What's Up With Leno?

Interesting Nikki Finke interview with Jay Leno from LA Weekly.

Is he [after big time sucking-up to the shameful, unqualified Governor Arnold] doing damage-control, backpedaling,...or making sense and not such a bad guy, after all?

-M!

Meeeet the Press?

No, it's not about the suckass, disgrace to his native Buffalo, Tim Russert.

I realized a few months back that, years ago, I met a guy who is now a member of the White House press corps!! He's Mark Knoller, representing the delightful CBS Radio Network.

No joke. It was in the studios of WNEW Radio one morning in the early 1970s. I was there as the guest of the late, great, comic genius of a radio personality, Gene Klavan. Knoller was apparently a new reporter at the station, meeting Klavan [and yours truly] for the first time.

Knoller's a bright guy, no doubt about it. That's why it makes it even sadder, more annoying to see him in the same boat, playing the same cowed, impotent role as the rest of the White House press whores. Won't ask tough questions, be a real journalist, giving pResident lummox a pass because the pRez is "incurious" at best.

I add Knoller to the long list of "journalists" - and even longer list of all other folks - who lap up all this shit, playing the game, perpetuating the ignorance, and I wonder how they can look in the mirror or sleep at nite as a result.

-M!

AmyWatch

Keeping an ear on Amy Goodman, who does important work but disappoints more often than I'd like...

Listen to Friday's show, the newscast segment about six minutes in. She was broadcasting from Buffalo, an especially significant place to me, a city I love. I assume she was there flogging her book, which she has been doing vigorously for months.

Okay, six minutes in, she does a story about the House vote on overturning changes in overtime regulations. BUT, if you listen even a little carefully, y'note that the story suddenly ends with her talking about "Clinton" and something that happened 10 years ago. It makes no sense. UNTIL you hear the next story about the assault weapons ban running out. That relates to Clinton and ten years ago.

Amy got her pages mixed-up and proved one of two things to us:

1) She had no idea what the hell she was talking about.
2) She figured we're all stupid and wouldn't notice.

So she just kept right on readin'
without correcting, without apologizing.

I've said it before: she's doing important work. We expect better from her, especially as she travels the nation [justifiably] criticizing the lousy job the mainstream media is doing.

-M!