William M. Daley is reportedly going to become the next White House chief of staff. I know that because I just read the report in the New York Times, and have seen “BREAKING” announcements from various outlets on Twitter, and have seen numerous reports to that effect for the last few days.
Now some news organization has bragging rights …
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqFuhCfb3Fk]
“Crying: Acceptable at funerals and the Grand Canyon.” —Ron Swanson, from a coming episode of Parks and Recreation
Memo to pundits, comedians and political reporters who are not quite comedians: Yes, John Boehner cries. A lot. We get it. It made news when the new Speaker of the …
[vodpod id=Video.5136763&w=425&h=350&fv=playerType%3Dembedded%26amp%3Btype%3Did%26amp%3Bvalue%3D50097514]
I get press releases asking me to embed clips of news reports all the time, and I usually hit delete. But this is bizarre, insane and awesome. According to a report to air on 60 Minutes Sunday, there are six people known to science …
[vodpod id=Video.5139650&w=425&h=350&fv=autoPlay%3Dfalse]
9/11 was a tragedy that happened to the entire nation, and in its larger ramifications, to the world. But New Yorkers also felt it, and still feel it, on a personal level: not just the fear, the terrible sights and the awful memories (the rest of America watched 9/11; we smelled …
[vodpod id=Video.5140753&w=425&h=350&fv=]
Even on his last show, with a gang of stars and Larry King Live regulars turned out to send him off, Larry King seemed to have an easier time talking about other people than talking about himself. Receiving tribute from former President Bill Clinton, he turned the conversation toward Clinton’s …
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObU–jxhvUg]
Remember when the Park51 Islamic center, or “Ground Zero mosque,” was the absolutely most urgent political-religious-cultural issue facing the United States? When there were protests and fury and old 9/11 wounds reopened, and you needed to choose a side, and politicians from New York …
Last week, we learned via WikiLeaks that the U.S. State Deparment had produced a cable analyzing trends of anti-Americanism in Canadian TV. But it now appears that the U.S. has an offensive as well as defensive posture on televisual warfare—and not just in Canada, which we’ve been bombing into submission with our sitcoms and dramas …
You tend to associate the sudden mass firings of staff members with TV series that are not, shall we say, doing well. So it was surprising to see reports that, after The Walking Dead became AMC’s biggest hit and one of the biggest cable hits of the year overnight, producer Frank Darabont was firing the entire writing staff. What’s more, …
The special issue of TIME now on newsstands, Time Frames, is a look back at, and update on, some of the signal events and developments over the past 10 years. The editor of the issue, Nancy Gibbs, asked me if I was interested in doing a Tuned In column about a particular TV event or show that captured the spirit of the decade. After …
*rolls eyes*
Fresh off having given Keith Olbermann a two-day suspension without pay for donating to three Democratic candidates, MSNBC has done the same to Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough for making eight contributions to candidates (including his brother) in local Florida races between 2004 and 2008.
I wrote about this issue when …
[vodpod id=Video.4920351&w=425&h=350&fv=]
The Germans should have invented a word that’s like “schadenfreude,” but describing the feeling that comes when someone expresses something in a such a way that you feel vaguely uncomfortable agreeing with them. Schaden-noddin’, maybe?
Whatever the word, it would roughly describe what I felt …
[vodpod id=Video.4892116&w=425&h=350&fv=]
Last night, Rachel Maddow devoted her MSNBC program to an interview with Jon Stewart about the message of his Rally to Restore Sanity, and its critique of the news media, especially—this being a cable news show—cable news. (See the whole thing here.)
I don’t want to oversimplify the …
Conservative journalist and sometime TV pundit Tucker Carlson is not Keith Olbermann; he just plays him on the Internet. This past summer, Carlson’s website, The Daily Caller, purchased the URL keitholbermann.com and used the domain to host (generally unfavorable) Daily Caller articles about the liberal MSNBC host. Last week, after Keith …
