Obama: The God of Hellfire

Anwar al-Awlaki

A 2007 Imam al-Awlaki lecture proved prescient:

 

And rewarded with hellfire he was.  Hellfire missiles. 

1968. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown:

Erin Burnett: "Vague. Ethereal. Glamourously Disruptive."

Wolf Blitzer to new hire Erin Burnett:  "At CNN the news never stops. So you're going to have no life ever." Mediaite

CNN is heralding the Monday arrival of the ex-CNBC "It Girl's" 7p show OutFront like a British royal visit.  Watch "Erin Sizzle" here.

OutFront producer's show notes

Burnett:  "There is no better known brand than CNN. In a world where all brands seem to deteriorating, [Read MSNBC] there's only a few that seem to be rising ... and I think CNN is one of them."

Michelle Obama: High Value Target

What a coincidence!  An AP photog just happens to be in a Target store Thursday to memorialize Michelle Obama's half-hour shopping spree!  Washington Post Reliable Source and photo captions:

CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley was gobsmacked that Obama went almost unrecognized:

WH spox: "It is not uncommon for the First Lady to slip out to run an errand." CBS News

With the same AP photographer who snapped her two days ago.

ABC News: "First Lady Michelle Obama was spotted this afternoon on a recession-friendly shopping trip at the Target in Alexandria, Va." 

"Spotted?"  Trick or treat?

"Once again, Michelle Obama is proving herself to be a first lady like none other." Radar Online

Send Target Michelle Obama Halloween masks ($19.95) to Pelley and the other media catching the First Lady's orchestrated movements like colostomy bags.

Related:  Michelle Obama and Walmart join forces promoting healthy food Jan. 2011 ABC News
Jan. 2011 Michelle Obama forced to appear in public in a Walmart costume.  Michelle's Mirror
NBC's 'Today' Swoons Over Michelle Obama Shopping At Target NewsBusters

Rush Limbaugh: "Do they really need to send the First Lady to Target which is, by the way, a non-union shop. Do they have to send the First Lady to Target for Lysol for the White House? What a phony-baloney plastic banana good time rock and roll optic photo op this was."

Media Matters attacks the "right wing" media attacks.

Salt II

NYP Page Six
The Daily Beast/Newsweek

Cable News Ratingzzz

 Wednesday Sept. 28, 2011 TV by the Numbers

Megyn Kelly: Feeling No Pain

Megyn and #2 Douglas Brunt (with whom she now has two children) Mar. 1, 2008

"I have been in the position, not with my current marriage, where I’ve been betrayed. In the beginning, the instinct is very powerful to hang on.” Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly in an August 4th interview placed in USA Weekend coinciding with her return from maternity leave.

Daniel Kendall D.O. and board-certified anesthesiologist

Time cancels young pain.  Euripides 438 B.C.

Megyn's ex-husband -- a DC osteopath specializing in pain management -- (they divorced in 2006) appeared on Megyn's Fox News show America Live Wednesday to offer his expert opinion on the manslaughter trial of Michael Jackson's dispenser of death, Dr. Conrad Murray.  Carpe Diem

Bill O'Reilly: Muffin Diver

 Fox's Bill O'Reilly demands a "consumption tax" on Bentley-buying cocaine dealers and $16 muffin munchers. The Daily Show

O'Reilly was on to pimp his Lincoln book but the boys ate up most of the time huffing and puffing about taxes.  Huff Post

Fox On Top

GLADD survey

NYT's Brian Stelter: GLADD Cites Fox as Most Inclusive of Gay and Lesbian Characters

The Ascension of Christie

NYP

NYT: Not All Buy Chris Christie's Assertions of Bipartisanship

Head Trip

MSNBC's unintentionally hilarious headline.

"The greats at NBC, Brokaw and everyone else, are rolling over right now." MSNBC Way Too Early's Willie Geist on contract employee Mark Halperin's appearance via Skype in a Delta jet head.

 Halperin: on his unconventional live shot venue: "It's making NBC history, there's no doubt." 
Geist: "I think it is. Brokaw just called and gave us a big old pat on the back."  

TVNewser (H/t Wayne J. Svantner)

Potty mouth Halperin, a TIME mag editor, faced an "indefinite suspension" in June for calling Obama "a dick" on Morning Joe. He was allowed to return a month later. Wash Post

Beetle-Browed Bore Bounced

Andy Rooney, 92, terminally old since his first tedious 60 Minutes end-of-show two-minute shtick in 1978, is finally dispatched to the TV broadcast museum. TVNewser

Brian Stelter NYT

(H/t Wayne J. Svantner aka ZD)

NYT: Topic Of Cancer

The NYT, with a sordid history of attacking Republican presidential wives and alleged mistresses, has Rick Perry's wife in the crosshairs over the governor's controversial cervical cancer vaccine executive order targeting sixth grade girls.  NYT A Political Wife's Influence on an Issue.

One potential explanation that has received far less attention is the influence exerted on Mr. Perry by a close confidante with expertise in women’s health: his wife, Anita Thigpen Perry, a nurse, country doctor’s daughter, and career-long advocate for victims of sexual assault who has been a vocal proponent of immunizations.

CNN: Dead Skunk In The Middle Of The Road

"We all know the struggle for CNN is they've tried to be in the middle and that's not succeeded." Ex-CNBC "International Superstar" Erin Burnett on her new CNN 7p show Richard Huff NYDN

With Fox News Shep Smith 7p ratings king, Burnett's new show name may be a harbinger as viewers opt out of OutFront after the initial ratings bang.

I Guess He'd Rather Not Be In Colorado

What's wrong with this picture?  CNN

(H/t Wayne J. Svantner aka ZD)

Nancy Grace: Girl Gone Wild

Hoofing to Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing", ABC broadcasts a split-second Nancy Grace nipple shot on Thursday's Dancing With The Stars. ABC News

Tit Mom Nancy Grace. Photo Matt Cherette

(Mediaite) TIME mag's James Poniewozik Judicial Disrobing? Nancy Grace Denies DWTS Wardrobe Malfunction

MSNBC Fail: Out On A Limb

September ratings show MSNBC rests on the precipice of third place. NYT Bill Carter

Terminal #3 CNN has resuscitated prime time with Anderson Cooper at 8p.  Carter: For the month, CNN averaged 257,000 viewers in prime time in the category that counts most to the networks — viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 — because that is where the advertising money goes for news programming. MSNBC was just barely ahead with 269,000 viewers. (Neither approached the leader, Fox News, with 526,000).

 The Olbermann factor: 

Lawrence O’Donnell has lost 100,000 viewers from the numbers Mr. Olbermann posted last September, with 185,000 viewers in the 25-to-54 age group, a drop of 35 percent. (Bill O’Reilly on Fox, as always, dwarfs his competitors with about three times as many viewers, 611,000.) More ominously, the falloff for Mr. O’Donnell seems to be affecting MSNBC’s biggest name, Rachel Maddow. Her audience dropped 15 percent this year, to 245,000 from 289,000. She still beats Piers Morgan on CNN in the 9 p.m. hour, but his show has improved 18 percent over Larry King’s ratings last year, with 193,000 viewers to Mr. King’s 164,000. MSNBC executives endured a contentious parting with Mr. Olbermann last January. Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, had a succinct answer to the question of whether the network is feeling the impact of Mr. Olbermann’s departure: “No.” He added, “I’m confident that we will increase our ratings as politics become the dominant story over the next year.”

NYT: Full of Piss and Vinegar

If only Texas Governor Rick Perry had known about the vinegar cure for cervical cancer before that executive order forcing little girls to submit to a preventive shot. The New York Times extolls a cheap, safe procedure developed by Johns Hopkins where nurses in Third World countries "brush vinegar on a woman’s cervix. It makes precancerous spots turn white. They can then be immediately frozen off with a metal probe cooled by a tank of carbon dioxide, available from any Coca-Cola bottling plant."

Perry should've just issued douche bags and white vinegar -- much like condom giveaways. Another Texan, Lance Armstrong, is ahead of the curve promoting vinegar douches:

NYT/MSNBC/NBC/CNBC Joint Liability

Television is king among viewers trolling for news. NYT media star Brian Stelter lamely defends newspapers following last week's Pew survey showing the New York Times in the tank just below the Times' "joint venture" partner MSNBC: 

Pew Research Center biennial media survey

Straight Skinny?

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back

So what if David Gergen, CNN political talking head, dropped trou and went swimming drunk clad only in his "skivvies" at George Clooney's Italian villa.  TVNewser thinks swimming in skivvies is "skinny-dipping."  Gergen was not swimming naked.

PARADE mag pays Gergen to pimp Clooney prior to the actor's new movie release.

Obama's Jews Harp

"If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew, uh, as a janitor makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honor. I have no problem with that."  Obama at Saturday's Congressional Black Caucus dinner in DC.



LAT: Maybe in Saturday night's speech Obama was thinking about all those talks on Israel in New York.

Or maybe the custodian of The Presidential Words was hacked ...

Prompter People Inc.

WH sanitation engineers are well-paid to mop up Obama's verbal vomit.

(H/t Wayne J. Svantner aka ZD)

Like, You Know, Sort Of Extreme Bias

Pimp Ty Pennington, host of ABC's Extreme Makeover: "She immediately has this ability to make you feel relaxed and calm, which is, I was just like sort of stunned. And she's wearing like low-top Converse. And I'm like, no way!"

Obama chooses $540 Lanvin shoes to visit a food bank in 2009.  Huff Post

Long cool woman in a black dress and $42,000 diamond cuffs Sept. 22

Pennington: "Like dealing with her, you don't realize how big of a deal it is. You sit and have a conversation, you know, and then over the corner of your shoulder, you realize that there's a guy with, you know, a rifle, just in case, you know. And they're telling you, 'Oh, by the way, don't make any loud noises or sudden moves.' And you're like, that's sort of what I do. So I'm like, you know, just walking really slowly. So, but, no, it was incredible, it really was."

ABC Good Morning America news anchor Josh Elliott prompting Pennington: "That's great, and you said right before we went on air, she's cool, she's - a cool lady."

Pennington: "She really is. And she's genuine. And she's real. And she, and she just enjoys conversation. She's really engaged."

Via NewsBusters fingering ABC for no orgasms over Laura Bush's 2005 appearance on the same show.
In 2012 it's Time For A Cool Change...

Roger Rainmaker

MSNBC Morning Joe defacto daily show rundown producer -- Politico's Mike Allen -- plucks nuggets from Howard Kurtz's five-page Daily Beast/Newsweek Roger's Reality Show spread.  Read it here.

Roger Ailes photographed at the Fox News Headquarters in New York on September 20, 2011., Jake Chessum for Newsweek

Politico's Allen: The Fox News chairman and CEO "has always been a master showman-he even gave advice on triple-checking the audio [before last week's debate] ... Fox's [debate] partnership with Google produced striking videos, graphics ... But the real eye-opener was the sight of his anchors grilling the Republican contenders, which pleases the White House but cuts sharply against the network's conservative image ... Ailes is more in demand than ever as the man to see for Republicans with designs on the White House. Perry stopped by his midtown Manhattan office a few months back ... when he was still weighing whether to make a run, and confided that he was worried about being able to raise the big bucks. 'Money will find you if people believe in your message,' Ailes assured him. Afterward, Ailes concluded that Perry had a look that 'if he tells people he's gonna kick their ass, he might actually do it, which is useful for a president.' ... When Romney ... sought out Ailes for a pasta dinner, the Fox chief was struck by a sense of humor rarely displayed in public. 'You ought to be looser on the air,' he said while dropping off the former Massachusetts governor at his hotel.

"[A]s President Obama's popularity has plummeted and the country has grown increasingly sick of partisan sniping, ... Roger Ailes pulled back a bit on the throttle. He calls it a 'course correction,' quietly adopted at Fox over the last year. Glenn Beck's inflammatory rhetoric ... became a bit of a branding issue for us' before the hot-button host left in July, Ailes says. ... Privately, Fox executives say the entire network took a hard right turn after Obama's election, but, as the Tea Party's popularity fades, is edging back toward the mainstream. While Fox reporters ply their trade under Ailes's ... 'fair and balanced' banner, the opinion arm of the operation has been told to lower the temperature. After the Gabrielle Giffords shooting triggered a debate about feverish rhetoric, Ailes ordered his troops to tone things down. It was, in his view, a chance to boost profits by grabbing a more moderate audience. ...

"He keeps his edge in part because after all these years, he still sees himself as an insurgent-an identity rooted in his blue-collar upbringing in Warren, Ohio. He likes to tell interns that he dug ditches as a teenager and was once fired for throwing a man off a loading dock. ... Ailes keeps a wary eye on anchor Shepard Smith, who occasionally backs aspects of the Obama record: 'Every once in a while Shep Smith gets out there where the buses don't run and we have a friendly talk.' And Ailes likes to tease O'Reilly: 'You gonna suck up to Obama so you can get another interview at the next football game?' Democrats have noticed the change. Says former Obama aide Anita Dunn: 'You have the sense that they're trying to at least appear less of the hyper-partisan political network they had been.'"

Other nuggets:  

"Three weeks after dropping out of the race, Tim Pawlenty showed up to ask for a gig at Fox."  

Megyn Kelly, who had been a Washington lawyer, so dazzled the network that she was hired without a vacancy. She did a sultry photo shoot for GQ and exudes on-air feistiness, but was nervous that at the debate she would “blurt out something that’ll be a career killer” (Ailes called with a pep talk). Kelly missed the rehearsal because she was nursing her 5-month-old daughter. 

Ailes has a blunt rejoinder to those who say he runs a biased outfit: “Every other network has given all their shows to liberals. We are the balance.” Even MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman, “tacks to the center,” Ailes complains, and “doesn’t act like a conservative.” 

Ailes is a brawler, albeit one with a preference for lavender shirts, and he isn’t one to mince words. A mention of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg unleashes a tirade about the mayor’s latest health crusade. “I like Bloomberg, he’s a friend. But fuck him and the salt. I like salt. It’s not his business.”

Mediaite's spin

TV Networks Return to Cash Cow Comedy

"The signs of a comedy revival were apparent on all networks last week." Bill Carter NYT
 

The New Recession photos.  Business Insider

Broadcast TV networks milking America's economic depression by squeezing out sitcoms, signaling saturation of reality TV competition shows.  NYT's Carter:

Amazon

Related: Nervous Laughter: Television Situation Comedy and Liberal Democratic Ideology Darrell Y. Hamamoto

Obama's Whine Press

"Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin'. We are going to press on. We have work to do." Obama to 3,000 blacks at Saturday's Congressional Black Caucus dinner. Watch here. CBS News Wash Post photos  Huff Post

Obama approval polls, slip slidin' away, show a growing number of Americans shedding their slippers and shying them at Obama much like abused, angry, unappreciated Eliza Doolittle, fed up with arrogant, condescending Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady -- and with a little bit o' luck, retiring Obama to his slippers in 2012.

Here are your slippers!

There!

[throws a slipper at Higgins]

And there!

[throws the other one] 

 Take your slippers, and may you NEVER have a day's luck with them! 

CB reader Grandpa D delivers the headline of the year:  The Reign In Pain.  See the comment box.  I wish I had thought of it...

Herman Cain: A President You Can't Refuse

"This is a sign of our growing momentum and my candidacy that cannot be ignored. I will continue to share my message of 'common sense solutions' across this country and look forward to spending more time in Florida, a critical state for both the nomination and the general election."  Herman Cain after winning the FL Repub straw poll Saturday.

Politico

 The Godfather

Quote Du Jour

NYT columista Gail Collins

Fox News: Top Gun

Half-cocked

More than 6 million viewers watched Rick Perry shoot himself in the dick in Thursday's Fox News/Google Republican presidential debate.  1.7 mil in the golden 25-54 demo. The biggest GOP debate audience yet this election cycle.  TV by the Numbers

Fox "beat half of NBC’s new fall lineup, including Prime Suspect, and was up against heavy competition with many fall premieres during the 9-11p timeslot." TV by the Numbers

Fox got 2.5 mil more viewers (600,000 in the demo) than the recent Repub sitcom hosted by Wolf Blitzer, CNN, and the Tea Party.  TVNewser (which failed to mention Fox's NBC primetime kill).

Prose and Cons: MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Over The Edge

MSNBC The Last Word Lawrence O'Donnell baits Bristol Palin baby daddy Levi Johnston to vomit words from Johnston's absurd new Dick and Jane reader. Psycho O'Donnell picked a shower scene. 2:58 in. Mediaite (H/t Johnny Dollar)

Levi used his one phone call after exiting O'Donnell's rubber room lockup to call THE NEGOTIATOR William Shatner -- mellifluous baritone and legendary delivery would've made puerile punk Levi's pedestrian shower scene seem Shakespearean leaving vulture O'Donnell hanging. 

Shatner in "Over The Hedge"

Shatner  advises Levi on protecting himself against media predators like O'Donnell: "The secret to taming falcons is to think like a bird. That hook nose, you gotta be very careful. ... Those long talons, GOT to be very careful. ... Those droopy [left] wings which can with one thrust knock your hat off or your head. ... So you train a falcon from behind. ... Don't let the falcon see you.  Should the falcon turn it's head around, duck.  Just get out of the way."

Rachel Maddow?