The White House Lists to the Left

Here's the tip of the iceberg list the WH gave out Friday of people who have been deigned entrance to the White House. 

The document dump came Friday at 4:30p.  The WH refuses to cough up a full list of ALL visitors since Obama took office.

Note:  the White House sez the William Ayers, Angela Davis, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Moore aren't THE radical, radical, radical pastor, radical filmmaker.

Celebrities include Oprah.

Armanied and Dangerous

The Huff Po pimps NBC's Brian Williams widely-hyped junket to Afghanistan.

Williams whines on his Daily Night blog that he's leaving without "a single interview with a senior U.S. official."  It's real war, Brian, not cable news wars. 

The only reason Bri's over there is to add a veneer of credibility to an empty Armani.

Boob Tube

In what appears to be a shameless November Sweeps ratings ploy, DC's WJLA TV runs a topless woman performing a breast self-exam.

You have to swear you're 18 years or older to watch this.

Does anyone see the hypocrisy here? Kids can see Britney Spears's naked crotch shots on the Internet as she emerges from a car. Paris Hilton giving a guy a blow job on video. And more.

I see no problem with the naked breast cancer thing. But I question WJLA's motivation. You know WJLA's hiding behind "the greater good." What's next? A gonad cancer probe?

I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!

I would've gone as Robert Gibbs but alas, no mas(k).

Related:  "Obama Press Boss Robert Gibbs No Mas"

Media Matters Mad Hatters

The White House has farmed out the Fox News attacks to the liberal Media Matters which unveiled a dark video today:

Fox's Man For All Reasons

The Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove on Shep Smith.

Night of the Living Dead

These plastic phonies need no Halloween masks.  They've lost face due to plastic surgery abuse.  Check out "The Bride of Wildenstein" - Jocelyne Wildenstein - before and after.

Robert Gibbs: Obama Press Boss "No Mas"

The WH publicly claims to have no regrets for taking on Fox News but privately you just KNOW they know they fucked up big big time and are down for the count in a below-the-belt match they started.

White House press czar Robert Gibbs now has lockjaw on pesky press probes of the fatuous Fox folly.

If this were a boxing match, Gibbs would be Roberto "No Mas" Duran to Sugar Ray Leonard in 1980 when Duran bagged it in the 8th round, pleading "no mas, no mas."  

The Fox box ended this week when erased face Gibbs invited Fox suit Michael Clemente for some WH face time, and in essence, pleaded "no mas" after a month of dirty fighting.  The liver punch was delivered by Fox's rival TV networks after Gibbs and henchmen fell through the ropes over excluding Fox News from a pool interview.

There's a kiddie Halloween party at the White House Saturday and Chickaboomer hears it on good authority that Robert Gibbs is hiding under a Roberto Duran mask after spending the day in a dunk tank taking in on his glass jaw.

What The Fox!

Jon Stewart: "MSNBC's the Toledo Mud Hens to Fox's Yankees.... Fox News is the Voice of America and Obama is Stalin! That makes me Yakov Smirnoff! Stewart skewers Fox News as "a perpetual revulsion-making machine" with the likes of "the emotional whirlwind and national therapy session that is Glenn Beck."

WH powerhouse Valerie Jarrett legitimizes Fox as "power" to Obama's "truth" in slamming Fox bias to CNN's "No Bull, No Bias" Campbell Brown while demurring on Brown's same question of MSNBC:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
For Fox Sake!
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Geraldo: Zorro Strikes Again with Licorice Shtick

With the sign of a Z as in zip your lip. "I give the benefit of the doubt to this president, Osama bin...." (pause) "It's the licorice."



Johnny Dollar's Place has audio of Geraldo gumming Lou Dobbs over this gun shot thing: "He's a pansy."  Sucking on licorice again, Geraldo?  Red or black?

Michelle Obama's Collective Farm

740 pounds of food from the WH garden that only cost two-hundred bucks to plant.  Kulak Michelle displays the fruits of somebody's labor:

Hard-Wired

Only one TV news heavyweight makes GQ's 50 Most Powerful People in Washington list:  ABC News "This Week" wanker George Stephanopoulos at #31. 

CNN's lazy legal analyst and out-of-wedlock baby maker Jeffrey Toobin: ".... he's becoming less of a pundit and more of a journalist every year."

Hard news journalist.  That's the ticket to TV news obscurity these days.... What?  No love for NBC Meet The Press David Gregory?

Obama's presidential butt boy Reggie Love lands in 38th place.

Lou Dobbs: Low Value Target

You just KNEW there was something bogus about Loud Obbs' claim that "someone fired a shot" near his house.  It was probably a local official pissed that L.Do is scamming on property taxes.

CNN: The Most Busted Name In News

Andrew Klavan of Pajamas Media has come up with some new slogans for now-fourth place CNN:

CNN: We Report, You Turn On Fox News To Find Out What Really Happened

CNN: Where Glenn Beck Used To Work

CNN: The Most Trusted Name In Sniggering Denigrations of Normal Americans

CNN: Because No News Is Good News

CNN: The President Likes Us; He Really, Really Likes Us

CNN: Where You Get All The Rush Limbaugh Quotes You Won’t Get From Rush

CNN: Saturday Night Live Fears Us!

CNN: No, Really. We Used To Have Glenn Beck.

CNN: When The President’s A Hologram, Shouldn’t The People Who Cover Him Be Holograms Too?

Yes, We CNN!  (For those of you in Rio Lindo:   Yes, We See An End.)

Your turn....

A Stretch

NBC News wisely decided to cancel Brian Williams's appearance on Jay Leno Wednesday night. Instead NBC dispatched MTP host David Gregory.

Jay: Brian Williams couldn't be here because of late-breaking news." 

Williams is in Afghanistan where the killing has escalated. Not much funny there. Except Brian's "Daily Nightly" blog where he bleats:

"I am living inside a containerized shipping box..... During a few hours of down time this afternoon, I quickly fell into a deep, exhaustion-fueled sleep. I was awakened by an explosion. Luckily, I've heard my share (like one every 30 seconds on the third night of the invasion in Bagdhad) and wasn't overly alarmed. I could tell it was some distance away. Only when I got to our workspace tonight was I told it was a "Controlled Det" in military parlance: a detonation conducted by the Army. I apparently slept through the announcement on the P. A. system warning that it was about to happen. Considering the violence in Kabul today, an explosion made perfect sense to me. It was also a reminder that we are in a war zone."

So here's David Gregory, who at 6'5" is too tall to live in a "containerized shipping box,"  substituting for Williams in Leno's Ten@Ten.

Jay asks David's last live concert. Spro Gyra. David's best prank: fake food deliveries. Last celebrity autograph: Steve Garvey. Phobia: "I don't like turbulence on an airplane. I'm kind of controlling. I don't like loss of control."

Well, THAT says a lot about Gregory's personality, no?

Jay:  "What is the most unique thing about Meet The Press?  A, has a host who is six feet five inches tall, B, has been on the air since 1947, or C, it's an NBC show people actually watch.

Gregory:  "A."

He should've danced.  Would've been funnier.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Whose shoes?  Not the $540 pink-toed Lanvins....

Obama Bowl Movement

WH press spox Robert Gibbs strikes back at  a Washington Times report that moneybags donors get to use the WH bowling alley.  The WH insists the Obama administration is the most ethical in history.

Speed Freak

All you need to know about terminally hung over MSNBC hack Dylan Ratigan is this quote in a vapid five question profile in Mediaite:  "I...accumulated 11 speeding tickets in the past 3 years."

Fox News: The Mountain Goes To Moses

A Fox was in the White House den Wednesday.   Some media mavens are bleating that "a truce" has been reached between Fox News and its Obama pursuers.  How can a truce happen in a one-sided war? 

Sounds like White House spin to me - and Inside Cable News.

Permit me to invoke a military term - brinkmanship.  Much to its peril, the White House pushed Fox News to the brink.  And blinked...

Boob Tube

Shameless Sweeps stunt or public service? You be the judge. DC's WJLA TV kicks off a four-part series on breast cancer during November sweeps showing women naked from the waist up. [photo, a local TV weatherman being a dick with a news graphic.]

Wash Post's Paul Farhi: WJLA acknowledges....  that the timing of its stories may raise some eyebrows: The reports will air on the first two days of TV's traditional "sweeps" month, a period in which stations air their most eye-catching stories to boost ratings that are used to set advertising rates.

WJLA general manager Bill Lord said he had no qualms about the timing of the reports, or in promoting them beforehand. "People will say we're doing it just for ratings," he said. "But we're a commercial television station -- we're trying to get people to watch us. Yes, this is an attention-getting story, but it's also an important story."

Lord said the station consulted medical experts who said news reports on breast-cancer detection haven't offered enough detail to teach people how to do an exam properly.

The station's first report features a 28-year-old woman from Northern Virginia, Lauren Albright, who volunteered to be led through an on-camera self-exam by an oncologist. She is shown examining her bare torso in a mirror and on an examination table, in both close-up and medium shots. Reporter Gail Pennybacker says in a voice-over that Albright took the "extraordinary step of baring herself" to teach women how to do the exam.

Although CBS ran afoul of the Federal Communications Commission for airing Janet Jackson's breast-baring "wardrobe malfunction" during the 2004 Super Bowl, WJLA isn't at risk of government sanction because news reports are exempt from the FCC's "indecency" rules.

Representatives of the American Cancer Society said they were unaware of other stations airing similarly frank reports. The organization's spokeswoman had no comment on WJLA's approach to the subject.

The American Cancer Society says self-exams play only "a small role" in finding breast cancer. On its Web site, the society says "it's okay not to do [a self examination] or not to do it on a fixed schedule."

Barbara Walters's Former Married Lover Gets Medal

President Obama presented former Republican Senator Edward Brooke the Congressional  Gold Medal Wednesday. It took the Washington Post five paragraphs to mention that the first black to serve in the U.S. Senate was Republican.

89 year old Brooke's still got an eye for the ladies:  "He turned his full charisma on Nancy Pelosi, noting, with some wonderment, "now the speaker of the House is . . . a . . . lady!"

In pimping her memoirs last year, the three-times-divorced Barbara Walters blabbed that she had a fling with the married senator back in the 1970s.  Babs breathlessly recalls Brooke told her she "was the oldest woman he had ever been with, she wanted to say - but never did - "Oh yeah? Well you are the blackest man I have ever been with."

The most Hispanic man she's ever been with?  Fidel Castro.

Jerk Off

NYP columnist Andrea Peyser's jerked off over ESPN  perv Steve Phillips's sex addict spin: All a man has to do to get away with a crime -- from drug addiction to violence to sleeping with a gal young enough to be his daughter -- is confess, repent and vow to clean up his act.

And if he falls off the wagon, as Phillips' agent so colorfully described his client's habit of obtaining sexual favors in a parking lot, that's not demonstrably bad. For Phillips, who earlier slimed the Mets by helping himself to the help, that is a relapse.... All that's required to claim that a man's transgression is really a disease over which he is powerless is a large bank account, a small degree of fame, a clueless wife. And a straight face.

Horse's Ass: Former Cop Cops Plea

A fired WNYW Fox 5 TV reporter is looking to saddle up again after he was fired for drunkenly driving into a NYPD horse.

61-year-old Michael Sheehan refused a sobriety test after plowing into the mounted horse in March. He pleaded guilty Wednesday.

Sheehan, a former NYPD police officer, was fired in April after 16 years at the station.

At the time Sheehan denied he was drunk, boldly proclaiming "I want to get this stupid accident behind me, which I feel strongly we're going to beat."

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

Page Six: Anderson Cooper has been consoling himself over falling ratings by living it up in Jaipur, India, at one of the world's most opulent hotels. The CNN star was spotted Tuesday with his muscular friend, Benjamin Maisani, an owner of East Village bar Eastern Bloc, at the Rambagh Palace, named the best hotel in the world by Conde Nast Traveler. Cooper's $3,200-a-night room features a four-poster mahogany bed and views of the gardens of the former Maharaja palace. Our source said, "Anderson's room has a large round bathtub. On the first night it was filled with bubbles and sprinkled with red rose petals." CNN declined to comment.

Marty's Back!

Marty will be back Thursday a.m. Hint: Palmettos and 75 degrees.

"This White House gives Fox nothing."

Fox News WH correspondent Major Garrett dishes the backstory on the Obama administion's futile fatuous efforts to ban Fox from that Ken Feinberg pay czar pool interview:.  Garrett:  "I never ever worry about being seduced by this White House."



H/T Johnny Dollar's Place

Satyr Steve

How many times does fired ESPN sexaholic Steve Phillips have to undergo "treatment" for his self-described "sex addiction."

It took ESPN suits way too long to can the 46-year-old baseball blowhard and his zany 22-year-old production assistant squeeze Brooke Hundley. (Wife Marni and Brooke Hundley.)

The former Mets GM was canned for the same thing.  Phillips is getting his other brain stoked at some expensive mystery spot.

Jon Klein's Dissociative Personality Disorder

TVNewser:   Newly-minted fourth place CNN menshevik (not to be confused with mensch)Jon Klein to quivering underlings:  "We refuse to do the things that might get us a quick number or cater to the extremes that would alienate our core viewers."

And who might they be?  Klein:  "Excellent journalism is what we are focused on." 

Like wall-to-wall Michael Jackson which pushed CNN's numbers through the roof.  Temporarily.  Universally derided and obscenely expensive holograms.  Manicures and pedicures.  Suntans. Teabagging jokes. The list goes on...

Delusional Klein drones: "Media writers might not understand that. Our competitors don't either. Despite the bad press we don't lose sight of OUR business. We, CNN/U.S., still attracts millions and millions of viewers a month, more than our closest competitors. Writers don't talk about our users -- we are on air and on line, globally -- rather they break it down to one part of the day."
 

"Attract" not "attracts."

I guess the King of Compartmentalization talks about specific dayparts when it suits him and CNN - and when it doesn’t, he then blames ink-stained wretched media writers for boiling it down to that. But wasn’t it him who said that 25-54 is crucial and he who singled out particular programs when those programs have done OK in a former life?

Case in point: Jon Klein to the Atlanta Journal Constitution in April 2008:

CNN officials say winning the 25-54 demo is crucial.  Klein: "That's the demographic that advertisers are buying."

And then there's Rick Sanchez....

The Obamas' Unaltered State

Politico's Michael Calderone notes that this Sunday's NYT mag Obama cover story is the fourth Obama since the election: "Clearly, the Obamas prefer to think of themselves as largely unaltered. ‘'The strengths and challenges of our marriage don’t change because we move to a different address,’ the first lady said, the president studying the carpet as she answered. But even as they serve as sources of continuity for each other, their own partnership is undergoing significant change, not just in outward circumstance — the city, the exposure, the security, the staff, the house and so on — but far more fundamentally...."

The media takeaway:  Michelle on marriage with the profound "bumps happen to everybody." 

I prefer Hillary's undeleted expletives and the telltale lamp-hurling bumps on Bill's head...

Harry Reid's Deep Throat

Media Matters attacks Glenn Beck for saying on F&F Tuesday a.m. that "only 35 percent of the population want the public option" and that Harry Kari Reid is "lying" when he said Monday the People want it:

Joe Klein's Primary Colors

Fox's Bill O'Reilly is a "fair kind of guy" inviting Joe Klein on to explain his charges that Fox is full of "hateful" "seditious" crap. O'Reilly accuses Klein of being yellow - and green (with envy).

Live at the Fill-harmonic!

Now here's a surefire Leno ratings booster.  NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams goes on Jay Leno Wednesday night.  Williams will do his shtick from Afghanistan where there isn't much funny happening. 

Brian will be yucking it up and ducking for cover.  A preview:  he'll be joking about MREs after ingesting delicacies guaranteed to trigger a cacophonous bowel symphony.

 "The sobering news and staggering loss of life has certainly forced us to re-check our logistical planning, and we are confident that we have the correct plans in place."

We shall see.... Williams reports from there tonight.

Taco Hell

ESPN suspends Bob Griese for one game this week for blabbing during last weekend's college football game that NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya was "out for a taco" and that's why he wasn't among the top five contenders in Sunday's NASCAR race.

Nell's Belles

Former lady Letterman gag writer Nell Scovell takes off the gag on Dave's sexually-charged hostile work environment:  Did Dave hit on me? No. Did he pay me enough extra attention that it was noted by another writer? Yes. Was I aware of rumors that Dave was having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Was I aware that other high-level male employees were having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Did these female staffers have access to information and wield power disproportionate to their job titles? Yes. Did that create a hostile work environment? Yes. Did I believe these female staffers were benefiting professionally from their personal relationships? Yes. Did that make me feel demeaned? Completely. Did I say anything at the time? Sadly, no.

Here’s what I did: I walked away from my dream job.

Phallucy

This is a real stretch.  Former MSNBC GM and legal talking head Dan Abrams's media blog Mediaite postulates that MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is the "Glenn Beck of the Left."  Why?  "Sometimes it seems that Rachel Maddow is the Glenn Beck of MSNBC….merely in so far as she is able to explain things simply, engagingly, often with the aid of props!"

She's great at explaining the public option!  With props.  Like a phallic Roto-Rooter?   An accidental colonoscopy. I liked Rachel until she went commando on the air.

NewsBusters Noel Sheppard thought the left eschewed Beck as "the Devil incarnate."  So Beck is Rachel's role model now?

Why Testosterone Rules The Blogosphere

My friend Thomas Stewart III passes this along on why 67% of bloggers have penises:

When it comes the arena of ideas, the women who blog are not typical women. [Me:  no shit!] Over and over, the women who blog are tougher. Like the shotgun wielding Western expansionists of yore, women bloggers take shots and can shoot back. [My Taurus .38 is registered and I have a concealed weapons permit.]

Women bloggers are often sexualized and insulted. [That's never stopped me. I'm not afraid of anything.]
Most women simply do not want to put up with this garbage. They feel threatened and they worry about their safety and the safety of their children.... There are nutjobs out there and in this business, there is a very real risk to personal safety. It’s something guys just don’t have to deal with as much. [There are nut jobs at your local Home Depot. I keep my gun in my car.]

Women often don’t like the intellectual jousting. Part of it is gender wiring. Men see verbal sparring as a testosterone-fueled challenge. Women see degraded communication and hostility. When they put an idea out there, it seems aggressive when someone rips the point of view to shreds. And, it is aggressive. [N/A  I've been told I have more balls than most men.]

It might not be politically correct to say so, but women and men have gender generalities that make certain behavior more typical–including online behavior. I’m not sure what will change this. And I don’t know if these gender trends would be good to change. For example, if men become more cooperative and women become more dominant, the playing field may be evened in discourse but some of the particularities inherent in gender would be lost. Is that a good thing? That’s a bigger question and not the one being asked here, but I think it’s a worthwhile one to consider. [Bullshit.]

The women who do blog tend to stick out.  [Yeah, so what?]  Most women have enough heat in the rest of their lives, they figure they don’t need to invite by putting ideas out there via a blog. [Wusses. Pack heat like I do.]

Men bloggers rabidly consume phallic Cheetos.  It's a proven fact Cheetos increases testosterone production. Women bloggers are constantly on diets,  reapplying phallic lipstick, and vacuuming...

A Fein Mess

Who's minding the store? Obama "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg has some financial issues in his own house.  Web of Deception's Joseph Culligan finds Feinberg's Homestead Exemption that was forbidden by the Countrywide mortgage terms; the Citibank credit line for 86% of the value of the home with Feinberg dealing with former client Citibank and Citbank -  his current charge.

Joe invites us all to examine the history of the tax liens

ABC News to Scientology Wacko: Blow!

A Scientology pimp interviewed earlier by ABC's "Nightline" Martin Bashir shows up at ABC News and muscles his way inside in a failed attempt to get the piece spiked.

Related:  1952 TIME mag piece on L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology crazies.

Mount Olympia

Primary is now a verb. As in will Maine Republican Senator Olympia Snowe "get primaried in ’12."

Wash Post Spins Bush's First Motivational Moment: 28 Minutes, $100,000

Wash Post's Mary Jordan "Bush's First Stand On A New Podium":  After nine months of being nearly invisible -- a big outing has been to a Dallas hardware store for flashlights -- George W. Bush made his debut Monday in his latest incarnation: motivational speaker.

Nearly 15,000 people heard the former president, known more for mangling the English language than for his eloquence, reminisce about his White House days. Bush, who is writing a book about the dozen toughest decisions he had to make, used much of his 28 minutes onstage to talk about lighter topics such as picking out a rug design for the Oval Office that reflected his "optimism."

Perhaps in a nod to his dismal 22 percent approval ratings when he left office, Bush noted that "popularity is fleeting. . . . It's not real." .... His speech came after the crowd at the "GET MOTIVATED!" seminar stood up and danced to the Beach Boys' song "Surfin' USA" and batted around beach balls tossed into the audience. ... Many people interviewed afterward said they liked Bush, perhaps even because he wasn't the best speaker of the day. He could have said a thesaurus was a big scaly creature that roamed the planet millions of years ago and they would have applauded.... Mindful of his new neighbors, who have had to endure as many as 650 people a day gawking at his new house in a cul-de-sac, Bush said he took Barney for a neighborhood stroll with "plastic bag on his hand" to scoop poop. That was a moment, he said, when he realized "Man, my life has changed!" ... "He is just a normal guy! He wasn't the best speaker. But I was happy to see him!" said Lubbock salesman Patrick Kruger, 50.

Along with Bush, former secretary of state Colin Powell, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, retired football great Terry Bradshaw and a host of professional speakers spoke on a stage decorated with red-white-and-blue signs that said "Motivate!" and "Achieve!" ... Powell, speaking after a drawing for a door prize of a high-definition flat-screen TV, told the audience to celebrate America's freedom. "We must never be afraid of some clown hiding in a cave," Powell said. Then moving on from Osama bin Laden, he talked about the Chinese: "The only fight we have with them is they want more shelf space at Wal-Mart!"

In Britain, where Bush remains wildly unpopular, the media have been reporting his return to public speaking with incredulity. Some commentators recalled his famous flubs: "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" and "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."

A Telegraph news article noted that the Republican former president -- whose policies inspired millions of Americans to vote Democratic in the 2008 election -- was now managing to draw crowds and "may yet have the last laugh."

Burning Bush

WHAT IF BUSH HAD DONE IT? POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein: “A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser. Snubbing the Dalai Lama. Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers. Freezing out a TV network. Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too. President Barack Obama has done all of those things … What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda. It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything. Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things? And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it? ‘We have a joke about it. We’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,’ former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. ‘The watchdogs are curled up around [Obama’s] feet, sleeping soundly.’ … Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. …

“For Bush, the [media narrative] was that of a Big Business Republican who rode the family name to the White House, so stories about secret energy meetings and a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, fit neatly into the theme, to be replayed over and over again. Obama’s story line was more positive from the start: historic newcomer coming to shake up Washington. … Democrats find the complaints of Obama ‘getting a pass’ hard to stomach in light of the way the press treated Bush — particularly on the single biggest mistake of his presidency, relying on the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Now, Obama’s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding. ‘As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,’ White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. ‘It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the … Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since training camp. It goes with the territory.’”

Halloween: Depend On It

The John McCain Halloween mask is so... 2008. Pick your political poison. Who are (or would) you emulating for Halloween? Politco serves up your options - one of them Glenn Beck: "Fox News’s pundit of the moment will have truly made it when he gets his own mask in mass production. For now, the one that’s out there is of the mocking, do-it-yourself variety. Find graphics and step-by-step instructions on how to make a Glenn Beck diaper Halloween mask."

The website promises to help you "assert your independent incontinent spirit with this attractive Glenn Beck Mask."

CNN: Paradigm Shift

Behind door number four:  fourth place prime time  CNN.  A first.   CNN requires a paradigm shift.  Why?  CNN is suffering from paradigm paralysis: the inability or refusal to see beyond the current models of thinking.

What do you think CNN should do now?  If you ask me, CNN desperately needs another presidential election.

Related:  Bill Carter NYT  "Fox News Ratings Soar After Obama Snub" "Fox Seeing Best Ratings.  CNN and MSNBC Worst" "CNN Falls To Last Place In Primetime Demo"

Harry Kari

Harry Reid "rolls the dice" by bucking backers like Olympia Snowe and going for the public option.  It's all about Harry's re-election and his plunging numbers.

Related:  Politico:  Harry's Big Gamble

White House Circus

CBS's Bob Schieffer can't imagine Mamie Eisenhower "kicking off her shoes and having a little fun" like Michelle Obama:



For her next act, the First Lady will perform a Cirque du Soleil contortionist feat on a trapeze in the WH bedroom...

CNN: Numbers Down. Number's Up?

What a difference a few months makes. Yesterday - when all their troubles seemed so far away - CNN's one-note-samba was "25-54 Prime Time."

The numbers game has changed. Now its: CNN and HLN are both beating MSNBC in the key demographic for the month of October (total day). As we have said for years, we measure our audience across the day and across all of CNN's platforms, not just prime time. This is the basis for advertising sales. We're extremely pleased that we are the only news organization that has two television networks delivering large audiences thanks to the continued growth of HLN.

Why?  CNN sucks in prime time.  It's hard to spin a ratings tailspin.

Inside Cable News:  CNN’s response is a tad disingenuous. The network is only too happy to note the prime time Demo, when it’s #2 in Primetime.

So.  Who do you think leaked the October No Surprise to Daily Finance's Jeff Bercovici?  (I suspect Fox to screw the NYT.)  Just sayin'....  I don't give a rat's ass about the leak source.  Hey, it's a dog-eat-dog world out there in Cable News Land. All the cable networks were down but none like CNN.  Numbers won't be set in stone until later today, they say...

Paging Balloon Boy... I'm just sayin'...

NYT's Bill Carter cranks out "CNN Drops To Last Place Among Cable Networks": The results demonstrate once more the apparent preference of viewers for opinion-oriented shows from the news networks in prime time.  CNN has steered opinion hosts like Nancy Grace to HLN, while maintaining more news-oriented shows on CNN itself. When news events are not being intensely followed, CNN executives acknowledge, viewers seem to be looking for partisan views more than objective coverage. Individually, the CNN shows were beaten resoundingly by all the Fox News programs, but also lost to all of the MSNBC programs, including a repeat of Keith Olbermann’s 8 p.m. edition of“Countdown,” which beat the 10 p.m. hour of CNN’s signature prime-time program, “Anderson Cooper 360.

Carter gets his statement from CNN flacks:  "CNN’s ratings are always going to be more dependent on the news environment, much more so that opinion-based programming especially in prime time.”

Larry King was the only CNN show that didn't finish last in prime time.  Nancy Grace (right) prays her HLN show continues to beat Campbell Brown by 100,000 viewers.   Bill O'Reilly creams them all with three times the ratings of Keith Olbermann.