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Paterson Aide Calls For Inquiry Into New York Times

2010-02-10T01:57:19Z

ALBANY, N.Y. (Associated Press) - Gov. David Paterson's chief of staff is seeking an internal inquiry into how The New York Times' reporting of a story led to unproven rumors of wild, personal misconduct by Paterson.

Paterson Chief of Staff Lawrence Schwartz released a letter late Tuesday that he sent to Clark Hoyt, the public editor of the Times. In the letter, Schwartz blames the newspaper for failing to stem the rumors, even after direct appeals.

Schwartz says the newspaper could have issued a public statement to end the unsubstantiated rumors that Paterson partied with women and drugs as governor.

Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty says the newspaper isn't responsible for what other news outlets and blogs reported. Hoyt did not immediately respond to Schwartz's request for an inquiry.

Full text of the letter appears below:

February 9, 2010

Dear Mr. Hoyt:

Out of respect for the newspaper you serve, and the important role it has traditionally played in New York's political discourse, I write to communicate our deep disappointment in the approach taken by the New York Times in the course of compiling a profile of Governor Paterson in recent days.

No one, least of all the Governor, questions the Times' right to undertake and publish such a profile or to make it as searing and critical as the facts might justify. In recent days, however, as the Times' reporters let it be known that they were preparing such a profile, an intense and damaging series of rumors about the article's supposed content began circulating and appearing in numerous other publications.

Over the weekend, speculation about what your article might reveal reached a fever pitch, and stories emerged predicting that, because of the Times' story, the Governor would be forced to resign this week. The imagined justifications for this predicted outcome ran the gamut of the most salacious and outrageous accusations uninformed speculation could produce.

Last week, as the rumors first began intensifying, the Governor personally telephoned your political editor, Carolyn Ryan. Knowing there was no truth to the dark things being whispered, the Governor suggested to Ms. Ryan that if the paper had evidence to support a serious allegation that it had a duty to present it to him, allow him an opportunity to respond, and then publish whatever story quality reporting could justify. If it did not have such evidence, it had an obligation to counter the false accusations wrongly attributed to the Times' forthcoming article. Ms. Ryan assured him that the profile would not contain anything like the salacious rumors being circulated, but demurred on the issue of doing anything to stop them.

On Monday, the Governor made himself available to the Times' Editorial Board for an extended discussion of issues. As you may know, the Governor led the meeting by again articulating his displeasure with the media circus being generated in anticipation of the Times' story. He articulated his belief that it was unfair for the paper to permit it to continue, knowing as the Times' did that the profile would contain nothing to justify such a frenzy.

This morning, as the Times continued its silence, the public was treated to blaring front pages further whipping up and spreading false rumors, traced once again to the impending Times' profile. Despite this, the Governor made himself available this morning for an extended interview with your Albany bureau chief, Danny Hakim. During the interview, he was asked about a number of subjects, including routine campaign expenditures (like the celebration of the Governor's birthday for his volunteer campaign staff); the Governor's choice of restaurants; and various hiring decisions. While these subjects may hold some interest for the public, I hope we can agree that none even remotely justifies suggestions of resignation or the howling storm of innuendo that continues to rage while the Times plods along in preparing its story.

What is clear, therefore, is that over the last several weeks:

â¢ the New York Times has prepared a profile of a major public figure;

â¢ misinformation about the content of that profile sparked intense, false and damaging accusations directed at the profile's subject;

â¢ the Times was aware that the rumors were untrue;

â¢ the Times admitted as much to the subject during the article's preparation;

â¢ the Times did nothing to correct the public record; and

â¢ when the article at last appears, it will do nothing either to justify or undo the permanent reputational damage suffered by the subject.

At any point, the Times' editors could have easily issued a public statement clarifying that the profile neither contained nor supported the salacious stories being sourced to it. Doing so would not have compromised the legitimate reporting being undertaken, the exclusive content being developed, nor the paper's right to produce such a profile. A public clarification would, however, have spared the public the misleading spectacle of the last week. Common decency, if not journalistic ethics, demanded as much.

We ask that in your role as Public Editor you undertake an inquiry of the propriety of the paper's actions and decisions that allowed this sorry set of events to unfold. Unfortunately, it is not in your power nor the New York Times' to undo the damage that has been already been done in this case.

Respectfully,

Lawrence Schwartz

Charles Warner: Focus on the Family's Super Bowl Ad Violence

2010-02-10T00:33:47Z

The Focus on the Family's Super Bowl commercial featuring Tim Tebow tackling his mother is typical of the anti-abortion movement's twisted thinking: Using violence to support their position against using violence to kill nascent life.

It's the same type of twisted thinking that causes right-to-life fanatics to murder doctors who perform abortions to stop them from what these self-appointed moral policemen consider to be the murder of a fetus.

The Tebow commercial was also a symbolic flag bearer for how low and twisted the thinking of television commercial producers, advertising agencies, and CBS have become. The only exception was the brilliantly conceived and executed Google commercial.

If you were not a thirty-something (or younger) chip-eating, beer-swilling, insensitive, immature, macho male, you probably noticed the distinctive misogynistic tone of many of the commercials.

Those commercials that weren't stereotyping and insulting and doing violence to women, gays, dwarves, and the elderly, were over-the top, over-produced, dull, un-funny, illogical messes, most of which were embarrassed to show the name of their product until near the end of the commercial.

The only exception was the Google commercial that showed the product name from the beginning and intelligently demonstrated how to use the product to do something useful, romantic, and uplifting (which included moving to France, which, I suppose, implied getting away from American over-commercialization).

CBS made some counterproductive decisions to group commercials according to some supposedly (and weirdly) related theme. For example, there was an abuse-the-elderly pod in which Betty White and Tim Tebow's mother were violently tackled. Or a no-pants pod with CareerBuilder.com and Dockers commercials in it. Or a magical-places pod with the coupling of Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" film with KISS for Dr. Pepper featuring dwarves rocking out.

The half-time show was the best in years, not because of the aging members of The Who, who played OK (windmill moves and all), but because of the awesome computerized laser light show and mind-blowing, light-revolving stage - an exploding celebration for the eyes, not necessarily for the ears.

In the second half there was an Audi commercial that touted its green, energy-saving car, which was fine to promote, but doing so in a commercial with a cast of perhaps a hundred that must have cost over $1 million to produce wasted more energy to create than a 100 Audi's could save in a month. This is another example of ad agencies reaching into the upper levels of cognitive dissonance to make a point.

If you want to promote green, do like Google did - show a demonstration of the benefits of using the product. It's ironic and symbolic of Google that its commercial was the probably the least expensive to produce, most efficient in the use of resources, and was by far the most effective. It's a lesson of rational and effective advertising - a lesson that probably went over the heads of Focus on the Family and most advertising agencies.

And, oh, by the way, it was a really good football game, which, of course, has become incidental to the over-the-top, materialistic, consumption-gorging culture of commercialism which I am hypocritically honoring by writing about Super Bowl commercials and not about the game.

Interview Magazine Shows Off iPad Capabilities (VIDEO)

2010-02-09T23:12:54Z

Interview magazine is celebrating its 40th anniversary Tuesday night in New York, and in celebrating its past will take a look into the future by unveiling its capabilities on the Apple iPad.

Interview, which was launched by Andy Warhol 40 years ago, will introduce several issues on iPad when the device launches next month. The iPad version, seen below, will be previewed at Tuesday's anniversary party and hints at magazines' capabilities on the iPad: photography and text mesh seamlessly with audio and video interviews.

"When Andy Warhol founded Interview four decades ago, he did so with an ethos that
embraced the new," the magazine said in an announcement. "As with his art, Warhol re-wrote the rulebook with Interview, creating an innovative, intelligent, sophisticated, cutting-edge magazine that was culturally impactful, pushed the boundaries of the medium, and reinvented what a magazine could be. So it's entirely fitting that Interview is once again at the forefront of reinventing the magazine experience for Apple's iPad, combining the benefits of the digital age with the familiar advantages of Guttenberg's printing press to deliver a groundbreaking, knock-out reader experience. One could call Interview magazine on the iPad 'an affordable Warhol screenprint.'"

Interview will introduce its 40th anniversary issue, featuring Kristen Stewart on the cover, as well as its December/January 2010 (Penelope Cruz), February 2010 (Jay-Z) and March 2010 (fashion) issues, all "reconfigured, redesigned, and re-imagined for Apple's iPad."

Interview's anniversary event will take place at the newly opened Good Units space in New York's Hudson Hotel.

WATCH:

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Disney Earnings Beat Estimates, Cable A Bright Spot

2010-02-09T23:07:42Z

LOS ANGELES — Consumers sent tepid signals to The Walt Disney Co. during the holiday quarter, as many of them still required discounts to step into theme parks and reduced spending on food, beverages and merchandise when they got there.

A nascent advertising recovery also had an uneven effect on the company, as ESPN benefited from higher ad revenue, while the ABC broadcast network suffered from fewer viewers and lower advertising rates. The Disney Channel, which doesn't run commercials, saw fees from cable and satellite operators grow.

"At this point we have limited visibility regarding the economy and its impact on our businesses," Chief Executive Bob Iger said on a conference call. "Thus we will continue to focus on controlling costs while creating great content and experiences and building our brands."

Disney is closely tethered to consumer confidence. Its theme parks, stores and movies are a good barometer of how freely people are spending their extra cash.

Disney said it earned $844 million in its fiscal first quarter, which ended Jan. 2, roughly flat compared with a year earlier. Revenue rose 1 percent to $9.74 billion. Although both measures beat analyst forecasts, shares were little changed in after-hours trading.

Iger said the goal at theme parks was to "slowly wean our guests off discounting. ... We don't believe that we're dealing with an economy right now that enables us to shut off the discounting immediately."

As an example, Disney said that at about half the hotel rooms at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., the company is now offering seven nights' stay for the price of five, instead of the four it began offering earlier.

Theme park revenue was flat at $2.66 billion as a decline in attendance at Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney World was offset by higher attendance at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif.

Movie studio revenue was down just slightly at $1.94 billion, although cost-cutting helped profits, including from the release of the Pixar animated movie "Up" on home video. Sales of consumer products fell 3 percent to $746 million.

Disney overhauled its movie studio in October following more than a year of disappointing box-office results. Iger confirmed reports that the company is considering the sale of award-winning label Miramax, which it acquired from Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 1993 for $80 million.

He said investing in new Miramax movies "wasn't necessarily a core strategy of ours," and that new investment will be limited to releasing six remaining films that are near completion through 2011.

"With that, we believe that it would be prudent for us to explore all of our options," he said.

The company also completed its acquisition of Marvel Entertainment Inc. in the quarter. It hopes the purchase will spur new movies and product lines based on Marvel's huge comic book universe.

The latest quarter, as have past quarters, was saved by the strength of ESPN. Disney also touted the international growth of the Disney Channel. Media networks revenue, which includes the ABC broadcast network and TV stations, was up 7 percent at $4.18 billion.

The results beat analyst forecasts. Excluding one-time items, the company earned 47 cents per share, compared with 41 cents per share in the prior-year quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting adjusted earnings of 39 cents per share on $9.62 billion in revenue.

Shares in Disney, which is based in Burbank, gained 4 cents to $29.88 in extended trading after the results were announced. Earlier, it closed up 36 cents, or 1.2 percent, at $29.84.

Daisy Whitney: Digital Comics and the iPad Opportunity (video)

2010-02-09T22:47:19Z

The comic business is estimated to be a $1 billion business annually, but it's one of the few media forms that hasn't yet fully transitioned to the digital world. That may change with the coming influx of Apple iPads and sexy new eReaders.

The business of digital comics is also one TV networks are already starting to leverage, including Starz, which created a motion comic for its popular new original TV series Spartacus. For more details, check out this week's New Media Minute.

This video was originally published on my New Media Minute and on Beet.TV.

BBC Executive Pressed Over $1,036.42 Taxi Bill

2010-02-09T22:31:53Z

As the BBC's director of future media and technology, Eric Huggers is accustomed to wrestling with the most tricky questions relating to the corporation's role in a rapidly changing digital age.

But even he may find himself struggling to answer one conundrum thrown up by his newly released expenses claims: how is it possible to justify spending £638.73 on a taxi?

Reese Schonfeld: CNN: Cooper and Gupta Exiled to Haiti

2010-02-09T22:10:32Z

The ratings on CNN primetime were so bad last week that Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta have been exiled to Haiti. CNN finished third in total viewers (only 9,000 more than the last-place Headline News) and fourth in all the demographic categories. Fox News had more 25-54 viewers in primetime, than CNN, MSNBC and Headline News combined. The news networks base their advertising revenue on the 25-54 demographic, and those low ratings hit CNN and Time Warner right in the pocketbook.

CNN had done pretty well over the last two weeks with Cooper and Gupta doing excellent reports in the wake of the Haitian earthquake. But as often happens, the wall-to-wall Haitian coverage turned off viewers who interested in other subjects, and they have yet to return to "the world's most trusted network."

The same sort of rating loss happened after the 1995 OJ Simpson trial. CNN had been averaging a point seven rating from 1983 through 1994. After the trial, CNN ratings fell to point fives and point fours. One-shot stories attract many non-news viewers. When the stories are over, the occasional viewers go away, and regular viewers who have learned to live without their favorite network are often slow to return. Despite all this history, CNN's leaders have decided that the best way to solve their rating problems is to send Cooper and Gupta back to Haiti, even though most of the action there has ended.

The rest of the news for CNN is equally dismal. MSNBC has regained its primetime edge, beating CNN by more than 100,000 viewers and finishing second to Fox in all the demographic groups. But MSNBC is a distant second. Fox News seems to have attained juggernaut status, and is rolling over the opposition in a way that alarms me, and, I think, casts great doubts about the nature of the news audience.

My only consolation is that cnn.com continues to dominate the Internet audience, which is far younger than the median age of any of the cable news networks. The Internet measuring service, Compete, measures cnn.com's monthly unique viewers at just under 30 million. I don't have the monthly "reach" numbers of the cable news networks. "Reach" measures the number of unique viewers who spend at least six minutes watching the network. (If any reader has current numbers, please feel free to send them to me.) But as I remember it, when I last saw "reach" numbers, CNN reached just more than 30 million viewers, and Fox was just under that number.

In any case, I hope the cnn.com viewers have replaced the network's TV viewers, and I wish that some broadcast/Internet research service would provide an analysis as to who is watching which, when it comes to news.

Klein: Senate Health Care Bill Already Contains What The GOP Wants

2010-02-09T21:43:20Z

Habitual readers know that I'm fond of pointing out this article by Igor Volsky, which thoroughly documents the way the substantive concerns of the House GOP Caucus have been addressed in the chamber's health care reform bill. As you can read for yourself, the Republicans got a lot of what they wanted.

I'm thankful to Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, for getting his citizen-wonk on, and doing the same for the health care reform bill passed by the Senate.

Klein identifies "six Republican ideas already in the health-care reform bill." The first four come right from the GOP's "Solutions For America" website.

1. "Let families and businesses buy health insurance across state lines."

2. "Allow individuals, small businesses, and trade associations to pool together and acquire health insurance at lower prices, the same way large corporations and labor unions do."

3. "Give states the tools to create their own innovative reforms that lower health care costs."

4. "End junk lawsuits."

Plus, a bonus two that aren't codified in their list of "Solutions" but nevertheless reflect the way the Democrats have attempted to respond to the GOP's concerns: placing a cap on the "tax break for employer-sponsored insurance" (Klein points out that Dems typically oppose this; the idea lives on in principle via the excise tax), and, of course, taking anything that looks like a "public" health care plan off the table. As in: no single payer, no public option.

I don't want to steal Ezra's thunder so, for the nuts-and-bolts details, I encourage readers to click on over and read for themselves. It's worth pointing out, however, that there seems to be this popular idea that those who crafted the bill just excluded the GOP entirely and failed to address their policy concerns. It's not in the least bit true, but it's a myth that the media has deemed fancy enough to perpetuate.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Marc Thiessen Suggests That Killing Terrorists Poses A National Security Risk

2010-02-09T21:41:43Z

Former Bush speechwriter and torture-thrillist Marc Thiessen has, of late, been mounting some sort of prolonged campaign of pure, mountain-grown idiocy. He reached a new plateau today with a piece that essentially bitches about how President Barack Obama's success at eliminating terrorists is putting the country in danger. I know: What?

Just so we're clear, let the record state that Thiessen agrees that Obama is doing a good job killing terrorists. I found this out by searching his article for the phrase, "to be sure," which I knew was in there somewhere!

To be sure, unmanned drones are critical in the struggle against al Qaeda. They allow the United States to reach terrorists hiding in remote regions where it would be difficult for special operations forces to reach them, or to act on perishable intelligence when the only choice is to kill a terrorist or lose him. Constantly hovering Predator (or Reaper) drones also have a psychological effect on the enemy, forcing al Qaeda leaders to live in fear and spend time focusing on self-preservation that would otherwise be used planning the next attack. All this is for the good.

Okay, that said, Thiessen's basic problem here is that with all this eliminating of the terrorist threat, Obama is harming our ability to detain and torture terrorists for their valuable intelligence.

President Barack Obama's escalation of drone strikes is one area in the counterterrorism fight where he has earned plaudits from even his most vocal critics on the right. Hold the applause. Obama's escalation of the "Predator War" comes at the very same time he has eliminated the CIA's capability to capture senior terrorist leaders alive and interrogate them for information on new attacks.

It's a weird thesis -- drone strikes are precluding any other possible counterterror effort, and we're getting too good at killing terrorists for our own good. It makes it sound like there can't be a parallel effort to garner intelligence or question suspects alongside targeted drone attacks. And it's not just a weird, unproven thesis, its one that just doesn't comport to available facts. Why, here's Walter Pincus, documenting the highly effective interrogation of this guy, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Maybe you've heard of him?

Right away, I start looking for evidence that some "CIA capability" has been "eliminated." A program cut, maybe? A budgetary line item reduced? Intelligence officials re-assigned? Thiessen's sense of incredibly unwarranted certainty seems to stem from some unnamed guy he got to back up the premise of his book, and in so doing, this article, who alleges that "In the wake of 9/11, [the CIA] put forward a program that had a lethal component to strike back at the people who did this. But the other component was to prevent this kind of catastrophe from happening again. And for that, killing people -- especially killing senior al Qaeda leaders -- is potentially counterproductive in that we can't know or learn of future attacks. You can't kill them all, and you don't want to kill them all from an intelligence standpoint. We needed to know what they knew." But nowhere in there is actual evidence of, well, anything.

As Matt Yglesias points out, the underlying premise of Thiessen's piece appears to be that "it's better to let four terrorists go free if that lets you torture a fifth." Dead terrorists may tell no tales, but tortured terrorists tend to tell tales that don't amount to a hill of beans, as far as national security is concerned.

I think Thiessen would have fashioned a more compelling article if he'd have just leveled with his readers, and simply said that the pain induced by torturing people fortifies his precious bodily fluids with feelings of awesomeness.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Jeff Probst Signs New 'Survivor' Deal

2010-02-09T21:40:50Z

LOS ANGELES — Jeff Probst is sticking with "Survivor" next season as host and an executive producer.

CBS announced an agreement Tuesday with Probst, who has been host of "Survivor" since its debut in 2000. He'll be back for the 21st and 22nd installment of network TV's longest-running reality competition series, airing in 2010-11.

In a statement, Probst said he was thrilled to continue working on "Survivor." He's won two Emmy Awards as best host of a reality competition show.

The 20th edition, "Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains," debuts with a two-hour episode at 8 p.m. EST Thursday (0100 GMT, Friday) on CBS.

Hugh Hefner Accused Of Sabotaging Playboy Sale Deals

2010-02-09T21:17:03Z

Hugh Hefner has been sued for living the good life and refusing to give it up for the sake of his company.

We've obtained a class action lawsuit filed by a Playboy shareholder who claims the company is falling apart and Hugh has intentionally sabotaged two potential deals in the last 6 months to sell the company at a decent price.

IAC Loss Has Silver Lining: Online Ad Market Improving

2010-02-09T21:16:51Z

SAN FRANCISCO — Internet company IAC/InterActiveCorp lost $1 billion in the fourth quarter because it wrote down the value of its search business, but the results beat expectations and offered the latest indication that the online advertising market is improving.

IAC shares rose 2 percent in afternoon trading.

IAC, which is run by media billionaire Barry Diller, said Tuesday its net loss amounted to $7.94 per share in the last three months of the year. This compares with a net profit of $227.4 million, or $1.57 per share, in the year-ago quarter.

In the most recent quarter IAC took a $991.9 million impairment charge to account for decreased projections for revenue and profit growth at IAC's search properties, which include such Web sites as Ask.com and Dictionary.com.

Excluding one-time items, the company earned 20 cents per share – 2 cents more than analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected.

Revenue climbed 5 percent to $367.2 million, beating analyst expectations for $339.6 million.

Even as IAC wrote down the value of its search business, overall the company appeared to be reversing some downward trends.

Revenue from IAC's core search business, which includes the Ask search engine and online city guide Citysearch and makes money from ads, rose 3 percent to $185.4 million. Revenue had dropped in the first nine months of the year.

IAC's peers also have signaled that the online advertising market is improving. Online ad leader Google Inc. reported fourth-quarter ad revenue grew 17 percent. Yahoo Inc. reported a 4 percent drop and AOL Inc. an 8 percent drop, but those declines were less than those logged during the first three quarters of the year.

IAC believes its search business will continue to grow, but in a conference call with analysts IAC Chief Financial Officer Tom McInerney said the writedown reflects the company's belief that the increases will be "at a lower rate than we previously thought." IAC did not offer details about its prior forecast or new expectations for the search business.

On the last earnings call, in October, Diller appeared to indicate IAC would be willing to sell Ask.com. At the time he said that IAC was open to "consolidating transactions in the area of search," and that it was not likely to be the consolidator. Offering an update Tuesday, Diller said that while "it's certainly possible that Ask will be part of another organization," for now the search engine is "not for sale."

Revenue from IAC's media and other business, which includes entertainment site CollegeHumor and online retailer ShoeBuy.com, climbed 6 percent to $63.5 million. IAC said the unit benefited from healthy holiday sales.

In IAC's Match business, which consists of dating sites like Match.com and Chemistry.com, revenue dropped 6 percent to $83.3 million. IAC said the decline was due to absence of Match Europe, which was sold last June. Match's number of paid subscribers rose 3 percent from a year earlier to 1.4 million.

For the full year, IAC reported a loss of $978.8 million, or $7.06 per share, compared with a loss of $156.2 million, or $1.08 per share, in 2008.

Revenue declined 5 percent to $1.38 billion in 2009, from $1.45 billion a year earlier.

IAC shares rose 19 cents to $21.35.

How The Citizens United Ruling Can Save Print Journalism

2010-02-09T20:44:50Z

The Supreme Court's recent decision in Citizens United -- which, by a 5-4 ruling, will allow corporations to drown out the voices of Americans not equipped to spend millions of dollars to bend the ears of their public servants -- is not going over well with the public.

As Evan McMorris-Santoro reports in Talking Points Memo, a recent poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research reveals that "more than 60 percent of respondents say [the ruling] was a bad idea." But did it occur to more than 60 percent of respondents that the Citizens United ruling might save print journalism?

What if all the corporations, which are now newly enabled to dump obscene amounts of corporate cash on issue advertising, could be somehow induced to spend that money exclusively on newspaper ads? Newspapers would get to keep killing trees, that's what!

This was an idea floated -- with tongue located in the vicinity of cheek, obviously -- by Henry Banta of Niemann Watchdog. He shared his thoughts with the Huffington Post today, via email:

I suppose under the Court's theory we can't prohibit corporate TV ads, but it would be easy to make it very inconvenient -- e.g. require an on-record vote of the board of directors for TV ads but not for print. We could really do it up big and make print ads tax-deductable. In any case, use it as an opportunity to bail out the struggling print media.

Seriously. Why the hell not? I suppose that in this environment, our newspapers would end up clogged with an unholy amount of rank political claptrap, which would run the risk of having naked corporate boosterism run alongside -- and potentially appear indistinct from -- the actual journalistic content of those newspapers. Which basically means that nothing would change, except that newspapers will have more money.

Anyway, the idea is probably unworkable for a host of reasons. But I guarantee you, when Marcus Brauchli reads this idea, he's gonna pop some wood at least for a minute.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Alona Elkayam: Best and Worst Dressed Brands of the Week

2010-02-09T20:26:00Z

It's been about 2.5 years since the recession struck. People are still behaving badly, and skinny jeans are still in style. And I'm still optimistic, as this week's ratio of Bests to Worsts will make clear.

I have a thing for mastery. After I got a black belt in Kung Fu a few years ago, I decided I was going to run my first (and last) NYC marathon last October. (I also have a thing for telling people I ran a marathon.) Now, I've decided that I am going to become a certain New York City Table Tennis champion. Table Tennis, or Pong, as I like to call it, ROCKS. I've got my outfit all picked out for the NYTTF competition on February 7. The thing I like about Table Tennis is there are no separate divisions by gender or age--whoever can kick your ass is the champ, and the female Chinese players basically sweep everyone off the floor. Don't believe me? Go to SPiN in the Flatiron and see for yourself while a celebrity (S. Sarandon) cleans up your stray pong balls. Play a few games, watch a tournament and get pong tips from Thomas, the 1955 Romanian champ.

Photo Courtesy Perfecto Insecto

In other news, I just learned yesterday that my favorite movie of all time, a French flick called Le Diner de Cons, is being remade--Dinner for Schmucks--and that one of the funniest people I know, Andy Borowitz, will be writing the screenplay. In preparation for this remake, I'd suggest you go rent the original to watch after your Sunday services, or your secular hangover brunch. The film follows a group of elite professionals who hunt for people with stupid hobbies to invite to a weekly dinner party so they can make fools of these idiots. One of the elites finds an idiot tax accountant who builds ships out of matchsticks, but he ends up making idiots of everyone. I promise if you don't like the film I will pay the price of the Netflix rental.

On a more serious note, I hate Rush Limbaugh. Barbaric. When I am running on the treadmill at six mph and I happen think of him, I speed it up to nine. I wish I could force him out of his studio with one pointy finger and escort him straight to hell, but his website very prudently doesn't publish the address. His comments about Haiti and taxes are so ridiculous that they're not worth repeating, and I wouldn't even mention them if I didn't feel we need some reminder of the evil in this world. Limbaugh needs a little "Love they neighbor" therapy. For starters, maybe he can read the poem by Pastor Martin NiemÃ¶ller that my uncle Mike used to read us entitled "First they came..."

Photo Courtesy Lord Jim

On a more contemporary and progressive note, I went to see David Mamet's play, RACE. Mamet's plays often deal with issues that will be with us forever, like gender and race relations, and they delve deeply into their subjects in a visual and verbal way that news segments and novels cannot. RACE is about a wealthy white man (Richard Thomas) who has been accused of raping a black woman in a hotel room. The white man seeks representation from a law firm whose partners (David Alan Grier and James Spader) are both black and white, and whose paralegal is a sexy young black woman, Kerry Washington. The racial issues in the plot are very clear and important to punctuate, but the real theater was not happening onstage. It was happening in the audience. Whites and blacks sat next to each other and watched a searing interpretation of what race means today. I loved cracking up and seeing the face of my black seatmate when the black lawyer called us whites stupid. I had a sense that I was experiencing progress in real time.

With Valentine's Day approaching, I sign off this week by giving props to Ahmed Ibrahim, the cupid cabbie. If you don't know him, he is the famous New York City cabbie responsible for matchmaking approximately one thousand loveless passengers. You actually have to be one of his passengers for him to become your matchmaker because he doesn't take referrals. "M" and I got into cupid cabbie on the upper east side Wednesday night after seeing a panel discussion at the 92 St Y. We did not realize it until M rested his head on my shoulder and Mr. Ibrahim looked at us from his rearview mirror to ask us how long we had been together. M then recognized the man he had read about in the Wall Street Journal and countless other publications. We told Mr. Ibrahim to guess, and he said, "Seven years. You like peanut butter and jelly." He was right about the number, if not the time (that's seven weeks, cupid cabbie--not seven years). And he was definitely right about the peanut butter and jelly (ewwwww for romance in a culture blog, sorry).

Angela McGlowan: Fox News Contributor Running For Congress

2010-02-09T19:47:51Z

Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund writes that "one of the highlights of last weekend's Tea Party Convention in Nashville was the appearance of Angela McGlowan, a Fox News contributor and former GOP congressional staffer."

She electrified the crowd when she hinted she would be announcing her candidacy for Congress from neighboring Mississippi in a few days. If elected, Ms. McGlowan would become only the third African American elected as a Republican to the U.S. House in the past 75 years. "Conservatives advocate policies that recognize the innate value of all humans, as opposed to liberal policies that demean the poor and disadvantaged by encouraging victimhood," she told the enthusiastic crowd.

McGlowan's district is currently represented by Democrat Travis Childers, who has held the seat since he won a special election in early 2008.

Fund describes McGlowan as "feisty" and a "force of nature," but concedes that this potential member of Congress is "not conversant with the details of all issues."