Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) changed out of his usual bow-tie this morning for a complete nerd ensemble for Current TV’s “Full Court Press.”
Seriously. A member of Congress shows up for TV in a dorky “Back to the Future” T-shirt and running shorts? “F–king gold,” one observer remarked to us.
Quotes of the Day
RAINING IN THE ROSE GARDEN: “Overheard: ‘Melt the Press.’ @MarkLandler of NYT pops out a Georgetown umbrella.” — NPR White House Correspondent Ari Shapiro with the accompanying photograph. And NBC’s Luke Russert: “The #Marines holding the umbrellas at this presser are unbelievably cool, had no idea there’s military protocol for umbrella holding.”
Umbrella memories
“In my first job as a sports reporter, my editor had me hold the umbrella over him & his camera on the sidelines. Good times.” — HotAir’s Mary Katharine Ham.
Politico Playbook Publish Time: 5:48 a.m.
From the Dept. of Bragiculture…
“So much happening-impt stuff must be slipping by for bandwidth lack. Just in my niche, turned in 7 stories in past 4 days & 8th mostly done.” — NYT‘s Charlie Savage.
ABC “Scandal” finale fallout
“So Fitz is porking a black woman to bring diversity to the Republican Party? Wow. #StartedFromATwerkNowWereHere” — Javonni Brustow, Washington editor of The DC Pundit.
“Oh damn Fitz just went rogue! And quotes Dillon Thomas to boot!” — Essence and theGrio.com‘s Sophia Nelson.
“Damn, Fitz just went Bulworth on Mellie! @ScandalABC #Gladiators” — Washington Watch and Tom Joyner Show regular Roland Martin.
“When @tonygoldwyn saw this two page monologue for the first time at the table read, he gasped. Then he dove in.” — Scandal creator and writer Shonda Rhimes.
“Mellie is going to fuck everybody. #Scandal” — @emokidsloveme.
“Liv. #shutitdown and call a locksmith.” — Avid “Scandal” watcher Shawna Thomas of NBC News as Olivia Pope nearly gets killed. And later, after Fitz sees a video in which Olivia, his mistress, has sex with another man, she writes, “OK Fitz. She is not a virgin nor your wife and she didn’t know that guy was charged w/ bedding/protecting her. STOP BEING A CHILD.”
“Can’t even type. This ending kills me! #scandalfinale” — Actress Kerry Washington, who plays Olivia Pope.
“Lemme get this straight, the season finale of Scandal is on during #ScandalWeek? THIS TOWN” — TPM Assistant Editor Igor Bobic.
Brian’s Stelter’s walk on the moon
“I vividly remember my first time watching ‘The Office.’ It was May 2005, on my laptop, on a train from Baltimore to NY.” — NYT‘s Brian Stelter. And were you simultaneously monitoring your Tumblr account, Facebooking, and checking your MySpace?
The power of ass kissing
“The power of @carr2n: He tweets your story and you get 126 clicks in 15 minutes.” — Slate‘s Jack Shafer in reference to NYT‘s David Carr.
Journo annoyed by mouth breather
“This kid who is mouth breathing next to me really needs to get off the train. Can’t deal. #imsoannoying” — Roll Call‘s Emily Cahn.
Unnecessary Tweet of the Day
“Intrigued by Cool Ranch tacos tho I’m normally not a Taco Bell fan & hearing cool ranch flavor gets overwhelmed by filling. Anybody tried?” — Washington Examiner‘s Philip Klein.
See more exciting Morning Chatter… Read more
Say hello to Paul Brandus who writes West Wing Reports and a column for The Week. He’s an independent White House Correspondent who writes a blog and has a Twitter account in which he doesn’t use his name. How come he goes nameless? “Here’s a question for you,” begins his standard refrain about it. “Name the CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN & Fox reporters at the White House 10 years ago. How about five years ago? This may come as a disappointment to many folks in this egocentric town, but most people can’t remember the names. And that’s at the most visible beat in Washington. Names fade quickly. But brand names have enduring market value. People have no idea who I am personally. I’d prefer they know my brands, one of which is West Wing Reports. Brands can be licensed, flipped, monetized in more enduring ways.” Even so, let’s get to know the man behind the brand, shall we? Brandus was a foreign correspondent in Moscow for five years. He worked for the U.S. Embassy, eventually NBC and NPR and did some magazine work. While in Moscow, he bought the broadcast rights to the Super Bowl from the NFL. He later worked at MSNBC and Fox — he says the concept of this makes people’s heads explode. “I helped launch MSNBC back in 1996,” Brandus explains. “Worked for Steve Capus, who went on to become President of NBC News. Good man. I was a writer, but apparently too good of a writer because they put me in charge of editing all the other writers. That’s where I learned the 80/20 rule: 20 percent of your people will cause 80 percent of your problems. At Fox News, I was a senior prime time producer in New York, working on news cut ins every half hour. If the you-know-what hit the fan, we had to run into the control room across the hall and break into Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity & Alan Colmes. Great fun.” Brandus worked on Wall Street for several years, cashed out and started another media company, his own. In 2011 he became a columnist for The Week. He moderates conferences for them on energy and cybersecurity. He also works with a Northern Virginia venture capital firm. Brandus won’t be found on the Washington cocktail circuit. Instead, he spends his weekends with his 18-month-old daughter or family horses in Fairfax County.
Now let’s proceed to the really important stuff.
If you were a carbonated beverage which would you be? Cherry Coke Zero
How often do you Google yourself? Once or twice a year.
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to an editor (or vice versa)? My old boss, Jim Farley, who hired me twice – first at NBC years ago and later at WTOP – taught me WGAS: “Who gives a shit?” It has universal applications today and I’ve used it to great effect in various times and places. WGAS is also text-friendly.
Who is your favorite working journalist and why? Anyone who understands it’s not about them. Anyone who eschews the limelight and simply focuses on finding things out, communicating about it well and not pretending to be an expert or feeling compelled to have an opinion on everything.
Who is your favorite White House reporter and why? The wire service folks are usually the best. Not flashy, just solid, nose-to-the-grindstone types day in and day out. I really admire them.
Do you have a favorite word? “Dada.” Uttered by a certain 17-month old little girl.
What word or phrase do you overuse? “Dumb ass.” Use it a lot.
Who would you rather have dinner with – CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s John King or CNN’s Piers Morgan. Tell us why. I think John King is an honest, hard-working, straight shooter guy. You know what I like about him? He made a mistake during the Boston coverage and dealt with it in a transparent, humble and honest way. People err – and it’s how they deal with it – for better or worse – that I remember. I tend to get along well with people like that.
What is the most interesting conversation you’ve had in awhile in the course of your work and who was it with? If I hadn’t hung up on Ronald Reagan in 1990, it might have been the time when, on a dare, I called him at home in 1990. This was a year after he left the White House. The Reagans were living in Bel Air and I never thought he would answer the phone himself. But I heard that famous voice: “Hello?” on the other end, freaked out and hung up. To use my favorite word, I was such a dumb ass. So I guess the answer would be the time I downed vodka shots with Boris Yeltsin at a Fourth of July party at Spaso House, the home of the U.S. Ambassador to Russia. I was lurking by the bar when he came over and we wound up downing a few and chatting. That’s what you do in Russia. Drink. Talk. Drink some more.
Tell us a funny story from the White House Briefing Room. Can be long or short. There used to be a guy named Lester Kinsolving, who used to show up in the briefing every day. Haven’t seen him in many months. He used to ask the most bizarre, completely out of left field questions imaginable on completely obscure, irrelevant matters. Bush’s flacks and now Obama’s used to call on him as a diversion. And, in this digital age, he used to carry a giant cassette recorder around with him like it was 1983 or something. Not picking on Lester, he is a nice guy. Hope he’s OK.
Without naming names, tell us some shitty thing that happened in the course of you covering the White House… Read more
Although former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il golfed 38 under par, turns out he wasn’t so good at racing jet skis. But he didn’t mind going to the sauna. Naked. With his chef.
Hmmm….
In a story appearing in GQ next week, the former sushi chef and confidant to the Shining Star of Paektu Mountain, Kenji Fujimoto, dishes on what life was like with “Shogun-sama,” as Fujimoto called him.
Fujimoto says the “Dear Leader” took a particular liking to him. The man of a million titles – Ever-Triumphant General, Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradely Love — regularly demanded affection from Fujimoto.
“Every time Shogun-sama said to me, Do you like me? I answered, Of course, I like you so much. I was thinking about making a joke—I don’t like you, I despise you. I wanted to say that as a joke, but I had no courage. Shogun-sama said, If you like me, why don’t you kiss me on the cheek? I don’t remember h ow many times I kissed him. A hundred times? A hundred kisses. We would go to the sauna together, naked. Shogun-sama said, Oh, you have a good body, a masculine body. I said, I’m good at sports. It’s not too much to say I was a good playmate for Kim Jong-il. And every time he asked me to kiss his face, he always said to me, If you betray me, you will… Then he would go silent and make a gesture of a knife going into my stomach.”
As a test of loyalty, Jong Il once challenged Fujimoto to a jet ski race. The sushi chef and nanny to Jong Il’s son, Kim Jong Un, thought about purposely losing the race, but since the Great Sun of Life had told him to do his best, he kept the lead.
Though the average North Korean would have been executed for embarrassing Jong Il, Fujimoto said he spared him (probably because of his “good body”) and simply told him, “you won.”
Fujimoto also gives himself credit for Jong Un’s love of the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls. More from the piece… Read more
Kevin Williamson, roving correspondent for National Review, is a theater thug.
But who can blame him for tossing a woman’s phone across the room while he’s trying to watch a show at a theater in New York? After all, as he explained on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday, he was working. He’s a theater critic and wasn’t watching the show just for his personal enjoyment.
Alyssa Rosenberg. That’s who.
“[M]aking grand statements like Williamson’s is almost certainly more disruptive both to fellow patrons and to the actors on stage than the use of a cell phone in the audience,” Rosenberg wrote in a post for Think Progress. She added that “sending someone else’s phone across the theater at great speed is a much more efficient way to make a martyr of said terribly rude person than to strike a blow for civility.”
Really?
On National Review’s “The Corner” blog Wednesday night, Williamson wrote up a post in which he broke the news, detailing how he just went to a theater in New York for a show only to find his experience repeatedly interrupted by phone users. He complained to the manager who said the problem would be amended, only to return to his seat and find the woman next to him on her phone.
Williamson wrote, Read more
That Washington Examiner columnist and former Editorial Page Editor David Freddoso will soon leave the publication and head out west. He didn’t answer an email request for comment about it and is generally keeping his plans close to the vest.
We asked Editor Stephen Smith for comment.
UPDATE at 2:37 p.m.: Turns out Smith had a lot to say! He wrote to FBDC, “David and his wife Nagore had decided long before the revamping of the Examiner that they wanted to leave Washington and move to Boise, Idaho, where her parents live. They did so because they thought it would be best for their two young children, and because they wanted a more relaxed lifestyle. Not that David will be idle: He and a partner will be writing a political newsletter from Boise, and he’ll be contributing a weekly column to the Examiner. We miss him already. He’s a wonderful colleague and a big talent — and I very much hope he’ll come back to the Examiner full time one day.”
UPDATE and Correction: In an earlier version, we ran with Boise, Montana but Smith actually meant to write Boise, Idaho and we should’ve caught it. Apologies to the state of Idaho.
The biggest stories this week have been about a trio of government scandals, one involving the IRS, another with the DOJ and a third with the September attack in Benghazi, Libya. But those aren’t the most of Bloomberg View‘s concerns. The 3-D printer is.
Over the last four days, the Bloomberg View daily morning newsletter blast was sent out with staff editorials on 3-D printing as their top story:
To be fair, the Bloomberg publications are primarily financial news publications. Actually, never mind. That doesn’t explain why the dangers of 3-D printing being used to create handguns is more important to BV‘s readers than a conflict involving the IRS. Since that scandal broke last week, BV has published… Read more
You know it’s spring in D.C. when BuzzFeed contributor Michael Hastings makes a TV appearance with an extra undone button on his plaid shirt, showing off just the right amount of chest hair.
Hastings usually does his TV hits with all but the top-most button fastened. Sometimes he wears a tie. Other times he wears a hoodie and T-shirt. But until his Wednesday night hit on Current TV, he hasn’t been seen going all ’70s-porn-star, letting that bushel on his chest run wild and free.
Watch Hastings’ segment here.
While we don’t know the long-term fate of CNN’s Erin Burnett, she was noticeably passed over for the network’s revamped morning show, which leaves her as host of OutFront. That leaves her future a little murky, but if times get really tough, she could always get a side gig as a look-alike for actress Zooey Deschanel.
It’s just after 7 a.m. and no doubt HuffPost‘s Howard Fineman is really glad he woke up at the ass crack of dawn to appear on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” from Washington only to be told that he’s boring the host, Mika Brzezinksi.
“Well Mika, I agree with you and even though the administration might want to cite civil service rules as it relates to some of those people. I mean, last night they fired the one guy they could fire — Steve Miller, who is a political appointee — so they could just summarily fire him. There are rules down there in the thick of the bureaucracy, but if I were the President, I would I would I would [sic] ignore them and try to move quickly, very quickly, to that source. To answer your earlier question about whether we’re going to look back on this as a fool’s errand or something that changes the nature of the historical view and accomplishments of the Obama administration, I think unfortunately for the Obama people we’re now in the situation where the situation is what did they know and when did they know it?”
Mika interrupting Fineman, saying, “But see, I just got bored. I just got bored. I’m just, I’m telling you.”
How does a guest recover from that? In Fineman’s case, he continues being toothpick prop your eyes up boring.
“Okay,” he continued, a little flustered, “but, but if it’s true as it said that both the IRS story and actions and the AP story and actions were down there in the bureaucracy and had absolutely nothing to do with and were not known by or managed by or shaped by the White House staff and the President … if that, in fact, is true,then this is going, in history, is going to seem like a wasted summer and a wasted year.”
Mika proceeded to awkwardly explain her boredom. Translation: It’s not you Howard Fineman, it’s me. Read more
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