Archive for October 30, 2004
Iocane powder
October 30, 2004That’s all I want you to remember when you see people talking about the new Osama video and whether or not that means he wants Bush of Kerry to win.
I know who I want to win– hint: it’s not the guy who’s let Osama run around for the past three years. Nor is it the guy who fell for one of the classic blunders.
Money, meet mouth
October 24, 2004Keith Olbermann has made an amazing offer:
Harvey Levin, who created and hosts “Celebrity Justice,” and with whom I happily worked at KCBS-TV in Los Angeles in the late ’80s, came on Countdown last night and said that the tapes are Mackris�s only leverage against O’Reilly, that the preliminary expenses of the twin law cases are hurting her, and that despite the report early in the week that the Fox side had made a two million dollar settlement offer to her, that O’Reilly had in fact offered twice that, weeks ago.
The two provisos on O’Reilly’s end: the tapes must be destroyed, and the settlement must include an automatic clause that if copies turn up at any point in the future, O’Reilly gets his hush money back.
I believe the Time-Life Record Library has a similar money-back guarantee.
I’ve testified in many sexual harassment cases in my days at ESPN and the process is still inevitably stacked against the accuser, so, I understand if she has to do what she has to. And, hell, when they took me off the air in 2001, I took $800,000 from Fox just to not say anything about what idiots they were – until the contract was over eight months later (I think I’ve done another $800,000 worth of damage to them since, because nowhere in the deal did it say I couldn’t start saying what idiots they were once the contract ran out – and they are idiots, by the way – there’s another $17 right there).
So from two viewpoints, I appreciate Ms. Mackris’s position. But I am speaking on behalf of history. I am pleading for the CD listeners as yet unborn. I am thinking of the boxed DVD sets and the orders from Amazon and the dance-mix versions of O’Reilly talking about loofas and falafels, counterpointed with his radio statement from this week: “I just made a decision that I’m just going to ride it out, and I’m going to fight them.”
Fight them. For four days. Yeah, like the Yankees fought the Red Sox.
But, as I said, I am not asking Andrea Mackris to do this alone. The NewsCorp smear machine, known by its colloquial title “The New York Post,” reports she’s exactly $99,000 in debt due to credit card bills and student loans (thus making her about $5,000 more in debt than the average 33-year old in television who has college and grad school loans). She’s selling the tapes and her case to O’Reilly to avoid financial calamity.
Well, if she’s going to get $4,000,000 out of it, I can’t match that.
But if she really wants to fight this, and only needs seed money to keep the legal challenge going, I’m willing to stand up and help her – and help history. I’ll pay off her $99,000 in debts. All I ask is a copy of the tapes, and her agreement not to make any deals requiring their destruction. She can settle with O’Reilly; she can sue him (with the tapes remaining in the public record) from now until 2027; she can date the guy.
Just save the tapes – that’s all I ask.
More power to you, Keith.
Aesop’s presidency
October 23, 2004Who in heaven’s name thought it was a good idea for George W. Bush– the brains behind a pre-emptive war costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars over non-existent weapons of mass destruction, and a man prone to running terror alerts whenever he has a dip in public opinion polls– to run a campaign ad where he’s quite literally crying wolf?
Bush’s iBulge
October 21, 2004Happy Go Larry – Bush’s iBulge
I’ve heard worse theories. (And by “worse”, I mean “oh dear God, if it’s true we’re in for a world of hurt”.)
If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers…
October 21, 2004From Software is too expensive to build cheaply…
Dear Mr. Architect:
Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.
Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them)…
Go read the rest. Ouch.
October 22nd surprise
October 19, 2004Oh, lookie: Celsius 41.11 – The Temperature At Which The Brain Begins To Die — brought to us by the same folks responsible for DC 9/11. Won’t this be fun?
Sludge reports…
October 19, 2004Michael Cravens notes in Comments:
And coincidentally, The Drudge Report has “suddenly” decided to run a story that indicates that the Daily Show is hemorraging viewers. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but you have to give Drudge credit…his timing is impeccable, given the largely positive reaction to Jon’s appearance on Crossfire on Friday. 
Michael is referring to this: JON STEWART ‘DAILY SHOW’ IN SURPRISE AUDIENCE — DROP
Sun Oct 17 2004 20:30:24 ET
COMEDY CENTRAL’s ‘DAILY SHOW’ has experienced surprise audience erosion — despite a publicity push by host Jon Stewart.
Stewart, who announced last week that he plans to support John Kerry, pulled 1,040,000 total viewers for the month of September — down 7% from August, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
Jumbo hype from media writers and a bestselling book apparently have failed to translate into any TV audience improvement.
MORE
CNN editors were busy this weekend cleaning up a transcript from Stewart’s Friday appearance on CROSSFIRE. One CNN executive called Stewart’s performace “belligerent.”
Now, as it happens, I happen to have access to experts in the field of TV ratings, so I asked her. Brandy…?
This is impossible to prove or disprove because he was so vague:
> Stewart, who announced last week that he plans to support
> John Kerry, pulled 1,040,000 total viewers for the month of
> September — down 7% from August, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
In what demo? Households, Men, what? And also for what airing? Just the 11pm one, or an average of all the repeats they do thru the day? The biggest problem is that 1,040,000 number… I’m not even sure where it comes from. He says ‘total viewers’ which is not a measurement we deal in. We deal in averages, not cumulatives. Hence I can’t even try to match it to prove or disprove.
Let’s assume he means only the original 11pm telecast. The 11pm telecast P25-54 average for the Nielsen month of August (7/26-8/29) was a 0.67 and the average for September (8/30-9/24) was a 0.66. If you look at the men and women breakouts all the loss comes from the female demos – men were up across the board and women were down. Why? Beats me. Women don’t like the negativity, they just want him to be funny?
Also, as you pointed out, there were lots of reruns, but I’m not sure if there were more in Sept than there were in August.
Basically by being so vague he’s insulated himself from criticism because it’s darn near impossible to figure out what he really means and prove him wrong.
But hey, why should little things like that get in the way of a Drudge exclusive?
Jon?
October 16, 2004STEWART: Here’s just what I wanted to tell you guys.
CARLSON: Yes.
STEWART: Stop.
(LAUGHTER)
STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.
…
STEWART: I watch your show every day. And it kills me.
CARLSON: I can tell you love it.
STEWART: It’s so — oh, it’s so painful to watch.
(LAUGHTER)
STEWART: You know, because we need what you do. This is such a great opportunity you have here to actually get politicians off of their marketing and strategy.
CARLSON: Is this really Jon Stewart? What is this, anyway?
STEWART: Yes, it’s someone who watches your show and cannot take it anymore.
…oh, just go read it.
Online polling help, please
October 15, 2004From email:
We opened a three-question Presidential Poll on GreatBoyfriends.com late last night, and left voting “open” thinking it would be unbiased that way. But our co-founder, E. Jean Carroll, who’s also the advice columnist at ELLE Magazine, was being interviewed on FOX News around 12:15 today, and just happened to mention the Poll.
Well, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people watching FOX came over to our little website and voted… and you would think the whole COUNTRY is going to vote for Bush. Are they??? That one little mention seems to have thrown the numbers that had been accumulating “normally” ALL out of whack.
We don’t want to demand that anyone login, register, and we’re not restricting voting just to our members so that they can remain anonymous.
Does anyone have any ideas how we can get some publicity to encourage a more representative range of viewers to take the poll at www.GreatBoyfriends.com ?
Thanks for your input,
Cande
Cande@GreatBoyfriends.com
www.GreatBoyfriends.com
Now, I’m sure that some of you folks will be happy to spread the word to correct this sampling bias, right?
Boo-hyphen-yah
October 15, 2004Round up the usual suspects, because it’s your tax dollars in action– Keith Olbermann has a blog of his own. Welcome aboard.