Takes on media, politics and entertainment - are you informed, or entertained?
Battle of the cable media personalities: While on cable and behind the scenes, the (loud) talking heads Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann ratchet up the vitriolic attacks, rounds of an old clip of O'Reilly are out with mixes and remixes actually more funny (mother, you love O'Reilly, see him use words he'd never use on air).
Media critic Howard Kurtz article highlights the feud between left-leaning Keith Olberman (MSNBC, GE's NBC operation) and right-ist Bill O'Reilly, (Fox News, owned by Robert Murdoch's News Corp.). While Olbermann attacks O'Reilly, O'Reilly attacks the corporation behind Olbermann. Olbermann's show has brought a high viewership to MSNBC while O'Reilly's show has 2.5 times the viewership of Olberman and the battle goes all the way up to the top of the two corporations owning the media outlets. O'Reilly is escalating assaults on the CEO of GE, calling him a "pinhead" and a "despicable human being" for his business dealings with Iran -- which is a way of escalating the feud between O'Reilly and NBC. Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes called NBC Chief Executive Jeff Zucker "warning that if Olbermann didn't stop his attacks against Fox, he would unleash O'Reilly against NBC." Olbermann didn't back off and O'Reilly is escalating his attacks on GE with executives at Fox say that if attacks on O'Reilly by Olbermann end, the attacks on GE will end. O'Reilly has called for Olbermann to be fired.
On McCain's most influential media appearances - With the NYTimes endorsement of McCain now relevant since their endorsement of Hillary didn't seem to help much, the NYTime Magazine's long piece on McCain - The McCain Doctrine, talks about how as Vietnam defined the beginning of his life, Iraq will mark the end. "And the fact is that I know war, and I know the tragedy of war. And no one hates war more than veterans.” Since I missed the original viewing, I went to youTube to find McCain's skit on Saturday Night Live, which has become a potent force this political season. A little boring but he did joke about his age. SNL's season finale scored better than any show on any network in prime time that night with about 6 1/2 million viewers.
Bill O'Reilly really riles me. Fox certainly knew how to position itself, though, as it is always channel 11, and doesn't have to be part of a cable package. It is free until such time as the antennae are no longer viable.
Posted by: tut-tut | May 20, 2008 at 06:01 PM
Unless Obama comes up with a running mate who will appeal to the kind of people who think McCain is a hell of a guy, he will have a hard time winning in November.
Posted by: Hattie | May 21, 2008 at 05:48 AM