks sent to his lieutenants’ cell phones is unlocked.
Meanwhile, over at the Baltimore Sun, Gus (Clark Johnson) remains wary of Templeton’s (Tom McCarthy) “reporting.” Templeton, however, is being groomed for a Pulitzer thanks to his fiction about the homeless, and is growing more defiant and defensive.
McNulty grows a belated conscience and starts confessing his fake crime spree despite the fact that it could bury him even deeper. As Bunk will soon tell him, his zealous actions have resulted in something “like a war – easy to get in, hell to get out.”
Next week (George Pelecanos wrote the teleplay), Baltimore police arrest half the city. A few things blow up in a few faces. And the final episode (written by Simon) wraps things up about as tidily as “The Wire” can ever find resolution.
Kind of pointless at this late date to go on and on about the show’s stringent, plangent intelligence, layered and absorbing plotting, nuanced characterizations, lived-in performances and other nouns that are preceded by laudatory adjectives. Fans have been doing that for five years now, without an appreciable uptick in viewership. But if ever a cop show deserved to be sent off with a good, old-fashioned Irish wake, it’s “The Wire.”
- “The Wire:” 9 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Sunday, 11 p.m. Wednesday, 10 p.m. Thursday and 8 p.m. Feb. 29, HBO.
It was the sort of story that TV political pundits would sacrifice a welfare mother’s child and/or Cadillac for: Yesterday, the New York Times dropped a story about John McCain’s cozy relationships with lobbyists. I know: Snooze, right?
But no! Pretty much all of that stuff got lost in the shuffle, mainly because this was the story’s second paragraph:
Vicki Iseman, “(a) female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.”
McCain’s a bona fide American hero, but I don’t really want images of him firing up the Barry White records and pouring glasses of Reunite burned into my retinas. Nonetheless, so began hours of bloviating on the cable news channels (This is so big, Keith Olbermann has jettisoned “Oddball” two nights running!): Might they have done the nasty? Isn’t it creepy that Iseman looks a whole lot like a younger version of McCain’s wife?
Oh, and somewhat more substantial questions: What did it mean for McCain’s Presidential campaign? What did the timing of the story – it dropped now, though the Times had much of it back in December, before the primaries even began – mean? How might Mitt Romney’s campaign have fared had this come out sooner? Could mutual disdain for the Times be the impetus to bring McCain into the far-right conservative fold? What is the august New York Times doing, running a front-page story merely hinting at a politician’s affair and citing only two blind sources?
Not really on the table, as far as the pundits were concerned: How much does McCain’s relationship with lobbyists compromise his policy-making? ABC News’ The Note today declared:
“This is not (as the Times headline might have you believe) about ‘self-confidence on ethics.’ It’s about sex. It’s a storyline that at this time is filled with innuendo – and suggestions that the Times was bullied into running the story on only what MIGHT have been an eight-year-old affair by the controversy that it wasn’t being published.”
McCain’s huffily offended senior aide Mark Salter echoed that theme, declaring to Time Magazine:
"They did this because the The New Republic was going to run a story that looked back at the infighting there, the Judy Miller-type power struggles – they decided that they would rather smear McCain than suffer a story that made the New York Times newsroom look bad.”
“John Weaver, who was McCain's closest confidant until leaving his current campaign last year, said he met with Vicki Iseman at the Center Cafe at Union Station and urged her to stay away from McCain. Association with a lobbyist would undermine his image as an opponent of special interests, aides had concluded. …
“The aide said the message to Iseman that day at Union Station in 1999 was clear: ‘She should get lost.’ The aide said Iseman stood up and left angrily.”
“The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn't. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.”
Keller spoke to NPR today, trying to dismantle that New Republic story a smidgen. On the paper’s policy in using anonymous sources:
“Obviously, you would like to have not just on-the-record sources, but documentary evidence for everything you put in the newspaper, but if you refused to publish stories that included anonymously sourced information, most of the most important things we know about how our country is run would not published – there are things you just cannot find without being willing to protect your sources.”
On why McCain’s relationship to Iseman was relevant and newsworthy for a story:
“He [McCain] came back from Vietnam a hero, entered into public life and then was felled by the Keating five scandal, if you read his books, it was clearly a humiliating event for him. And he subsequently built his political life on themes of redemption, reform, you know, rectitude, if you will – and became the scourge of lobbyists, the champion of campaign finance reform, and so on, in Washington. Yet, according to some people who knew him best, he can be surprisingly careless about his reputation, and that’s what I think this, his relationship with this particular lobbyist illustrates, although I think there’s a lot of other illustrations as well in the piece.”
Still, no justification for playing up the sex angle. But then, all the pundits can explain that to you.
The right, of course, are questioning the timing of the piece. But when would they have preferred it to have run? Before the primaries began, thereby effectively kicking McCain out of the running? Closer to the general election, thereby inflicting a potentially mortal wound to the Republicans’ White House hopes? Wait, I know: Never. Depending on what you think about McCain, the Times story is either meticulously researched or thin and baseless innuendo.
And we still have nine more months of this circus until election day, plenty of time for an Obama bombshell or Hillary hair-raiser. Those with delicate stomachs might be encouraged to sit this one out.
CBS is going all Fox on us: It has greenlit a reality pilot titled “Splitsville,” a game show of sorts pitting couples going through a divorce against one another to see who will get which belongings as they divvy up their estate. That soft, poignant sigh you just heard was the final death rattle of civility on Television.
Too bad this show wasn't on back when CBS CEO Les Moonves was leaving his wife for Julie Chen. That could've made for a very special episode.
Edie Falco hasn’t been lazing about since “The Sopranos” went to black: She appeared in three episodes of “30 Rock” and now will star in a pilot for HBO’s competition, Showtime.
In the series – billed as a “no-holds-barred, darkly comedic view of a health care system gone awry” – Falco will “an indomitable nurse with a special calling who doesn’t hesitate to challenge her superiors – and the often untenable status quo – by taking matters into her own hands in order to save lives. While brilliantly in control on the job, her personal life is precarious, unpredictable, and demanding in ways that she is surprisingly not always prepared for.”
No title as of yet, so that’s where you come in: I’ll offer “Heal Thyself” with the hopes that certainly, you can do better.
It really is the end of the world for “Jericho:” Only 6 million watched last night, more than “Big Bother” (as we’ve rechristened it) which preceded it but less than a “Law & Order: SVU” repeat and “Boston Legal.”
CBS Entertainment chief Nina Tassler renewed the show due to its faithful online audience, and this season aired other provocations she hoped would get the chatterazzi buzzing in blogs and message boards: “Kid Nation” (which inspired no cyber-revolution) and “Viva Laughlin” (dead after a mere two episodes). Boy, if you can’t trust the Internets to drum up support for your shows, who can you trust?
Back to the drawing board.
So Jon Stewart’s preparing for his second tour as Oscar host with even less time for his writers to prepare, and, apropos of something, he wore Army boots while discussing his assignment with the New York Times.
“I think there’s a way to do it where either you’re a guy hosting a party for your friends, or a guy watching a party you were invited to,” Stewart told the Times. “I’m much more in that category. I embrace that.”
Adding, that for many in the audience, this isn’t a joke: “This is the pinnacle of their careers. … Their lives could change, and they’re very on edge. So you’ve got to give respect to the fact that this is the most important night in film. But for the audience at home, you also have to let them in on the fact that it’s still film. It’s not war; it’s not cancer. No one’s going to come out of it and say, ‘My God, I can walk!’ ”
Stewart actually did OK the last time he hosted, warming to the gig as he went along, but all most people remember were those tight shots on his face betraying a smidgen of flop sweat as the room refused to laugh at his first few jokes. With less time to fret over every detail, here’s guessing Stewart will be looser and do much better this time around.
But what do you think? Will the writers have not had enough time to prepare some really killer material? Or will not having enough time to worry whether to include a crowd-pleasing punchline in favor of a genuinely funny joke work in his favor?