Sort of Serious Stuff

Media Research Center’s Director of Media Analysis Tim Graham really seems to have a thing for passing gas. We’re beginning to think he needs to see an ass doctor immediately because this morning he reported this on Twitter: “Darn tooting. O’Reilly: Obama’s Criticism Of Romney’s Bain Record ‘Reinforces Some People’s Belief That The President Is A Socialist.’”

Darn tooting?

Even resident feces expert WaPo‘s Gene Weingarten, who has a giant piece of poop for his avatar, picked up on it. He cracked, “Tim Graham just wrote: ‘Darn tooting’! How conservative can a man BE?”

No joke, we recently reported that Graham confused the terms “flatulent” and “highfalutin.” As we reported, he was criticizing lefty radio host Bill Press for calling Ann Romney‘s hideous fish shirt “highfalutin” since it cost her $990.

Happy tooting Graham. We’re here if you need us, but from a distance.

 

 

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An editor for The Blaze, the sister site of GBTV, says conservative commentator S.E. Cupp won’t likely try to sue Hustler for photoshopping a penis into her mouth for a new feature. More on their minds is who will denounce it?

On his Twitter feed, Glenn Beck, her boss, is already asking, “Where is N.O.W.?”

“It doesn’t sound like a lawsuit is what S.E. has in mind,” says The Blaze‘s Editor-in-Chief Scott Baker. “It’s more a question of seeing who will condemn this.”

Baker called Cupp  “fierce” and “feminine” and said Hustler will have regrets. “Obviously there won’t be a lot of defenders on moral grounds. But will NOW — for example — say anything?” he asked. “And the counter scenarios raise good questions as Glenn Beck did on the radio — if this had been a picture of Michelle Obama what would happen? This is obviously a disgusting move by the morally hampered.  We intend to say so and we’re looking to see who else will.  S.E. is the true definition of fierce and feminine — I’m pretty confident Hustler will regret their depiction and their decision to publish.”

S.E. Cupp, a conservative commentator who works for GBTV, is in a bit of a pickle. She appears in Hustler, but not in the way you might think. The Blaze, a sister company to GBTV that is owned by Mercury Inc. which is owned by Glenn Beck, is reporting this morning that Cupp is part of a new Hustler graphic on celebrities. In the feature, they place a penis in the woman’s mouth. They’re calling it “Celebrity Fantasy.”

There is a “disclaimer” saying that “no such picture actually exists.” Still, Cupp is hopping mad and told Beck as much this morning when he interviewed her. They discussed how it would stick with her and affect her future (kids, etc…) and how it will make its way around the internet.

No word on whether she’ll take legal action, but Beck encouraged her to do so. He told his listening audience that if anyone wanted represent her, to contact his show.

Developing…

With Politico‘s Jake Sherman (The Shermantor, Shermy, non-stoner Jake ‘n Bake, etc..) currently incapacitated we could all be in for a very long, arduous day as he works from the courthouse.

Let’s all try to be supportive.

DC jury duty today. Nothing I like more than sitting in an auditorium with nothing to do all day.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 23, 2012

Yesterday afternoon WaPo Opinion Media writer Erik Wemple reported on TWT and UPI Columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave‘s questionable attribution habits. In other words, he doesn’t attribute necessarily, he gathers bits and pieces from the vast number of news sources he reads daily.

The best part of the story are the excuses de Borchgrave offers Wemple. Our favorite: “As I recall, it came from my Pakistani associate Ammar Turabi and from the Pakistani English-language papers I read daily. I assume the AP, which I seldom read online, picked it up originally from Pakistani news sources.” The AP disputes this, saying the interview was given directly to the AP, not other sources of which de Borchgrave speaks.

This whole thing could wind up being a fun parlor game to play with friends. For example, read this TWT story from April and Google the last graph. “It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.” Results of the exact same sentence show up on a variety of sites two years earlier. That must have been an easy cut and paste for de Borchgrave.

So far, TWT Editor Ed Kelley isn’t talking. Speaking of Kelley, another great line from de Borchgrave: “I don’t have an editor.”

In a twist on Mother’s Day today, we asked Washington journalists to think about a time or moment in their lives when they disappointed her. Just the asking part was fascinating in that it sometimes evoked complicated feelings. While many readily replied to the question, more than one declined for any number of reasons. A few said the question brought up touchy things they’d rather not discuss or have her see, while others dealt with the heavy reality that she’s no longer alive. We appreciate those who provided us answers, and to those of you who couldn’t or wouldn’t respond, we understand that too.

NBC Producer Andy Gross told us he’d rather not answer the question since his mother, Cornelia, passed away fairly recently and this is his first Mother’s Day without, as he put it, her “reassuring presence in my life.” In lieu of an answer, he sent this photograph of the two of them. He’s the one in the big black shoes.

SiriusXM’s Julie Mason: “I grew up in a seriously liberal family — Boston Irish Kennedy-huggers from way back. Effective modes of teenage rebellion were highly limited. I became a punk rocker, but that raised few eyebrows. Then one summer during college, I went to work for the RNC. It was like I had stabbed her in the heart! We both got over it, eventually.”

Mike Elk, In These Times Magazine: “My mother used to fart a lot when I was a kid and then blame it on me in public. Occasionally, I would be like no mom you farted, I dont know if that she was disappointed I wouldn’t take the fall for the fart, but she was certainly embarrassed.”

Politico‘s Dave Catanese: Probably when I was a young teenager and a few friends and I got nabbed by local po-po swiping political signs.  And nooooo, it wasn’t a partisan thing.  Just dumb kids seeing what we could get away with it in the dark of night.  Mom wasn’t pleased, but neither was Dad.

WaPo‘s Erik Wemple: “I am sure that I disappointed my mother on many fronts. Thing is, I don’t really know what those things were, because she never betrayed disappointment. She was everything to me, and then she dropped dead in a supermarket in Schenectady, N.Y., 12 years ago. So I’ll add this question to the many that I never got to ask her.”

NJ‘s Jim O’Sullivan: “My mother is a tough lady. You’d have to be, to endure the perpetual state of disappointment in which I’m certain she exists. She’s too kind to ever show this, of course, but I’d imagine on any number of levels – sartorial, behavioral, professional – the disappointment is almost total.”

The Daily Caller‘s Brian Danza: “I wouldn’t want to disappoint her more by saying something stupid in the media. My mom lives in Italy, so it’s not mother’s day over there. I am off the hook this time.”

Publicist and Hollywood on the Potomac blogger Janet Donovan: “In general, my mother was very supportive and non judgmental so it is hard to say just what disappointed her, but if I had to guess it would be when she and my father would take my children in the summer so I could ‘get my act together’.  Instead, I went tooling around in the Greek Islands and pretended to be calling from a ‘bad connection’ when I checked in with them.  They never said anything, but being a mother myself, I know she knew, so assume she was disappointed.”

TWT‘s Anneke Green: “So I called my mom on this one. She denied every disappointment I accused her of ever feeling, including that I wouldn’t cut off my hair. Apparently I am a model child. Or it’s right before Mothers Day and she doesn’t want to jeopardize her gift situation. Gotta go, jumping on a plane to surprise her this weekend!

TPM‘s Evan McMorris-Santoro: “I have never disappointed her. Every mother dreams her 30 year-old son will spend his days driving across the frozen Iowa tundra in the hopes of yelling questions at a former Pennsylvania Senator in a pizza buffet restaurant.”

Publicist Dannia Hakki: “I have the lucky privilege of having a mother for a client. My mother is the COO of my father’s plastic surgery/med spa practice, Luxxery Medical Boutique. I am the boutique’s publicist. My mother loves to bother me about pitches, press releases and other public relation’s services that are included in her monthly retainer. She sends me daily emails with updates, questions, and concerns to make sure my father is being pitched properly. Take, Plastic Surgery Practice Magazine, for example. Email from my mother attached – in which she yells at me her assistant Maha about our pitching efforts.” An excerpt from her mother’s email: “This is going to become poop on Maha day because Maha doesn’t know poop about what I am talking about, and besides: AINT GOT TIME FOR THIS. Dannia, if you are in your office, please look in the pile of junk this is on your left hand side at your desk and you will find the PSP issue, at which point we can talk.”

In a most unusual editor’s note on the Chronicle of Higher Education website last night, Editor Liz McMillen apologizes profusely for what turned out to be a controversial post written by now fired “Brainstorm” blogger, former WSJ editor and Harvard graduate Naomi Schaefer Riley. Like most anything that goes viral, Riley tells Poynter she didn’t see it coming. The topic: Riley asserted the reasons why she believes Black Studies ought to be eliminated.

And the crowd went wild. Racism. Prejudice. So much for brainstorming.

McMillen, meanwhile, all but embarrassingly opens a vein for readers. She writes, “We’ve heard you, we’ve taken to heart what you’ve said.” She goes on to say that they let Riley go and they will “review” their editorial practices.

“It’s obvious they caved to the pressure,” Riley told FishbowlDC this afternoon.

Were these so-called practices ever thought out or spelled out in the first place? Was Riley ever told what she could or couldn’t write? Or was the outcry of online observers — and there are a lot of them these days with loud, shrill, threatening voices — so great that McMillen collapsed under her own lack of direction and standards that were never conveyed to Riley in the first place?

Last Monday Riley posted her story. On Wednesday night she received an email and on Thursday a call from her editor asking her to respond to critics, which she did. Last Thursday her bosses at least found that acceptable as well as her post, which they did not remove. But by last night, just before McMillen threw herself and Riley to the pack of wolves, she had a conversation with McMillen during which she was fired.

“They claim I didn’t live up to standards, but I’d like to see where these standards are that I didn’t live up to,” Riley said, explaining that her bosses knew she had unconventional views. She thought that’s why they hired her. “I don’t really think the standards are being universally applied, let’s just say that.”

She also said that at any other publication she has ever worked, the behavior of her bosses would never fly.

Riley says she will undoubtedly continue writing. “I’m not some anti-intellectual we should get rid of college tomorrow [type], but I have made critiques,” she said. “This was not my full-time job, I will go on with my writing.”

Brad Phillips, who writes the Mr. Media Training Blog, points a damning finger at The Chronicle of Higher Education, calling it the “worst of both worlds.” He told FBDC, “Although I don’t agree with Naomi Schaefer Riley’s viewpoint, it appears that she’s the victim of an editor who buckled under public pressure. Just a few days ago, the blog’s editor was encouraging vigorous debate about Riley’s article; the editor did an about face when it became clear that her readers were upset. The Chronicle is now in the worst of two worlds – appearing to have stifled a voice with no specific rationale, while simultaneously selling their blog as ‘a range of intellectual and political views.’ The Chronicle of Higher Education looks to have lacked clear guidelines regarding appropriate content, and this incident is yet another reminder that blogs need to maintain clear guidelines for their writers.”

In her note to readers, McMillen talks about a “freedom” that Riley and other bloggers have in that their posts go unedited before they are published. “Ms. Riley’s post was not reviewed until after it published,” she wrote in the publication’s defense.

But it is her concluding line that is most grotesque to herself and the publication: “You told us we can do better, and we agree.”

Perhaps she should have thought about that before firing Riley, instead of after. In most newsrooms editors fiercely protect their reporters. Most editors don’t let strangers in the door and watch as the reporter gets bloodied. Maybe McMillen could be a real editor, hold strong and “improve” their ways instead of essentially letting a wild flash mob determine Riley’s fate.

Here’s to hoping all our editors have stronger backbones that that of Liz McMillen.

Note to readers: We reached out to McMillen through the Chronicle‘s publicist, Amy Alexander, for  comment on why she allowed a petition of strangers to determine the firing of their writer and why it appears there were no clear standards for bloggers in place. “Let me forward your request to Liz and have her get back to you. But that’s how we’re handling these requests at this time,” said Alexander. We’ve emailed her our questions and will report back when and if McMillen responds.

See our questions to McMillen after the jump…

Read more

Labor journo Mike Elk was on a tear yesterday about his pre-flight jitters. Though just on a short jaunt from Chicago to D.C. Monday, his fears about flying loom large. “Damn flight anxiety already started – covering the airline industry completely fucked over my life,” he eloquently wrote on Twitter. He went on sarcastically, “The magazine assures me that if I die in a plane crash, they will use my death for fundraising, feeling more relaxed already. Worst part about flight anxiety is you got anxiety about having anxiety. I never used to be afraid of flying.”

Elk, who writes for InTheseTimes.com, tells FishbowlDC he used to live for flying and found it exciting. “Like it was the only time in my life that I could just read and not have to deal with cell phone, email etc..,” he said. But then a few months ago he covered how a lot of aircraft engine repair work is being outsourced to shady places in El Salvador and China and it and now flying just “freaks him out.” For instance, he shares,  50 percent of aircrafts are repaired overseas where there is limited FAA inspection.

Yesterday he got off easy. Tomorrow, he says, “I gotta fly to Paris.”

Poor thing.

“The AP learned about the thwarted plot last week but agreed to White House and CIA requests not to publish their story immediately because the sensitive intelligence operation was still underway. Once those concerns were allayed, the AP decided to disclose the plot Monday despite requests from the Obama administration to wait for an official announcement Tuesday.”

Read the story here.

The liberal mag, The American Prospect, is in deep trouble, so much so that Editor Kit Rachlis felt the need to let his staff know late last week that the publication is not doing well financially. HuffPost media writer Michael Calderone has the scoop. Key points: If the mag doesn’t raise enough cash it could close in late May. They’re looking to raise $500,000 by summer.

Read here.