“If you’re for Social Security and Medicare, we’re all socialists,” Jon Stewart told Bill O’Reilly. “Fifty percent of the people know nothing,” O’Reilly told Stewart, adding as examples, “the Jersey Shore people, the Colbert watchers… ” If you find those statements either enlightening or funny, you would have enjoyed “The Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium” that took place on Saturday night. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Melissa Moseley/HBO
Airing at the close of a week with big news stories both heavy (the Supreme Court ruling on health care) and light (Ann Curry exiting The Today Show), The Newsroom’s second episode was both timely and windbaggy, to varying degrees of entertainment. The scene that might have echoed most ringingly in your ears was the one that introduced Olivia Munn’s character, financial news reporter Sloan Sabbith. She was interrogated and cajoled by Emily Mortimer’s MacKenzie about the former’s masterful command of complex issues and wonderment that she wasn’t making more money doing what attractive women on TV do, according to Mac: Go for a glossier TV show or into the private sector. Sloan replied that she was, indeed, “offered a morning show” but turned it down because “I’m not interested in cooking.” Ding, ding, ding!: There you had it — the Ann Curry imbroglio in neat reverse. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Melissa Moseley/HBO The Newsroom
On Thursday night’s O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly got all het up over a scene from the season finale of Parenthood. It was the moment in which Sarah Braverman’s teen son Drew had sex for the first time with his girlfriend Amy. O’Reilly convened a summit with his so-called Culture Warriors, Gretchen Carlson and Margaret Hoover, to bemoan what the segment called “The Coarsening of Our Culture.” READ FULL STORY »
Bill O’Reilly termed Whitney Houston’s death a suicide (he said she “killed herself” through “decades” of drug use) and said that entertainers such as Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg are “creeps” who contribute to the profits of “Mexican cartels” every time they buy “a marijuana cigarette.” READ FULL STORY »
Imagine my surprise last Friday when I turned on my favorite guilty pleasure — Fox News’ The Five, its five-person, 5 p.m. five-days-a-week replacement for the full-fathom-five insanity of Glenn Beck — and saw little ol’ me getting slammed by the panel. There on screen was the cover of the new Muppetastic Entertainment Weekly alongside a pic of my ugly mug, as one of the Five, Greg Gutfeld, criticized me for my review suggesting that last week’s South Park was slightly weaker than some of its recent, sterling efforts. READ FULL STORY »
Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera got into a shouting match, and Nancy Grace presided over a lynch mob of lawyers eager to top each other in venting their rage over the Casey Anthony trial verdict on Monday night. The networks tried to act as though they were above it all, while every one of them featured the verdict prominently. Scott Pelley led off the CBS Evening News by saying the case “became a sensation on cable television,” but that was just spin, in order for Pelley’s broadcast to exploit the Anthony case for its own purposes. Later, CBS preempted the legal fiction The Good Wife to present a legal reality: a “special edition” of 48 Hours Mystery about Casey Anthony. READ FULL STORY »
Keith Olbermann and his Countdown returned to TV on Monday night on Current with an hour loaded with obviousness and an unfortunate amount of fawning on the part of his guests.
Meanwhile, over on Fox and The O’Reilly Factor, the host and Lupe Fiasco engaged in a ludicrous debate over the musician’s characterization of President Obama as “a terrorist.” READ FULL STORY »
