FunctionalAmbivalent

Another Job I Think I Could Do

Gwyneth Paltrow's boob checker.

Belaboring the Obvious, Headline Edition

Headline on MSNBC:

GM Bankruptcy Would Be Complex, Painful

Who would have imagined?
Interestingly, on the homepage the headline reads:

GM Bankruptcy Could Be Complex, Painful

Apparently, a glimmer of optimism is necessary to make the front page.

The Sophisticated Media Manipulator Has a Non-Embarrassing Answer At the Ready

There are certain questions those who are regularly interviewed need to be ready to answer. They're the questions that are in the grab-bag of every tired, lazy reporter working a beat, questions like, for example, "What's the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you on stage?"

Apparently, Fergie's handlers haven't prepared her properly, and when asked the above question she responded not with a charming-but-innocuous story of the time she tripped over one of her back-up singers and bruised her left boob, but by recalling an actually humiliating event that she would prefer  people forget: the night she peed her pants on stage.

"I think everyone has seen the pictures on the Internet when I didn’t use the bathroom before I went on stage. We were doing Let’s Get It Started and I was jumping all over. Yeah, I should have used the toilet before I went on stage. That was and always will be the most embarrassing moment of my life. I can never live it down."

Whether she can live it down is largely a function of whether she keeps bringing it up.

I mean, if she's going to talk openly about the event, she might as well do an adult diaper endorsement deal and make a few bucks off of it.

Still No Action on Adult Diaper Advertising

Democratic Congressional Representative Jim Moran of Virginia wants the FCC to ban "any ad for erectile dysfunction or male enhancement" from prime time. His legislation, the "Families for ED Advertising Decency Act," is not expected to get very far, as most members of Congress are elderly men who need to be reminded to take their medication.

Interestingly, the legislation would allow prime-time product placement for Viagra and similar drugs, which means in aggregate that, if passed, the legislation creates incentives for pharmaceutical companies to underwrite plotlines that can only be resolved when characters take "erectile dysfunction and male enhancement" drugs.

Reality Gap

A study at Ohio State University reveals that Republicans are more likely than Democrats to believe that the satirical character played by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report seriously believed what he was saying.

Slipping One By S&P

Keith Olbermann teases:

"We'll have complete teabag coverage, but we'll save it fellator."

Sometimes, I miss working in television.

Liberal Media Watch: There's Also, of Course, the Possibility That It's Not News

The not-at-all-insane World Net Daily does a "review" of President Obama's writings and speeches and uncovers the shocking truth that President Obama uses speechwriters and may even have used ghostwriters in his books. Jack Cashill, who has previously reported that the Clintons murdered their labor secretary and that TWA Flight 800 was shot down by terrorists, did the research himself, so he can be sure it was untainted.

Taking his stunning findings about the President to the mainstream media, he finds the liberal media conspiracy still strong. His proof: no one wants to pay him for his groundbreaking work.

To be sure, not one single major media outlet stepped up to commission a university study or even test the evidence that I had gathered. If my hypothesis were true, and they may have feared it was, they simply did not want to know.

Curses! Foiled again!Clearly, there can be no other reason for disinterest by responsible grown-ups than ideological conspiracy! Why, I'd bet if you'd come up with research demonstrating that President Bush used speechwriters, the media would have been all over it!

How PR Works

The sales of business suits is down, Jos. Bank decides it needs a themed publicity stunt, people like me write about it.

Shouldn't I get some kind of discount?

Modern Media

Everyone makes mistakes; I think we all accept that. And in the old days, if someone put together an unfortunate headline, once it got into print there was nothing you could do about it. But this is on a website. It would take about one minute to change. But no. After two weeks, it's still up there.

On the other hand, it is driving traffic to the site.

UPDATE: They took it down, the spoilsports.

Out of the Box

New Republic suggests William Shatner as the host of next year's Oscars. I think Shatner should co-host with Leslie Nielsen, and have absolutely nothing go right and the show just stumbles along on it's own momentum.