The greatly anticipated Oprah interview with Sarah Palin has just aired in the Eastern time zone. We heard a lot of advance info about it so there really aren’t any surprises. It was great to see Sarah again.
They talked about the McCain’s team handling of the pregnancy announcement, wardrobes and makeovers. Sarah says she never had a script to stay on and was not told about the campaign dropping out of Michigan.
Then there’s the infamous Couric question about reading materials. (ABC has blocked embedding) Sarah makes some poignant remarks about her and Todd’s reaction to the news of a Down Syndrome baby coming their way.
I can understand that Palin would have been annoyed at Couric’s question. There was a condescending insinuation in the very fact of asking such a question.
Palin says she does not feel to blame for losing. She wouldn’t expect credit had they won.
She speaks about aspiring porn star Levi. (For some reason this embedding is not blocked.)
Her marriage with Todd is very strong and based on equality. She says 2012 is not on the radar and dodges a question about getting a talk show by calling Oprah the queen.
I thought Oprah was aloof, but I’m not a regular viewer so maybe that’s the way she is to all her guests. I thought Sarah was a little tentative at first but settled into it. Maybe I was projecting my own feelings.
Looks like going rogue is becoming more popular than ever His comments on today’s show infer a possible entrance into politics. He met with Roger Ailes of Fox in September. Anything is possible. I think this is good news and it’s about time Dobbs got the stink of CNN off him. I’m sure we’ll see him somewhere soon, continuing to make a difference.
Lou Dobbs, the longtime CNN anchor whose anti-immigration views have made him a TV lightning rod, said Wednesday that he is leaving the cable news channel effective immediately.
Sitting before an image of an American flag on his television set, he said “some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem solving as well as to contribute positively to the great understanding of the issues of our day.”
“I’m considering a number of options and directions,” Mr. Dobbs added.
The media slant on the Fort Hood massacre is a weepy focus on the mental health of our miltary. All of them. So much stress, so many suicides, so few mental health workers. This Fort Hood tragedy, they suggest, points out the heartbreak of what our soldiers must endure. The implications for the upcoming (but who knows when) decision on more troops for Afghanistan is not lost. Are our soldiers turning into wackos because of this hideous war? That’s where the media is taking the story about the massacre at Fort Hood by a shooter named Hasan. We know they have an uncomfortable problem with the facts and have to point away from it.
Then along comes Joe. Senator Lieberman in what counts for a bold move in these times, states the obvious. Let’s ask about the shooter’s possible Islamist extremist motives in “the worst terrorist attack since 9/11″. [click to continue…]
David Axelrod appeared on a legitimate, unbiased network today. It looked more like a counseling session than a newsy Q & A. Poor Andrea Mitchell, clearly despondent over the disappointments of election night, needed some cheering up. I can just see the poor woman flipping between the HBO special reminiscing the glorious triumph last year and watching the gloomy election returns this year. Even New York 23 couldn’t cheer her up much. If Axelrod was in the studio, I’m sure he would have offered her his handkerchief, maybe a hug. He did his best consoling her on each of her worries, but Andrea wasn’t buoyed much by the pep talk. The interview ended with sad Andrea saying, “We loved you in the HBO documentary and we’ll always have the New York 23rd“. You could almost hear the music.
Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again
How much power does talk radio have? No psychiatrist today to help us on that. For some inexplicable reason those insecure, bully-loving listeners don’t necessarily do what the talk show hosts tell them to do. Go figure. The imagery and subliminal messages that talk radio is populated by weird loud people with extreme views continued.
Camille Paglia sees the opposition party quality of conservative radio these days as a sort of a shadow government and not a problem in a democracy. If you ask me, it’s what democracy is all about.
Michael Harris of Talk Radio Magazine attributes Al Franken’s successful bid for the Senate to his stint as a talk radio host. Yeah, that and some fortuitous discoveries of previously uncounted ballots.
So Obama got elected in spite of talk radio, but will the country be safe from the harm of talk radio forever….time will tell.
I’m getting a sense that Carol Costello thinks we listeners are some kind of dupes being lured in by talk radio con artists. As she pointed out yesterday as though letting us in on a secret, it’s entertainment and about making money. Maybe like a circus, eh Carol? A sucker born every minute? It’s so much fun seeing something so familiar to you analyzed by someone who is clueless.
I’m a news/politics junkie and I love radio. Forty years ago I was listening to shortwave broadcasts from all over the world. My original SW was a hand-me-down. It was gigantic and it had tubes. I sent in my reception reports and received QSL cards in return. Dang, I wish I still had them. I would send a letter to Radio Moscow and two months later get a notice that my letter would be read by Vladimir Posner (future friend of Phil Donahue) on Moscow Mailbag the following month. I never thought that would become a “well, back in my day” story.
Talk radio is like family to me. I’m sure the psychiatrist would make something else of that, but you know what I mean. I’m so grateful to Tammy for how much she’s done to bring like-minded people together. I’ve had the opportunity to exchange emails, tweets, have blog discussions and even personally befriend very wonderful people through the Tammy connection. They are salt of the earth decent people who are as concerned as I am about the fate of the country we love. That kind of power is incomprehensible to Carol Costello.
Who listens to talk radio? To find out, Carol Costello went to bitter-clingy central PA, hopped a ride in a local’s pickup truck and listened to cowboy hatted local WHP host Bob Durgin (He rants and raves!). Then she asked a psychiatrist.
“Anger in the Air, What listeners don’t know about talk radio”. Since I’m an avid listener I wanted to find out what it is I don’t know about talk radio. I still don’t know, unless it’s that it’s all about anger and that listeners are looking to befriend a bully.
Today, Tammy spoke about what’s “normal” depends on your point of view. That’s why Fox News is biased in the eyes of liberals, but not CNN. From CNN’s point of view the secret behind talk radio’s success is the intoxicant of anger that appeals to conservative personality types. Yes, I’m angry. I’m not an angry person; I’m a person who is angry. Bullies scare me. Bullies like ACORN, SEIU, the White House and Congressional Democrats. That’s partly what’s making me angry.
Carol was delighted by Bob’s analysis of liberal talk radio—too compassionate. Compassion is a badge of honor for liberals and you can never be too compassionate. Randi Rhodes doesn’t think compassion is undermining the success of liberals on the air. It’s that they’re not on the air all that much. It’s obvious to Rhodes that liberal talk radio would be much more popular if only there was more of it. Brilliant.
The post report chitchat was revealing. Kiran Chetry noted that some of the listeners are angry at talk radio. Great point, says Carol. In fact, she says, 56% of listeners are independent. Ah!, but what does she mean by that? Do 56% of listeners disagree with talk radio? Should we ask Randi to figure it out?
The news blindsided even his biggest champions: Barack Obama had joined Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Dalai Lama as a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Former Polish President Lech Walesa, himself a Noble laureate, echoed many when he responded: “So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far.” Even the Nobel Prize committee acknowledged the award honored Obama’s “efforts” to advance global harmony, rather than concrete achievements to date…
Said Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele: “It is unfortunate that the President’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights.”
This starts a list of Obama’s biggest ‘backfires’ and they even give us a handy-dandy list allowing readers to do their own ranking of Urkel Moments. That’s right. Without the Nobel Prize, I don’t think we’d even be seeing that list.
Thanks Oslo!
Bobby Muller, who won the Nobel Prize as co-founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, told The Times: “I don’t have the highest regard for the thinking or process of the Nobel committee. Maybe Norway should give it to Sweden so they can more properly handle the Peace Prize along with all the other Nobel prizes.
Isn’t it curious that there was more of a media debate about giving drivers licenses to illegals than about health care coverage? Where are the editorials and the Sunday show discussions about how mean-spirited and unfair it is to exclude illegals from health care? I would have expected to see more like this from E.J. Dionne.
I am not at all at peace with the fact that the one issue about which a member of Congress chose to rise up and accuse our president of being a liar related to the charge that our chief executive wasn’t doing enough to build walls between illegal immigrants and health coverage.
How mean-spirited will we allow ourselves to become? How coarsened has our political culture made us? We like to see ourselves as a generous, caring and welcoming nation. Are we losing that part of our character?
There isn’t a debate because it is understood that the circumstances require certain things to be said now. Obama expressed it this way in an interview with Latino correspondents:
Obama told Hispanic Link columnist José de la Isla and other Latino correspondents that the animosity around both issues will be tough to overcome at present time. “I think that, with respect to the debate that’s taking place around health care reform now, it is not going to be possible to provide coverage for undocumented workers,” he said, noting that health coverage had already been extended to 11 million children including undocumented ones. “That was a fight that had been out there for a decade. And it was a huge accomplishment.”
We all know it is inevitable. Maybe Joe Wilson should have said, “You deceive”.
That’s what the People’s Cube wonders, as should the rest of us. It will never end until we plumb out all racism from every object, animate or not. Just like Newsweek. Exactly. What?
Just as the progressive community was scraping the bottom of the barrel to rationalize America’s rejection of Obama’s socialist policies and to provide plausible but untrue reasons for the 9-12 Tea Party in Washington, DC, Newsweek boosted their efforts with an effective subliminal image on this week’s cover, leaving no doubt that the debate is all about race. A picture of a white baby with large black letters over its face “Is your baby racist?” is a brave new take on the olden-but-golden response “You’re a racist!” to every difficult question…
Fortunately, the People’s Cube was able to get their hands on one of the rejected Newsweek covers, which of course, poses an equally pressing, and realistic, question as the original:
In Vanity Fair of all places we finally have someone asking the right question. This astounding event inaugurates the first Tammy Blog “Flying Pig Award” recognizing and lauding the right thing from quarters least expected. Below is a snippet. Please do read the whole thing, and the comments attached to the article are also worth a read. Some of the more thoughtful remarks about a young woman the left would prefer be forgotten. (HT Kruiser)
…I am very well known, a United States senator. My family is incredibly powerful. There are allegations that I had been drinking heavily hours up to the time I got into the vehicle with the passenger. I deny this for the rest of my life. That at no point did I make an attempt to call for rescue would probably be considered by many people to be outrageous and horrible, perhaps a crime that would carry a prison sentence. Can you imagine what the parents of the deceased would be going through when they found out that their 28-year-old daughter died alone in total darkness? I serve no time. Not inconvenienced by the burdensome obstacle of incarceration, I seek to maintain my elected position. I am successful and remain a senator for the next four decades. Would any deed I performed in that time, besides going to prison for the negligent homicide I committed all those years ago, be enough to wipe the slate clean? After my passing, would you fail to mention the incident and the death of this innocent person in reviewing the events of my long and lauded life? You wouldn’t forget about her, would you? That would be negligent.
I thought Sanjay Gupta turned down the job as Surgeon General. Here he is with a thinly veiled pitch to sign up your kids to be guinea pigs for H1N1 swine flu vaccine tests.
Two adorable playful little boys, ostensibly of their own volition, decided to volunteer for the H1N1 vaccine tests. One boy says he wants to do this because a schoolmate died from another kind of flu and he wanted to prevent that as much as he could. Their mother, who coincidentally volunteered for a vaccine test in 1976, says she has complete trust in the people doing the study. The boys’ grandfather is a pediatrician and he’s all for it too. He wants to protect his family, his patients and the general health. The younger boy (what about 5 years old?) sagely tells us it is the right thing to do.
A caveat is added about informed consent at the end but it is after all for the betterment at large.
“…scientists say it’s extremely important they complete their pediatric trials so they have a proven vaccine to protect kids if the swine flu begins to spread rapidly in the united states”
…there have been rare situations of severe allergic reactions, as well. one of the terms they are hearing is a term called informed consent, that’s what you hear during a trial is that you’re consenting that we don’t know exactly how this is going to work, but we’re trying this out for, again for the betterment for the public at large
Blatant propaganda coming from CNN. What a shock. No overt suggestions, but a map of testing locations is informatively displayed.
Now aren’t you shamed into admitting it is your civic duty to sign up your kids as guinea pigs for hurried testing of a vaccine that may or may not prevent a mild flu?
Lou Dobbs Quitting CNN
by Tammy on November 11, 2009 · 11 comments
Looks like going rogue is becoming more popular than ever
His comments on today’s show infer a possible entrance into politics. He met with Roger Ailes of Fox in September. Anything is possible. I think this is good news and it’s about time Dobbs got the stink of CNN off him. I’m sure we’ll see him somewhere soon, continuing to make a difference. 
Lou Dobbs to Quit CNN
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