Online Media

DCRTV’s Dave Hughes posted a Happy Birthday message to himself yesterday over on his website. It’s a sure sign that you have a fulfilled life full of meaningful relationships when you have to remind everyone that it’s your birthday. Since Mike Allen didn’t tell us about it in Playbook, we missed it. So, Happy Belated Birthday, Dave. So, here are our Top 3 Birthday Wishes for you..

1 – We hope that you get another glowing profile like this one from Washingtonian. We can only hope that WaPo will get around to including you in their weekend section. If not, GQ may come calling for tips on how to maintain a “Squirrelly and Discolored Metal Beard.”

2 – That someone gives you a huge gift box with a bow on top that is filled with new sources and story ideas so that you don’t have to go regurgitate other people’s content without giving them credit.

3 – That someone buys you a mall gift card so you can replace those filthy looking military fatigues that you have on all the time.

Just in case you missed his birthday wishes to himself, Dave continues the celebration today.

Give Andrew Breitbart a plate of spare ribs and a goblet of red wine and he’s yours for as long as you want him. In fact, he’ll stay up until 5 or 6 in the morning telling you what he thinks about a whole host of things on his mind. Hey, if we’re going to do that, can we at least have some ribs and wine too?

For now, it’s 8 p.m. on Wednesday night — CPAC eve — and Breitbart, a publisher who runs six websites, is just getting warmed up. He’s at home at “The Embassy” (the townhouse he and his business partner, Larry, call “home” in Washington) for a book party on digital kids books that focus on family values like hard work and patriotism. Larry is a little freaked out about by my miniature blue notebook and pen but soon enough he gets over it. No one is talking about those kiddie books. Certainly not Breitbart.

He’s chilling in the parlor in a masculine rich brown leather armchair. His exquisite mop of gray curls sets off nicely against his attire, a pale blue button down, faded blue jeans and dark loafers, and his eyes, a crystalline blue.

For starters, Breitbart in person is not Breitbart online. He dominates every room he enters with his emotional and physical presence, but he’s warm and hospitable — and quite the goofball. He knows the perception is off. “All these bastards in media who meet me like me because they know I won’t lie,” he says. But not all like him, not even on the right, and he knows it. Hence the bodyguard he’ll have as he attends CPAC this week. He doesn’t like to think about danger too much. He jokingly mentions weapons he carries that include a “bazooka, a dog feces catapult and horse urine balloons.” He gives a nod to his publicist on the dog feces line and makes sure she thinks it’s funny. At two or three junctures in our conversation, he prefaces what he is about to say by declaring that THIS will be the most shocking thing I hear from him all night. In those moments, I brace myself for news that he once ate a live chicken including the beak and then he inevitably tells me something comparatively benign.

But Breitbart, even at his least shocking, is anything but benign…

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TBD’s Jenny Rogers has an extensive profile of Jane Jayne Sandman and Barbara Martin of BrandLinkDC this week in which she follows the powerful pair over the course of a working day (GQ has declared them powerful; NYT gave them the Sunday Style section treatment).

Rogers, who recently announced she was leaving the confines of the TBD Titanic to join Washington Examiner’s Yeas and Nays column, begins her day with the gals at the gym in a kickboxing class. Rogers writes that she struggles to keep up with Sandman, “who gave birth 10 months ago.” I don’t mean to downplay the miracle of childbirth, but it doesn’t exactly keep you on bed-rest for 10 months. She had a baby almost a year ago. She didn’t have a leg amputated last week. When the workout is over, Sandman “slips into a blue second-skin of a dress and thigh-high black stiletto boots (to cover the “giant shiner” on her shin, she explains).” Rogers doesn’t bother following up on that nugget, because she must feel compelled to protect us from the horror of producing any actually interesting details in the piece.

After the gym, the ladies dash to the salon to get their hair done. As Sandman is getting styled, Rogers writes, “She covers her eyes with her hands as her stylist spritzes her Little Mermaid-esque waves.” I think the phrase “Little Mermaid-esque waves” is “Stab-myself-in-the-eye-with-a-blunt-object-while-children-cry-and-women-weep-and-men-gnash-their-teeth-as-they-watch-in-horror” in terms of bad writing. As the day moves along, we follow the ladies to a book party they’re handling at the W Hotel. Before the event kicks off, we get to hear about Sandman’s exchange with her 10-month-old son, Owen.

Sandman takes a minute to FaceTime with her husband and baby on her phone. “Hi Owen!” she coos. “Hey Owen, clap for Mommy? Want to clap?” She claps. “Now he’s eating the phone,” she says with delight, to no one in particular. “All I can see is Owen’s mouth on the camera.”

We can only imagine this must be what it’s like to have a video chat with Washingtonian’s Garrett Graff. Sandman’s husband, by the way, is UrbanDaddy’s D.C. Editor Jeff Dufour.

Side note…

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Mitt Romney has raised a crop of devilishly handsome sons. There’s Tagg, Matt, Josh, Ben and Craig. The internet seems to be smitten with young, handsome Craig. Today, Buzzfeed has found a new tumblr site devoted to the magic that is Craig Romney. The website, Fuck Yeah! Craig Romney, is devoted to pictures of Craig in various dreamy poses and pictures from the internet. Check out the pictures, that is, if you think you can handle the bombardment of beautiful.

Late last night, CNN Analyst and Washington Watch Host Roland Martin issued a “Final Thoughts” statement on the Super Bowl controversy that has thrown a wet blanket over him for the past 48 hours. In it, he explains that the LGBT community has accused him of supporting violence against gays. “That is furthest from the truth, and I sincerely regret any offense my words have caused,” he writes.

He says, he too, was bullied. A “middle schooler pulled a knife on my father when he boarded our school bus and came to the defense of me and my brother.” Specifically addressing jokes he made about smacking down men who enjoy looking at David Beckham in undies, he wrote, “My joking about smacking someone, whether it was in response to a commercial or food they prepare for a Super Bowl party or wearing an opposing team’s jersey, was stated in jest. It was not meant literally, and in no way would I ever condone someone doing such a thing.”

The tweet that sparked the controversy: “If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him!” Repercussions included GLAAD coming after him and demanding that CNN fire him as well as briefly being knocked off Twitter — or, as he called it, “Twitter jail.”

In his late-night statement, Roland pointedly apologized.

“As I said repeatedly, I often make jokes about soccer in the U.S., and my crack about David Beckham’s commercial was related to that and not to anyone’s sexuality. To those who construed my comment as being anti-gay or homophobic or advancing violence, I’m truly sorry. I can certainly understand how someone could come to a different conclusion than the one I meant.”

On big occasions,  Martin likes to have #Roland’s Rules, a funny, bold compilation of things he doesn’t want in his home. Typically they include anything from bad food to annoying house guests. Examples: “I don’t care if Christine Aguilera screws up up the national anthem, we don’t want to hear your version. Shut it! #rolandsrules.” And this one: “If you bring a football hatin’ woman to the party & she is on the phone complaining to her girlfriend, I’m cussing her out! #rolandsrules”

Read his full thoughts here.

(A Sprinkling of What we Think you Ought to Know…)

Does Tom Hanks Look Like Bill Murray? – According to The Atlantic’s John Hudson, some people can’t tell the two actors apart. We’ve never had that problem, but Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has. Hudson reports that when Attorney General Eric Holder appeared in front of a Congressional hearing on the Fast and Furious program, Kucinich said Holder must feel “like Tom Hanks in Groundhog Day.” While Kucinich quickly amended the record to reflect that it was Murray in the movie, Hudson explains that it’s a common mistake. Director of the movie, Harold Ramis, actually admitted that he went after Hanks for Murray’s role, but decided against it since Hanks appeared “too nice.” As an added bonus, YouTube has put up the entire movie for free. You can watch it here.

Hillary as a Bond Villian - The Daily Mail has a story on the wardrobe of U.S. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. It shows her latest outfit and says that she is beginning to dress like an “old-School Bond villain.” This once again highlights the difficulties that professional Washington women face when they are in a position of power. Former Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice faced down criticism whenever her coiffe changed over the years. As does FLOTUS over her dress choice or her bare arms. But, the whole thing did get us thinking of a good Bond villain name for Clinton. Maybe Secretary of Hate?

Politico Profiles Political Prankster – Politico‘s Patrick Gavin writes on comedian Joe Mande riling up the Twitterverse in an early morning story. Mande has been making waves on his Twitter account by cracking on various politicos. Favorite targets include MSNBC’s Meghan McCain, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), Fmr. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin among MANY others. We follow Mande, and our personal favorites involve his quiet retweeting of obnoxious celebrities and politicos like this one:

I met @TheScienceGuy this morning while at @foxandfriends! twitter.com/THEHermanCain/…

— Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) February 1, 2012

While many politicos have blocked Mande, including Vitter, others have joined in the pranking. As Mande explains, “Andrew Breitbart, I used to give him shit, but what he would just do is retweet what I wrote to him, and his psycho followers would attack me for hours and hours. So I say: ‘Touché, Andrew Breitbart.”

Politico introduces readers to the weekend political talk shows this week as they usually do, with a video overview with the hosts. This week Editor-in-Chief John Harris is at the helm as they welcome ABC “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos into the fold along with Washington’s other familiar faces such as Candy, David, Bob and Chris.

The Daily Caller issued a release yesterday on current web traffic — 4.6 million monthly unique visitors based on Google Analytics. Quantcast has them at 3.3. million, but in many circles Google Analytics is considered more reliable. They made a special point to blast Politico, as they have on many occasions, saying they had “obliterated the growth pattern of more niche operations like Politico.” Then they offered an unusual sequence of comparisons to entities such as Orbitz and Travelocity.

Asked what they meant by their jab at Politico, Daily Caller Publicist Nicole Roeberg explained by email, “We mean that at our two-year point (this January), we have way more readers than Politico did at their two-year point.”

“At 4.6 million unique readers at the 2-year mark, The Daily Caller has doubled the growth rate of other very successful general online news offerings such as The Huffington Post, and has obliterated the growth patterns of more niche operations like Politico.  The site is currently ranked ahead of many well-known and long-established entities including The Hill, Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, The Economist, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. The Daily Caller also received more visitors in January than the online travel booking sites Orbitz and Travelocity.”

Politico, meanwhile, released their latest numbers this morning in an internal memo to staff. Mentioning that they’ve topped 300,000 Twitter followers, they never once mentioned The Daily Caller or any other publication. VandeHarris wrote:

“Thanks to the hard work of our traffic and web teams,  we topped 77 million page views in January, a new record for us. The previous high was 76 million in March of 2010. We also had 11 million unique visitors to the site, a whisker away from a site record and second-best since launch.”

 

Politico‘s PULSE author Kate Nocera is moving to the publication’s Hill team to be a features reporter. This appears to be a new beat for the publication, as most CLICK reporters have vanished and the Capitol Hill team doesn’t typically have a specific features writer.

WaPo‘s Sara Kliff, formerly with Politico, thinks this is joyous news. “WINNING THE AFTERNOON” she blared on Twitter posting the news. This came right after virtual shouts from various colleagues including transportation reporter Burgess Everett, who wrote, “awwwwwwww yeah.”

Nocera came to Politico from the New York Daily News, where she covered cops and crime.

We’re hearing murmurings on who will take over writing the PULSE newsletter. Stay tuned…when we know, so will you.