Riddle Me This

Politico has a relatively new morning feature that is predominately performed by Mike Allen and occasionally Executive Editor Jim VandeHei.

Accompanied by catchy sitcom music they likely dance to when the camera isn’t rolling, they give us a few golden nuggets from the day.

First off, World Headquarters? We didn’t realize Politico is a world-wide operation. Why stop there…why not Universal Headquarters? VandeHei doesn’t call it “worldwide” — that’s a folksy Allen touch. It’s an earnest feature. But something has us both wildly impressed and frankly, concerned. Has Allen stopped blinking altogether? We nearly got hypnotized watching him. Does he have dry eye? In this morning’s edition, timed one minute, eight seconds, in which he pimps out stories by Alexander Burns and new blogger God Charlie Mahtesian, we counted a grand total of zero blinks.

In previous videos for this feature, Allen also never blinks. So if you’re considering a staring contest with him? Don’t do it. He’ll win every time.

Take a look. In at least one previous video, VandeHei and Allen perform the feature together in Vandeland (apparently his office has a name). This is the far more relaxed and superior option as VandeHei brings in some Politico LIVE charm and makes Allen laugh and blink, bringing out the more natural aspects of his personality and coming off as less of a Martian figure in the Politico stratosphere.

GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich and ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) can now officially say they have something in common. No, Gingrich hasn’t taken up snapping intimate portraits of himself on his cell phone. But both have received oddball lucrative offers from dating websites.

During his time of duress, the site offered Weiner a deal to have his, ahem, weiner, be a spokesthing or, as they eloquently put it, a “talking head” for SugarSugar.com. They wanted to fork over $50,000 for the use of his schlong. Now Gingrich is also getting an offer. His is from the extramarital site AshleyMadison.com. Thanks to all his prior cheating, they see him as a business asset and want him to write a revealing book about his philandering called Under the Covers.

Following the news that a $4.5 million deficit has forced Newt to sell his most valuable asset (his donor list, not Callista’s bangs, get your mind out of the gutter), AshleyMadison.com founder Noel Biderman hopes to salvage Gingrich from financial ruin. Though the Canadian company is prohibited from making donations to the campaign, Biderman has pledged to help Newt get a much-needed cash flow.

The offer on the table: In an letter sent to Gingrich’s HQ Monday, Biderman offered Gingrich a $4.5 million sponsorship deal in which they would broker the exclusive rights to Newt’s personal story. Biderman calls Gingrich “that rare politician who exemplifies both passionate leadership and real life relatability. He is a great representation of the AshleyMadison.com brand and I’d be honored to help give Newt the final push that gets him into the White house.”

See the shocking offer after the jump…

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Occasionally what is not in a story is as striking as what is.

On Sunday’s “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace offered a touching account on the passing of his father, “60 Minutes” newsman Mike Wallace. He showed a clip from a 2005 interview he did with his father in which Mike cracked on Chris’s “fair and balanced friends.” At the close of the interview, Mike told him he loved him and was proud of him. Chris could be heard crying on air.

In subsequent news stories since Wallace’s death, it has been noted that Wallace did not speak of his life’s work near the end — only his family and how important they were.

So all the more strange that in a whopping hour-long devotional to Mike Wallace on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday night, there was not a single mention of the FNC host. At one point Wallace admits his attentions to his family were less than what he dedicated to his job. But there were mentions of Wallace’s fourth wife, Mary, a deceased son, Peter, and of the vast interviews that Wallace conducted during his 93-year-old life. These included Barbra Streisand, Bette Davis, The Reagans, Eleanor Roosevelt, Johnny Carson and more.

We have a few candidates for this feature today. We’ll begin with tried and true me-hound Howard Kurtz, Washington Bureau Chief of The Daily Beast and host of CNN’s Reliable Sources. Over the weekend as Mike Wallace’s family no doubt began mourning his death, Kurtz wrote on Twitter, “As I write, Mike Wallace once cursed me out over an
unflattering story — but in a good natured way. What an incredible life and career.” In a subsequent lengthier piece, he wrote more about his interactions with Wallace.

“In 1994 I reported that he had secretly taped a conversation with a reporter, Karon Hall, who thought she was just providing background information to the program and did not want to go on the air. CBS wound up reprimanding Wallace for ‘a violation of journalistic ethics.’ The next time I spoke to him on the phone, he greeted me with thusly: ‘Hello, you prick.’ But he said it good-naturedly, having realized he was wrong.”

Really…can Howie be absolutely certain that Wallace really didn’t think he was a prick? In another zinger, as Kurtz puts it on the close of the piece, he writes of Wallace once again insulting/complimenting him during an interview: “This wasn’t work. This was a joy to come to this office every day and see people buzzing up and down the halls doing stories and reading a Kurtz column and saying he’s full of —.”

Meanwhile, Josh Gerstein over at Politico has a mildly interesting piece of grief porn about how he once got scooped by Wallace and watched him jump over a fence. Apparently old people can jump over fences. Read here. A much better example of getting scooped by Wallace comes from Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker. Read that here.

This grief porn by Patch Editor Todd Richissin is also well worth a read. Far better than Kurtz’s incessant patting himself on the back, this one speaks more brashly of how the author once made Wallace cry. Well, his eyes welled up. That counts.

In the not so egregiously annoying category, Mitt Romney advisor Kevin Madden recalls his Wallace experience on Twitter: “I was fortunate enough to work w/ Mike Wallace & his team on a 60 Minutes profile of Gov. Romney during the ’08 race.”

TIPS FROM THE POOL…INTO THE DEEP END

President Obama‘s pastor at St. John’s Church took an opportunity on Easter Sunday to bash the media. Did the devil get inside his head?

NYT‘s Mark Landler wrote in a White House Pool Report:

“Referring to the messy state of the world, [Rev. Luis León] said, ‘Sometimes I wish I didn’t read the newspapers or watch the television news.’ Rev. Leon went on to dwell on the mystery of Easter and the resurrection, likening it to the global economy, which he also said he did not understand. ‘You ruin it if you try to explain it,’ he said. ‘It can’t be explained.’”

The pastor may want to work on consistency. After ripping on the media, León went on to give the NYT a shout-out.

“But Rev. Leon cited an article in the NY Times, which talked about the renaissance of Mogadishu in Somalia. He said he viewed it as a metaphor for the rebirth of Easter. ‘Now you may say, ‘they’re all Muslim,’ he said, his voice rising a bit. ‘But so what? That is evidence of the resurrection.’ During the Prayers of the People, as is customary, the congregation offered a prayer for ‘Barack, our President, the leaders of Congress, and the Supreme Court, and all who are in positions of authority.’”

What, no prayers for the media?

Marion Barry, former D.C. Mayor, current (and recently reelected) City Council member and noted geologist (okay, maybe not, but he is known for fancying certain types of rocks), just can’t help but make himself a liability where the media is concerned. He represents Ward 8, the part of the District most resembling Detroit.

To celebrate his victory Tuesday night, Barry took to the microphone…to attack Asians. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Actually, I do. A microphone and cameras only capture stupidity, they don’t create it.

Barry said, “We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops. They ought to go. I’m going to say that right now. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too.”

Those damn Asians just come into town, open stores where no one else is willing, to employ people and sell things people need. It’s like Pearl Harbor all over again, if Pearl Harbor were economic growth in an area of depression. Diabolical!

But this is what the voters of Ward 8 wanted, a dude with a history clouded in crack smoke and hatred. It’s hard to feel sorry for a Ward that continually votes someone like this into office expecting things to improve. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

Crack is whack, kids. Crack is whack.

Just after 4 p.m. today Barry took to Twitter (because isn’t that what he should do next?) and semi-apologized: “I’m very sorry for offending the Asian American community. Although taken out of context by many about the conditions of some W8 carryouts.”

You have to wonder how The Washington Times deputy editorial page editor would come to be on an email thank you list for supporters of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

From: Nancy Pelosi
Date: April 3, 2012 10:25:59 AM EDT
To: David Mastio
Subject: Record-breaking

David –

Thank you. Because of the generosity of our supporters, we shattered nearly every previous grassroots fundraising record to date. In March alone, we received donations from more than 100,000 supporters.

On Saturday, we broke our all-time grassroots record for one day!

Don’t be mistaken, this is an authentic grassroots campaign: Over 90% of the contributions we receive are $100 or less.

This people-powered movement will help us win a Democratic Majority in November.

Already today, we’re putting contributions we’ve received to work and launching an ad campaign to hold Republicans accountable for their all-out assaults on women, seniors and the middle class. It’s because of supporters like you that we are able fight back.

Thank you again for record-setting support,

Nancy

National Journal – sultry?

The March 17th cover is a little seductive.  It features this dude giving sultry bedroom eyes with his arm over his head, his button down is pulling out his Boss jeans to show peek of his stomach and orange underwear.

A little strange for them, no?

The deck on the cover reads…”Sam Chaudhary came to America with a plan [and apparently orange underwear] to create jobs. He’s the kind of immigrant both parties want. So why can’t Washington help him?”

It’s always strange when a publication allows the eating of one’s own cubs. Isn’t that a little, um, disgusting?

But at WaPo it’s allowed. Usually it happens between partisan journalists. But yesterday afternoon a blogger for The Plum Line, a liberal blog run by Greg Sargent, ran an item knocking star blogger (and Democratic strategist) Ezra Klein.

Blogger Jonathan Bernstein begins with a compliment/complaint for Ez. “Ezra Klein had a great post this morning about the upcoming contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, but I have to nitpick just a bit,” he writes. He goes on to elaborate. “Klein writes that ‘Obama has the worst poll numbers of any incumbent president running for reelection in recent history.’ That was true briefly earlier this winter, but it’s no longer the case.”

See him lay out what he claims is Ezra’s false reporting here.

Hang in there, Ezzy. We still love you!

It goes without saying that the father of Snooki‘s baby, Jioni Lavelle, is far more interesting than any of the hopefuls — except, well, maybe pompous Newt Gingrich telling us how he’s going to pork his blonde bobbed wife on Valentine’s Day.

But now we know for sure that Lavelle is officially more popular. On Super Tuesday, iProspect, purportedly a “leading global digital performance agency” (that we’ve never heard of) collected data on what topics were Googled most. The results? None of the candidates even cracked the top 20 and “Super Tuesday” itself only landed in 10th place. Embarrassingly, number nine was “Buckeyballs” — an addictive magnetic desk toy.

See the Top 10 list after the jump…

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