Notoriety

Our ongoing series examining the tweets of Washington journos is about to take a wild turn. Last year, Yesha Callahan was looking for a relationship on Craigslist and Rep. Chris Lee (R-NY) replied in the creepiest way possible: flexing his shirtless arms while showing his face. The whole scandal ended Lee’s political career. Callahan continues to blog and tweet at lightning speed on JUST about everything under the sun. It’s a blistering Twitter feed that pulls no punches on ANY topic. So, let’s take a look to see What Yesha is Tweeting today.

Yesha’s first few tweets of the day seem to focus on semen. If that bothers you, then read no further, because we are about to submerge ourselves in baby batter. Yesha tweets, “I swear women need to stop swallowing all willy nilly & for recreation…got men out here expecting it from other women like it’s a given.”

Wait. Where the hell are all the women who are “swallowing all willy nilly”??? Is that REALLY a rampant problem? Yesha continues, “My best guy friend from hs….apparently told me that it’s expected from anyone he dates.” It’s EXPECTED???  We hate to go all Penthouse Forum here, but if you find someone who loves sack sauce THAT much, you may have just found marriage material.

Callahan isn’t done shooting her load quite yet. She tweets, “I posted the article abt the semen cupcake on fb…here’s Carla’s sister ‘where can I get one of those?’ Grosd.” A semen cupcake? We must have missed that recipe on the latest episode of Paul Wharton’s TV show.

Editor’s note: Stay tuned for more episodes of “What’s Yesha Tweeting?” In the meantime, Peter is gargling with Purel.

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The NYT Sunday Magazine owes a lot to last night’s AMC’s “Mad Men” episode. Pete Campbell, played by Vincent Kartheiser, is having an erotic daydream in his office.  The object of his lust arouses him with this line: “I forgot you, and then I saw you in the New York Times Sunday magazine.”

Anyone watching Fox News’s Neil Cavuto Wednesday afternoon was in for a real treat of exposed breasts. Free of charge. The star of the soft porn film, er show, was The Daily Caller‘s Michelle Fields, who decided to go on national TV with a large portion of her breasts jiggling out of her shirt.

This isn’t the first time Cavuto’s program and others have been criticized for having on scantily clad female guests. Media Matters wrote about the rash of sexism emanating from the network’s programming in January 2011. They pounded that point home again in March 2009. And as far back as 2007 Conservative Radio Commentator Laura Ingraham voiced strong complaints to FNC’s Bill O’Reilly. To which O’Reilly said, “I don’t have anything to do with Cavuto. He’s a demented guy.” Ingraham complained of the male newscasters playing loops and loops of racy images of females. “I don’t know if there’s a rampant midlife crisis going on on this network among the male anchors, but I can tell you that my female listeners are saying … what is the purpose?”

Reaction to Michelle’s appearance was widespread. Readers and viewers from Washington and New York bombarded us over email about the inappropriateness of the video reporter’s attire during her performance on Cavuto. We’re shocked our computers survived it.

We sought comment from The Daily Caller, asking if management supported their reporter exposing a large chunk of her breasts on national TV.

Apparently the Fox News producer handling her never bothered to mention that her breasts had swallowed her attire. Fields is often plucked over male guests who may have more knowledge on a topic. We can only imagine they want her for her brain and not her breasts. In recent weeks this has been a growing sore spot for guests who get bumped and then see her in their spot. In fact, Fox News, as it is wont to do when women appear on their programs, dropped the banner for maximum viewing pleasure. Dropping the banner when a guest is wearing something revealing is apparently one of Fox’s favorite tactics. Who could have guessed that?

I checked in with a few members of Michelle’s fan club, FBDC’s Piranhamous and Senior Michelle Fields Rack Correspondent Peter Ogburn for their thoughts on the matter.

Piranhamous remarked, “I can’t believe anyone would go on news program dressed like this! Now could you please send me a hi-rez copy of this screen capture so I can have a poster made of it for my bathroom? Thanks.”

Ogburn was beside himself. “Women who use sexuality on Fox is nothing new.  But NO ONE shows off their rack like that. Fucking titty city.” But he wasn’t done. “For all the people who talked shit and said that she wasn’t showing cleavage in the videos we reported on before, they can shove their heads up their asses. Who shows THAT much cleavage on cable news?  Seriously.  Who?? Being sexual is one thing. Showing that much of your tits on TV is just over the top.  It doesn’t matter if she makes the most valid points on Earth, she has zero credibility.”

Some of the commentary and emails we received well into the night:

• “Michelle Fields was on Fox News this afternoon around 4:50 wearing an absolutely unbelievably egregiously revealing shirt (and talking about Occupy Wall Street? Who even knows.)”

• “As one who has thought you’ve been too touch on Michelle Fields….her Cavuto appearance right now is about one thing, her chest.” — Senior Capitol Hill aide.

• “I don’t know how a bill becomes a law, but look at my breasts!”

• “I didn’t have the sound on and might be better off for that.”

• “I had it muted.  Boobs everywhere.”

• “Floppy Funbags!”

• “I can’t imagine many viewers are consciously listening, which is supposed to be the goal of contributing.”

Read the headlines we left on the cutting room floor….

Read more

CNN Contributor Roland Martin, host of TV One’s “Washington Watch,” is the first American to speak at the Black Business Professional Association (BBPA) 30th Annual Harry Jerome Awards Gala. Held last Saturday at the Toronto Congress Centre in Ontario, Canada, top black professionals throughout Canada gathered to hear Martin discuss what was described in a relase as “the urgency of economic and social mobility; developing skill-sets to move young professionals forward and entrepreneurship.”

The Jerome Awards are apparently often referred to as the “Canadian Oscars” to give you an idea what in the hell this is.

Kendra Marr has resurfaced in the media world.

Marr was fired from her job as a transportation reporter at Politico Pro following allegations of plagiarism in October. She virtually disappeared immediately after. But as of January, she came back with a WordPress blog under her name and started tweeting again. It also looks like she’s freelancing in the area. A story published in early April in the Travel section of BBC.com headlined “Baltimore’s beer flows again” is bylined Kendra Marr. Her blog says she’s “a writer, splitting [her] time between Baltimore and Washington, DC.”

Today FBDC takes a look at what Marr has been tweeting since she hopped back on the Twitter hog.

Here’s a taste:

• This photography blog about Asian people levitating. “Daily levitation…,” Marr wrote with the link.
• This story about a scenario in a New York school exam that involves a talking pineapple. “So bizarre,” Marr commented.
• This blog featuring the untouched photos of various celebrities. “Mesmerizing…,” Marr said.
• “At last!” Marr said in a more dynamic tweet to the news that Vice President Joe Biden joined Twitter.
• This NYT story about “stupid” video games. “If only we could blast apart all NYT stories with an asteroid spaceship,” Marr tweeted.

FBDC contacted Marr for comment.

Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren and her husband, John Coale, have something of a tradition landing unusual, blockbuster guests for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. One year it was Ozzy Osbourne, the next it was Kim Kardashian and last year it was former V.P. hopeful and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

This year they seem to have outdone themselves. They’re bringing Trouble, otherwise known as actress Lindsay Lohan, to the dinner as well as to socialite Tammy Haddad‘s and Hilary Rosen‘s infamous garden brunch on Saturday afternoon.

The notorious party girl will have her pick of festivities this weekend. For the media’s sake, we sure hope they keep Lohan on a loose leash!

Clarification: Palin’s office wrote in to complain that she actually did not attend the WHCD last year. She was in Washington to keynote a speech for a pro-life group and popped into some parties with Van Susteren and Coale. Duly noted.

Erik Wemple, media blogger for WaPo, was called out last night on the “O’Reilly Factor” by author and media critic Bernie Goldberg. The topic: media bias. Goldberg was responding to a short post by Wemple questioning the conclusion reached by FNC’s Bill O’Reilly and Goldberg that “media bias doesn’t matter.”

“Last week Bernie and I were talking about media bias and organizations that are in business not to inform anymore, they’re just pushing an agenda,” O’Reilly said on last night’s show. “The Washington Post weighed in on their blog and you [Goldberg] want to say something about that?”

Goldberg cocked his gun.

“Erik Wemple… this fella ended his piece by saying ‘if the impact of media bias is so trivial, why do these guys’– you and me– ‘why do these guys harp on it each week?’ Well first of all, we don’t harp on it. We talk about it.”

Aim.

“Secondly there are many smart, thoughtful, serious people who write about the media,” Goldberg continued, “but Erik Wemple, sadly, is not one of them.”

Fire!

Goldberg went on to lecture Wemple and “everybody else” why media bias does matter.

“Those words really hurt,” Wemple told FBDC in an email last night shortly after the segment ended. “After all, not long ago I’d credited Bernie for raising an interesting point about the NYT, one that I had followed up with my own reporting. In the case of the media-bias thing, I do believe that both Goldberg and O’Reilly on that [previous] program glibly dismissed the impact of alleged media bias and I am glad that Goldberg finished out his argument [in tonight's edition].”

In a follow-up post this morning Wemple wrote:

“It’s fine that Goldberg thinks something I wrote was dumb, less fine that his rebuttal rests on insulting my intelligence. Though I have criticized Goldberg in the past, I have also credited him. What I hope is consistent across all my mentions of Goldberg is an unwillingness to reach conclusions about where his opinions situate him along the continuum of media-critic IQs. That doesn’t seem relevant to anything.”

If nothing else, Wemple can be grateful that Fox News producers used a photo of him looking kind of bad ass. Maybe even a little dangerous.

DCist Editor-in-Chief Martin Austermuhle decided to share with the world praise the site received Wednesday from strangers in a cafe. We generally like Martin’s work and Martin for that matter, but this was pretty douchey even for Washington standards.

Overheard in a coffee shop: couple saying nice things about DCist, @IMGoph. I’m blushing.

— Martin Austermuhle (@dcist_martin) April 11, 2012

In case you thought you were having night terrors last night, CNN Democratic Commentator and SKDKnickerbocker Managing Director Hilary Rosen really did go off on would-be first lady Ann Romney in a late-night Twitter rant. Soon enough the Twittersphere exploded and Romney jumped in to defend herself. “I am a sea of calm in the storm,” Rosen wrote to FishbowlDC just after midnight after we asked how she was faring. The fire ignited on “AC360″ Wednesday night when Rosen said she “wished Mitt Romney wasn’t using his wife as a guide to women’s economic struggles because she had never worked a day in her life.”

President Obama‘s top campaign advisor David Axelrod wasn’t pleased. He wrote on Twitter, “Disappointed in Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney. They were inappropriate and offensive.” And Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, concurred: “I couldn’t disagree w/Hilary Rosen any more strongly. Her comments were wrong+family should be off limits. She shld apologize.” In a strange twist to this already odd evening, at 11:15 p.m. Rosen published a story on HuffPost. Suffice it to say Rosen, who cares for two children by herself, doesn’t have horses or an elevator in her home.

It all began innocently enough…

7:46 p.m. I’ll be on @AC360 with @andersoncooper tonight at 8:30 on Romney and the women’s vote. Does he even know what Lily Ledbetter Act is? #CNN

Things start to heat up.

9:55 p.m. When I said @AC360 Ann Romney never worked I meant she never had to care for her kids AND earn a paycheck like MOST American women! #Truth

9:59 p.m.: Mitt Romney is running for President, not Ann. He hired only 10%women at Bain; now makes up false concern for women’s economic struggle.

She trys to make nice. A little.

10:09 p.m.: I’ve nothing against @AnnRomney. I just don’t want Mitt using her as an expert on women struggling $ to support their family. She isn’t.

Her harsh conclusion…

10:11 p.m. @donnapt My point is that he should stop saying that she is his guide to women’s economic problems. She doesn’t have any. #IsntItObvious?

It’s not over. Things turn weird as she welcomes Ann to Twitter…

10:46 p.m. Ann Romney joins Twitter and issues her first and only message of the night: “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.” By 11:46 Ann Romney had 4, 265 followers.

10:56 p.m. “@AnnDRomney I am raising children too. But most young American women HAVE to BOTH earn a living AND raise children. You know that don’t u?”

11:02 p.m. @AnnDRomney Please know, I admire you. But your husband shouldn’t say you are his expert on women and the economy. #HeNeedsMore

11:06 p.m. Oh and @AnnDRomney welcome to Twitter. You will find it a very exhilarating and often unforgiving place!

11:15 p.m. Rosen publishes a story on HuffPost. She doesn’t apologize.

The backlash from the right was swift…

“According to Leftist rules: Every Democrat on television this week should be asked if they agree with Hilary Rosen.” — Lee Doren, Washington D.C. author of Please Enroll Responsibly.

@SalaciousSully: “Honestly, this @hilaryr broad MUST work for Romney. His support has gone up hugely in the past few hours because of her!” (Former Right Girl who describes herself as “the classiest asshole you’ve ever seen.”)

Members of the Media React

• “Fact that Axelrod repudiated Hilary Rosen CNN attack on Ann Romney says it all: HR is not an Obama advisor but is biz partner of one.” — HuffPost‘s Howard Fineman.

• “Axelrod & Messina have made Hilary Rosen comments into a story. Did they need to react to talking head?” — Daily Mail Online‘s Toby Harnden.

• Anonymous right-leaning journo tells FBDC: “It’s a total bullshit point my side is trying to score, but it will be ridden like a rented mule on FNC.”

• “I’m waiting for Bill Maher to criticize Hilary Rosen.” — NRO Contributor Greg Pollowitz.

• “Hilary Rosen makes me glad I (mostly) say all my stupid crap in private.” — Philadelphia Inquirer political writer Tom Fitzgerald.

• Breitbart.com’s Dana Loesch: “Rosen works at same PR firm run by former Obama comm director that also reps Fluke. Total collapse of orchestration. #waronwomen #waronmoms”

• Hot Air’s Michelle Malkin: “By attacking @AnnDRomney, @hilaryr managed to do what hadn’t been poss. before tonight: Uniting the Right behind Romney. Heckuva job, Hil.”

• HuffPost‘s Sam Stein took a decidedly lighthearted tone in his reaction: “History will show that the election was lost tonight by Hilary Rosen.”

• And Reuters‘ Sam Youngman‘s reaction was of a similar vein: “Upside of today’s battle in the war for women? Easy reminder to call mom.”

 

There is much talk about John Derbyshire‘s notoriously-racist column published in Taki last week. Not just because it was so nastily anti-black, but also because Derbyshire was fired from National Review as a result.

Derbyshire’s “latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible,” National Review Editor Rich Lowry declared in a post on Saturday. “So there has to be a parting of the ways.”

Though originally from the UK, Derbyshire lives on Long Island. His earliest column for National Review Online is from the year 2000. He hasn’t responded to a request for comment. He was with the publication since 1998.

Derbyshire’s column drew widespread criticism. In Washington, journos and political types weighed in over the weekend.

Politico‘s Alex Burns compared Derbyshire to D.C. Councilman Marion Barry, who recently caused a stir by commenting on Asians who open “dirty” stores in the District.

“I should be offended by this Derbyshire piece but it’s so incoherent that I can’t tell why. Probably my Negroid IQ”– The Atlantic‘s Ta0Nehisi Coates.

“Good news for Derbyshire: [Breitbart.com]  is always looking for race-baiting writers.”– MMfA’s Eric Boehlert.

“According to [Politico's Dylan Byers] Derbyshire’s column was “widely viewed as racist in nature.”– Metro Weekly‘s Chris Geidner in an apparently snarky tweet about Byers’s post on the column.

“I know I don’t,”– National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru responding to a tweet from ObsoleteDogma who asked if anyone at the publication wants “to be associated with someone who publishes racist trash like this.”

“At what age should parents have ‘the talk’ with their kids about John Derbyshire?– Former White House speechwriter Jon Lovett.

Some reaction from the comments section of the column:

• “[D]ownright disgusting way of messing up the kids,” one said.
• “Well, he’s done a public service, having the racists out themselves by allowing them to pretend to be ‘hard-headed clear thinkers,’ who extrapolate a mugging into a theory of eugenics,” said another.
• And, “Is there something statistically incorrect about this article?”