Media Quote Of The Day

Courtesy of award-winning ex-60 Minutes producer (and star of the Rathergate scandal) Mary Mapes on this morning's Morning Joe on MSNBC:

"The other thing, I would say about CBS, and this is having worked there for a long time, one of the fascinating things is, and I know Mika knows this, too, you can be almost 50 years old and at CBS and working with people twice your age and it can give you a false sense of job security. That is a tough place to work and the people who have survived it, have really been savvy and I really think it makes for a difficult atmosphere. I've always really liked Katie's work. I think she does a good job and she's a good journalist, but I think, by trying to put her into a completely different format, she's gone from being sort of an exuberant presence to someone who looks like they've been kidnapped and drugged and are making a hostage tape. So, that's not comfortable to watch. It has nothing to do with her being a male or female, it's just not comfortable to watch."

If Mapes' rant sounds familiar — by a decade — it is. Check the transcript from Don Imus' infamous 1996 Radio/TV Correspondents Association Dinner speech:

Everybody knows Dan Rather is capable of anything, including pulling a gun out on the set of the CBS Evening News. Dan has these utterly incomprehensible bucolic expressions he punctuates the conversation with. Several times after talking with him, he would say to me "Tamp 'em up solid." Having something to do, I later learned, with fortifying underground tunnels his father dug, for reasons that remain unclear. Now I'm hearing impaired a little bit from wearing headphones for a long time. I thought he was saying "tampons up solid" and I'm, why would he say that? I mean, I know he's nuts, but what does that mean? Anyway, I'd laugh and I'd say uh huh, and I would hang up. And he's a great reporter, but he does not have all of his bait in the water. And he's a little tense. Watchin' Dan Rather do the news, he looks like he's making a hostage tape.

UPDATE: Watch the video here ...

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