Sundays With Tina

Note: If you didn't get the above pun this post will likely not make much sense to you.

Oh how happy was I tonight, lazily switching channels looking for something to watch after Futurama ended. I ended up on Topic A with Tina Brown on CNBC, usually the subject of well deserved ridicule, but compared with the rest of the Sunday talk shows is actually quite above-average. (note that this doesn't in itself imply that it is good.) But oh how happy was I this week when I saw who the panel was. It was surprise to see my blogging girlfriend, Wonkette, but also my new blogging boyfriend, James Wolcott. Together the two of them produce about the most witty commentary on US politics. Wolcott's wit is like a razor while Wonkette's (Ana Marie Cox) is like a cricket bat wound in barbed wire. And the two of them were put alongside some unknown-to-me conservative columnists who really didn't have a chance.

When the topic of the last presidential debate came up, the conservative pair dutifully tried to parrot the usual party line about how Bush looked 'confident', but being from the blogging world where one doesn't pay attention to the rule that you have to take your opponent seriously, no matter how stupid the thing they might be saying is, Wonkette just burst into muted laughter, and shot back that Bush definitely lost the women's vote thanks to his outburst, and Wolcott added that this must have been what Bush would have looked like when he was a raging alcoholic. Normally these political talk shows are stacked in favour of the conservative side so much that it was an aberrateion to see it the other way around.

The most ironic part of the whole affair was the fact that Cox was allowed anywhere near the show at all. One of the best parts about wonkette.com is a bit she does called “Thursdays With Tina” where she regularly uses Tina Browne's Thursday column in the Washington Post for easy comedy material. I think putting her on the show was Tina's attempt to show us how cool she is, and that she is in on the joke. But Ana winked at me when the camera first panned to her, yes she did, and with that she re-assured her loyal readership that she wasn't selling out to get on TV. (she had done that long ago, doing MTV's political convention coverage.) But since she is earning a rather low paycheque from known thief Nick Denton to write her blog, one can hardly blame a little media whoring now and then. Especially not since it means we get to laugh at Tina Browne's attempt to look hip and in with the new cool kids on the block, the bloggers.

Here's a Thursday's With Tina post just for fun. Link.

Thursdays with Tina: My Birthday Present to You Edition

Back by popular demand: Translating Tina Brown's Thursday column in the Washington Post. We understand it so that you don't have to.

Tina says	Tina means
Are the media having a nervous breakdown?	I believe I am a member of the media.
The broiling partisan heat, the pressure to get out of third place with a scoop, the hot breath of cable news, the race to beat all the hacks and scribes who keep nibbling away at the story (your story, the story you've spent five years trying to get right), the baying of the bloggers, the sick sense of always being news-managed by the White House's black arts, the longing to show the Web charlatans and cable-heads that rumpled-trenchcoat news is still where the action is, the pounding inner soundtrack that asks: Am I a watchdog or a poodle? A journalist or an entertainer? A tough newsman or a mouse with mousse?	All the editors have left the building. I am here all by myself. LALALALALALA. I think I'll run naked down the hallway!
But he looked as if his psyche had been through Hurricane Ivan.	I have a desperate need to be topical, even when the topics are unrelated in any way.
Every editor, producer and reporter knows that the warp speed of the news cycle means we are all only one step ahead of some career-ending debacle.	Not that I would know anything about career-ending debacles.

Fear of missing the bandwagon is behind all the hype about the brilliance of bloggers who blew the whistle.	Hello? Hello? Are there any editors heeeerrre? Ha ha. More running naked down the hallway, mixing metaphors as I go!
The way things have unraveled must be Karl Rove's wet dream: a living, breathing example of ostensible liberal media bias with which to bludgeon the rest of the press into an even deeper defensive crouch.	A metaphor here, a metaphor there, who cares? Bludgeoning the media with a living breathing wet dream! Lalalalalala!
Like O.J. Simpson's infamous "struggle" to squeeze his big hand into the glove, the letter was just a lousy piece of evidence that should never have been produced in court. Now because CBS, like Marcia Clark, screwed up the prosecution, Bush is going to walk.	Every thing is like some thing. Sometimes more than one thing! That's why we need so many metaphors. See, it's like the internet start-up bloggers are in slow-motion car chases while Fox breathes down their necks in a trenchcoat with poodles and a mouse and mousse and Karl Rove's wet dream. Yay!
A veteran newsman is in the twilight of a long and distinguished career. He just wanted to taste that sweet medicine one more time.	I'm lonely. Please come back.

Breaking the News, Then Becoming It [WP]