All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Back in March, Arianna Huffington wrote the following:

It says everything you need to know about the current state of TV news -- indeed the current state of our media culture -- that on a day that saw Iraq moving closer to all-out civil war, with at least 76 Iraqis killed and 179 wounded in sectarian attacks, the CBS Evening News devoted one minute and thirty-nine seconds to coverage of Iraq... and one minute and fifty-six seconds to coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's appearance in front of the Supreme Court. (ellipses in original)

Well, Anna Nicole is back, thanks to a Supreme Court decision in her favor, and Arianna is thus once again assessing "Evening News" coverage of "the Bomb vs Bombshells balance." Writes Huff:

CBS' update of the Smith story was given another minute and fifty-eight seconds of precious air time -- two seconds more than last time -- while its coverage of Iraq lasted two minutes and ten seconds. Aha, you may say, that's 12 seconds more than they gave Anna Nicole, and a 31 second increase from the last time the two stories went head-to-head. True, but Monday was also the third anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech -- a fairly significant news peg, wouldn't you say?

Huffington deems the relative coverage between Smith and the war "seriously out of whack." Now, this is a news judgment question, so I'm not going to bother asking anyone at the "Evening News" about it – all they would likely say is they felt that the Anna Nicole story was an important one. And, well, it is: a victory for federal courts over state courts, a ruling that means federal courts can get involved in these kinds of probate cases, as CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen pointed out. That said, had the Trimspa spokeswoman not been involved in the case, it's safe to say it would not have garnered the same kind of coverage.

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Fashion week may be long over, but people are still talking about labels – specifically, whether its time we stop applying them, at least when it comes to politics. "…the right/left view of American politics is slowly going the way of Betamax, the 8-track, and "Cheney '08" bumper stickers," writes Arianna Huffington. "It's well past time that right vs left gave way to right vs wrong." Her evidence: The fact that people like Tom Coburn and Barack Obama are pushing the same issue – earmarks.

During his first term, George W. Bush's Republican party was largely on the same page as the president, but as Bush has lost political capital in his second term, more and more Republicans have gone off the reservation on issues ranging from Iraq to wiretapping to immigration to whether an Arab company should take over major U.S. ports. As a result, the traditional labels, such as "conservative" and "liberal," have seemed less and less meaningful. And Bush himself has pushed the definition of these words – after all, one doesn't associate the word conservative with nation building and high government spending. Many Democrats have also pushed their labels: If you think of Democrats as liberals and liberals as pro-choice, have a gander at Senate minority leader Harry Reid.

But is it possible to have a political discussion without labels, imprecise as they are? Is there a point at which they become essentially meaningless? To call someone a "liberal" is linguistic shorthand for a series of values, although one's interpretation of those values often depends on his or her political perspective. Some people, after all, take the term "liberal" as a compliment, while others consider it an insult. (The latter may have won out – see the decision of many people to self-identify not as liberal but "progressive.")

One of the most striking distillations of this issue came not from someone labeled not a political commentator but a comedian: Chris Rock. This is a family Web site, so I can't give you Rock's routine in all its four-letter glory, but I did want to include as much of it as I could. (For the whole shebang, go here, but don't say I didn't warn you.) It's safe to say Rock's not a label guy:

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Arianna Huffington and Mickey Kaus are a bit worked up over James Carville, Paul Begala, and Mary Matalin's appearance on "Meet The Press" this weekend. I'm a little surprised they even watched the segment – I couldn't, having already seen enough Carville and company to last a lifetime. (The James and Mary show has hit "Meet The Press" alone 41 times since 1996, according to Arianna. Mickey says 35 times. But you get the point.)



Take it away, Huff:

James and Mary, plus their straight man Paul Begala, were on to promote Carville and Begala's new book Take It Back: Our Party, Our Country, Our Future -- which, I'm sure to their publisher's immense satisfaction, was mentioned 12 times in the course of the show.



But what made this appearance extra-special is how it was so luckily timed to coincide with Carville's upcoming gig as the host of a sports show on XM satellite radio.



And what made it all even more special is the relationship of Carville's radio co-host to Meet the Press's host…

Any guess who said co-host might be? Luke Russert, a sophmore at Boston College, who "attended two Super Bowls, a World Series, five Major League Baseball (MLB) All-Star Games, an NBA final, four NBA All-Star Games, two NCAA Final Fours, an NHL Stanley Cup Final, a U.S. Open and The Preakness Stakes," all by age 16! He is also…let me check…yes…Tim Russert's son! What a coincidence! Here's the chummy exchange on the subject between Russert and Carville. Note that they never quite spell out what's going on:

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