Cusack’s thoughts:

As you can see in this video now, watching the performance was like diving into an ocean of bad fashion and forced smiles. Dr. Pepper dancing and Mom Jeans from shore to shore… pre-Prozac in motion…. military ballet… Mandatory cheers and quasi-religious cult patriotics… the glory of the empire. A choreographed tribute to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. A celebration of diversity, unity, and fluorescent leggings.

Meanwhile, Reagan was dumping all the mentally ill and vets out on the streets to die, as a direct result of his policies.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Interesting story from Dave Maass of the San Diego CityBeat about the consequences of drunk, racist, violent Internet trolling.

Blood was boiling in late October 2008 as Election Day neared. The corpse of a bear cub, draped with Obama campaign posters, was left at a university in North Carolina. A mannequin dressed like vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was hung by a noose in a Halloween display in Los Angeles. And from his home computer in La Mesa, Bagdasarian was causing trouble on a Yahoo! Finance message board in the middle of the night.

“fk the niggar, he will have a 50 cal in the head soon,” Bagdasarian typed after midnight on Oct. 22 in a thread titled “Obama” on the website’s section for the recently bailed-out insurance mega-corporation AIG.

Twenty minutes later, Bagdasarian added: “shoot the nig…the country fkd for another 4 years+, what nig has done ANYTHING right???? Long term??? Never in history except sambos.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Amidst wild speculation about the future of the trade pub, The Hollywood Reporter has sacked its publisher Eric Mika.

Nikke Finke has the story:

E5 Global Media CEO Richard Beckman just informed the staff about Eric
Mika’s exit. It’s hardly unexpected. Ever since Beckman was hired in
January, he has been telling people outside the trade — but, deliberately, not the staff — that he plans massive firings at The Hollywood Reporter because the company plans to abandon the traditional trade format and formula. Instead it will become a small online showbiz news aggregator, and a glossy magazine, and a cable TV programmer which all depend on whether The Hollywood Reporter brand itself is marketable. On the other hand, there is a real possibility that the new owners may just flip the property or take on outside partners instead of exploit it themselves. So the future of The Hollywood Reporter as we all knew it remains a big question mark right now.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Marketplace’s Gregory Warner probably offered more context than any other story on health care reform in a six minute radio segment than we’ve seen or heard all year. Yes, This American Life did a two part series on health care – but that wasn’t six minutes. Anyway, the story is fantastic and starts around minute 22 in the broadcast.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

First Annual Jamie Fund Announced by Dodgers

Jimmy Choo Shoes Rushes To Donate

Los Angeles, CA – The Los Angeles Dodgers and the Greater Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce today announced the formation of THE JAMIE FUND to help raise cash or checks for current/former/future Dodger co-owner Jamie McCourt who is currently “down on her luck” according to Fund officials.

Immediate needs for Mrs. McCourt include $25,000 monthly for spa treatments, $2,500 for weekly pedicures, and $10,000 for daily household expenses, including shopping trips to Rodeo Drive.

“Rest very assured that all funds raised will go directly to Jamie McCourt,” said a lawyer for the beleaguered McCourt who requested anonymity to avoid unwanted late night phone calls from his voluble client.

“Jamie is being more than reasonable. She is just asking that her basic living needs be cared for.”

Whole piece is here.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

David Mills, a staff writer and co-executive producer of the upcoming HBO drama “Treme,” died of a brain aneurysm Tuesday in New Orleans, an HBO spokesman confirmed Wednesday morning.

A former newspaper feature writer, Mills went on to write for some of the finest TV dramas of the era, including “Homicide: Life on the Street,” “NYPD Blue,” “ER” and “The Wire.”

Mills was 49 years old.

Wow, what a loss.

Alan Sepinwall the TV critic for The Star-Ledger, remembers his friend on his blog.

Photo credit The Times-Picayune Archive

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

BBC News reports on speculation about the timing of Martin’s revelation:

Public relations expert Mark Borkowski said he suspected Martin might have been prompted to make his announcement to pre-empt a tabloid story on his private life.

“My suspicion is it needed to get out there quickly,” he told the BBC News website, pointing to Martin’s use of the instant messaging service Twitter.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

According to TMZ, James has checked himself into a rehab facility that treats drug, alcohol and sex addiction. Wonder if they also treat being a racist prick?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

I write this letter from a beach chair, watching a squadron of brown pelicans dive-bombing the surf in front of me. This fairly deserted stretch of Mexican beach is not a bad place to lick my wounds after getting fired by KCBS-TV (Channel 2), where I have anchored the morning and midday newscasts for the past 7 1/2 years. I write to set the record straight about being “restructured” out of my anchor chair and to provide some context to the story. There was no mention of my own dissatisfaction with the job and the state of local news in the limited news release of my departure. The following is an excerpt from an email I sent in January to my agent, asking him to convey my feelings to the new KCBS management:

“[T]he worst thing about my job is that I don’t feel valued at CBS and haven’t for many years. I tried… to be more than just a newsreader – but continually got feedback that someone to read the teleprompter was all that was required and indeed, all that was wanted from management. After years of pitching stories, after pitching ways in which I could further contribute to the betterment of the product that elicited no response or support, I let it go. I am secure in my ability to contribute to a great news product if my wings are not clipped, and would welcome the opportunity to do that. But things have to change… Excellence does not happen in a vacuum and without support and collaboration between individuals.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Escalante gained national prominence in the aftermath of a 1982 scandal surrounding 14 of his Garfield High School students who passed the Advanced Placement calculus exam only to be accused later of cheating.

The story of their eventual triumph — and of Escalante’s battle to raise standards at a struggling campus of working-class, largely Mexican American students — became the subject of the movie, which turned the balding, middle-aged Bolivian immigrant into the most famous teacher in America.

Escalante passed away at his son’s home in Roseville, California.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Times Miami reports:

Back on March 16, Riptide broke the news that South Beach-based author Gerald Posner’s latest book, Miami Babylon, had stolen eight passages from Frank Owen’s 2003 work Clubland.

New Times and a doctoral student have found more than a dozen new instances of plagiarism in Gerald Posner’s latest book.

Posner had already resigned as chief investigative reporter at the Daily Beast after Slate’s Jack Shafer busted him for lifting sentences from the Miami Herald, Texas Lawyer and others in his work for Tina Brown’s website.

After Shafer exposed his Daily Beast thefts, Posner blamed the “warp speed of the Net.” When New Times published his Miami Babylon thievery, he pointed toward a new system of “trailing end-notes.”

It just makes us cringe and cringe.

Previously on FBLA: