Now that Jimmy Breslin-so-not Mike Barnicle is back in his shell, msnbc Hardball host and Jimmy Breslin-in-his-dreams Chris Matthews is back in the saddle.
Here Media Matters observes Matthews as he expounds on gender, history, and politics. Let’s listen in!
As Media Matters has noted, Matthews — who on his June 24, 2007, program said that he “love[s] gender politics” — has frequently focused on gender issues when discussing Clinton. He has said that “some men” say Clinton’s voice sounds like “fingernails on a blackboard“; wondered if Clinton is “a convincing mom“; claimed that “men don’t knock Hillary” and that they are “are afraid” to criticize her. He once also claimed that her criticism of the Bush administration’s homeland security spending priorities made her look “witchy” and has wondered if there is a “gigantic monster,” a “big, green, horny-headed … monster of anti-Hillaryism that hasn’t shown itself.”
Matthews’ discussion of Edwards’ height and Clinton’s voice came about three hours after a conversation on Hardball about gay marriage, during which he turned to Karen Finney, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, and said, “[Y]ou don’t love your wife, do you? I’m just kidding.” Moments later, Matthews said: “Let’s get back to the debating point here before we get too frivolous.”
[END]
And now for a snippet from the guy who isn’t a Jimmy Breslin wannabe:
[From Democracy Now, it's Jimmy Breslin talking with Amy Goodman about media coverage of the 2004 Democratic Convention. link here http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/29/1442255]
AMY GOODMAN: Some say that because it’s so scripted, there’s nothing to talk about.
JIMMY BRESLIN: I don’t care. That’s none of your business what it is. Your business is to write it. If it’s lousy, then you’re running a lousy convention. If it’s good, you run a good convention. But you are running a convention of the Democratic Party, which is producing a candidate to run for president and you don’t want to cover it? You don’t have it on your air? Then you shouldn’t have the station. Awful. That’s a tremendous thing that happened.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that this goes hand in hand with the way the media covers the lead up to the invasion?
JIMMY BRESLIN: Exactly — they don’t care. They got good jobs. These people are too well off. Ever look at them? There is no curiosity. Their curiosity is where they are going out tonight or what party they go to. There’s no curiosity here. None whatsoever. And also, they can’t write too good. 37 words in a lead sentence, and they expect the public to follow and read. Norman Mailer would do 16 or John Steinbeck 14, they do 47 to show that they went to Tufts and they did 10 papers before this.
AMY GOODMAN: Pulitzer Prize journalist Jimmy Breslin. He writes for “Newsday.”
When I was a kid and teenager I watched Dick Cavett, David Susskind and and Wm F Buckley’s Firing Line. I loved how guests like Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer and Gore Vidal would get into big literary and political fights about things like Tolstoy, Vietnam, and sex. It was fun, and the guests could speak without censorship, it seemed.
Now Charlie Rose asks his fawning, interminable non-questions and I nod off. And who else is there? Oprah?
This Slate piece reminded me of the good old days.
Glenn Greenwald has a great, funny piece about the weird fawning by “journalists” like Chris Matthews over the manly musk pf GOP pols like Fred Thomson, John McCain and even (though not so much lately) George W. Bush himself.
Here’s Matthews in raptures over Thompson on his “news” show, um, Hardball:
Looks like trouble is a-brewin over at CBS news with Katie Couric.
Viewership is down. Excitement is…eh. Ms. Couric’s producer has been axed and a new one brought in, but just who exactly is the anchor here, the producer or Couric? The article hints at at dull commentary segments, over-long interviews (Katie’s strong-suit!) and just plain lackluster news-gathering.
Have you seen the telecast? Ms. Couric – bright enough, tough enough, and very driven – just doesn’t seem that interested in news...a tricky hurdle for the anchor of the station made famous by Edward R Murrow.
I mean, the other anchors are dull as cement and network news is hardly cutting-edge, but come on: Couric appeared on the Superbowl pre-game show (woo hoo!) to plug a new, ongoing CBS “happy news” feature. Because, as she explained to the sports desk ‘big-necks’, we just don’t see enough of what’s going right with America.
Thing is – it’s not a news journalist’s job to give us joy and hope in a new day and a better tomorrow. That’s what we have Oprah for. And Dick Cheney.
I cant help but think of last week’s superb Washington Post expose of the squalid conditions at Walter Reed Hospital. Now THAT was news. Gloomy, shocking, necessary NEWS. And it broke open a huge scandal that maybe – maybe – could lead to action being taken to actually improve the care wounded US soldiers receive at Walter Reed and other VAs.
Would that story have made the cut over at Katie’s CBS happy-cast?
I know I know, it’s Scorsese. But The Departed is Fake Irish (FI) crap. So was Mystic River; ditto the new TV show The Black Donnellys.
Fake Irish, or FI, is huge nowadays, everybody wants blather and tribal blood oaths and the ancient clannish something-or-other. Plus hot guy-on-Guinness-action!
But first: What exactly is FI? Well, if a faux-brogue voice-over describes somebody onscreen as ‘tough’ because his father works for the steelworkers union (Black Donnellys), you got yourself some FI. After all, there are no unions in America anymore. Which brings us to a common thread in FI movies and TV – nostalgia!
Another sign of FI? Dialogue like this:
First guy says to second guy:
"You know I gotta do this. It don't matter what you say. I gotta make this right."
(The Black Donnellys).
FI is all about fightin and drinkin and bein tough-yet-tribal-yet-silent-yet-possibly-poetic-underneath.
The lassies dig it.
Heck, these guys might even spout a line of poetry or two in the middle of a brawl.
Cute, those Irishes.
Want Real Irish? Don’t Miss The Leprachaun Watch, right here! Sightings abound…
I love Las Vegas and American Idol and lots of other trash TV.
But what is the deal with ‘24′? Why is it a hit? The episode I saw had that flat, fake-tough dialogue that makes every character sound the same. Kiefer Sutherland is a snore. Plot twists pile up but I didn’t see any moral complexity or irony in the show.
Also, the show depicts torture as something the good guys do often, and well.
I liked what James Wolcott of Vanity Fair had to say:
And really interesting New Yorker piece on ‘24′ by Jane Mayer here:
Any 24 fans who want to weigh in?
Does it matter what a TV show shows?
Filed under: TV
Finally saw an audition on American Idol. Truth be told, I saw the final episode last season, where the white-haired boring guy won and Prince performed at half-time. So, I had seen a crowning, but never the run-up…
The first-round contestants seem like isolated, lonesome people whose exposure to other humans comes solely from watching them on TV.
The whole hotel-room audition thing is a pretty harrowing spectacle. Last week’s contestants really practice the American ethos of ‘If you believe it will happen, and try and try and try (and try), it will happen’. Other considerations (talent, training, money, connections, etc) don’t enter in. The resulting clash between self-delusion and reality makes for cruel, riveting TV.
Example: A young, small, big-eyed, tuneless, clueless contestant “sings”. He says “yo dog” to Simon Cowell. His bravado is ridiculed. Rejected, he tries a little more back-and-forth with Cowell as the camera lingers. Rejected by all 3 judges, he retreats out the wrong door of the hotel conference room (why does one exit door stick in both Seattle and Minneapolis??)
And the ratings are beyond high. No wonder nobody’s in the streets protesting war in Iraq – everybody in the USA is either in line to audition for American Idol, or watching it on TV.
There is truly something deranged about the perseverance displayed by these people. It makes determination itself seem scary. I mean, even when told they don’t make the grade, they WON’T STOP SINGING.
It’s almost impossible to look at it (though I sure did), this raw national exposure of private desire. These folks have been tucked away in bad homes, tiny towns, poverty, aiming their desperation into the mirror for a long, long time. They have pictured themselves impressing the crap out of the celebrity panel, they have imagined 40 million jaws dropping in unison (the small guy even said something like “your mouth will drop” to Simon). They want fame or love or both. I don’t know.
It’s brutal and humbling. Like looking directly inside someone’s chest at their beating heart.
Some are more menacing than others: The hairdresser who finished singing terribly and approached Cowell with a dab of hair gel. Three security guys erupted out of the fucking walls.
Only one contestant compels silence from the panel: A young round guy with an odd, loud voice. He appears to have some sort of developmental disability, and as soon as he speaks the judges grow quiet. This is the ‘Do Not Cross’ line I guess. It took a long time to reach it. Again, the camera lingers.
I don’t know if I can take it. Not because the show is terrible but because it’s sort of powerful – Americans are dreaming alone in rooms. If they could only win it would make up for everything that ever went wrong in their lives, and rescue them from invisibility. I would not want to be one of those judges, beseeched and despised, sitting like Fate itself armed with red plastic cups and sharpened pencils.
