Category Archives: Television

October 17, 2010 · 9:54 am

Glenn Beck: Drawing On 1950s Extremism? : NPR

Great article on NPR.  I encourage you to click the link and read the entire interview

In the Oct. 18 issue of The New Yorker, historian Sean Wilentz examines “how extremist ideas held at bay for decades inside the Republican Party have exploded anew — and why, this time, party leaders have done virtually nothing to challenge those ideas, and a great deal to abet them.”

Wilentz, who teaches at Princeton University, argues that the rhetoric expressed by both conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck and the Tea Party is nothing new — and is rooted in an extremist ideology that has been around since the Cold War, a view that the Republican Party is now embracing.

“I think what’s happening is the Republican Party is willing to chase after whatever it can to get the party back — to get power back,” he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “This is what’s happening in the Republican Party, so instead of drawing lines, they’re jumping over fences to look like they’re in the good graces of these Tea Party types.”

Wilentz says Beck, who has emerged as a unifying figure and intellectual guide for the Tea Party movement, finds fodder for his Fox News Channel and syndicated radio shows in the ideas espoused by the John Birch Society, an ultraconservative political group founded in 1958 that, Wilentz writes, “became synonymous with right-wing extremism.”

via Glenn Beck: Drawing On 1950s Extremism? : NPR.

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October 10, 2010 · 2:06 pm

Jon Stewart: The Most Trusted Name In Fake News : NPR

Great article and interview with Jon Stewart on NPR.

Here is an excerpt from the story and if you click the link, you can read the entire interview:

On Oct. 30, comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will host dueling rallies on the National Mall. Called “The Rally to Restore Sanity” and the “March to Keep Fear Alive,” respectively, the two rallies closely mimic Glenn Beck’s recent “Restoring Honor Rally,” also held in Washington, D.C.

Stewart sat down with Terry Gross on Sept. 29 in front of a live audience at New York City’s 92nd Street Y to discuss his time on The Daily Show, his role in the media, and the upcoming rally — which is being billed as “Woodstock, but with the nudity and drugs replaced by respectful disagreement.”

“Like everything that we do, the march is merely a construct,” he says. “It’s merely a format, in the way the book is a format, a show is a format … to be filled with the type of material that Stephen and I do and the point of view [that we have]. People have said, ‘It’s a rally to counter Glenn Beck.’ It’s not. What it is was, we saw that and thought, ‘What a beautiful outline. What a beautiful structure to fill with what we want to express in live form, festival form.”

For the past 11 years, Stewart has been expressing his opinions nightly on The Daily Show, which consistently ranks among the top programs viewed by the 18-34 age demographic. His quick wit and biting satire have taken the once-obscure fake-news show and made it an influential voice in American humor and politics.

via Jon Stewart: The Most Trusted Name In Fake News : NPR.

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September 27, 2010 · 6:59 pm

We survived Bush. You’ll survive Obama. Wisdom from Margaret and Helen

This is an excerpt from one of their older columns.  I courage you to click the link and read the entire post from these wise Senior Citizens!

Margaret, please tell Howard that I love him because he loves you.  But that is about all the reaching across the aisle that I can handle.  A few years back, millions of people across this nation and across the globe marched for peace.  George Bush ignored us and we had to endure his lazy ass being in the White House for eight years.

So now a black man named Barack Obama, elected by the will of the people, has decided to fight for the poor, and work for world peace… and a bunch of white guys who think Fox really is News just can’t stand it.

Well, they can kiss my ass because I am tired of their belly aching.

This is exactly how our political system works.  Sometimes your party is in and sometimes it is out.  Your party is currently out.  So shut the hell up and deal with it.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for a group of disgruntled citizens banding together to form a third political party because they don’t feel represented by the other two.  But let’s be honest – this bunch of idiots  doesn’t like that a black man is the most powerful man on the globe.   I wonder if they know that, while 78%  of  the world is not white, only 13% of the United States is black.   So they can relax.  Barack and Michelle most likely will not be buying the house next door.

via We survived Bush. You’ll survive Obama. « Margaret and Helen.

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September 25, 2010 · 3:32 pm

Come On Get Happy! “The Partridge Family” Turns 40

Now I feel really old…..

It was 40 years ago today, Shirley Partridge taught the band to play.

OK, so maybe it was Keith.

Either way, “The Partridge Family,” a landmark show about a fictional singing group that produced a very real teen idol who, in turn, helped sell the records the group performed on the show, is 40 years old. It premiered back on Sept. 25, 1970, quickly turning David Cassidy, now 60, into a teenybopper sensation.

MORE:   Come On Get Happy! “The Partridge Family” Turns 40.

And a little video of their Greatest Hit:

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September 25, 2010 · 10:30 am

FOXNews.com – In Case of Emergency, Please Remove Your Bra

Only on Fox News:

Caught in a disaster? You’d better hope you’re wearing the Emergency Bra. Simply unsnap the bright red bra, separate the cups, and slip it over your head — one cup for you, and one for your friend.

Dr. Elena Bodnar won an Ignoble Award for the invention last year, an annual tribute to scientific research that on the surface seems goofy but is often surprisingly practical. And now Bodnar has brought the eBra to the public; purchase one online for just $29.95.

“The goal of any emergency respiratory device is to achieve tight fixation and full coverage. Luckily, the wonderful design of the bra is already in the shape of a face mask and so with the addition of a few design features, the Emergency Bra enhances the efficiency of minimizing contaminated bypass air flow,” explains the eBra website.

It sounds silly, but Bodnar, a Ukraine native who now lives in Chicago, started her medical career studying the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster. If people had had cheap, readily available gas masks in the first hours after the disaster, she said, they may have avoided breathing in Iodine-131, which causes radiation sickness.

The bra-turned-gas masks could have also been useful during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and for women caught outside during the dust storms that recently enveloped Sydney, she said.

“You have to be prepared all the time, at any place, at any moment, and practically every woman wears a bra,” she said. Her patented devices also look pretty, no different from a conventional bra, she added.

According to a report on tech news site CNET, there are plans for a “counterpart device for men” in the works, though the precise shape it will take has yet to be revealed.

via FOXNews.com – In Case of Emergency, Please Remove Your Bra.

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September 22, 2010 · 9:54 pm

The Best of Karen Walker

It’s been a long, stressful day.

I’m not in the mood for anything serious…

A little Karen always makes the day a little brighter!

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September 21, 2010 · 6:04 pm

More from “Margaret and Helen”

Here is an excerpt from their latest post.

Please click the link at the bottom to read the entire, hilariously insightful post from these two wise 80-something ladies:

Margaret, that Sarah Palin sure seems to be enjoying her moment in the spotlight.   And it appears she got another one of her Tea Party candidates one step closer to November 2nd.  Now,  I for one don’t begrudge her all this newly found fame and fortune.  I still think she is an idiot, but I don’t begrudge her all this success.   I just wish she came by it in a way that didn’t involve the fate of our nation…. like maybe being on The Real Housewives of Wasilla.

I hear she is about to have her own television show on the Learning Channel.  Do you think she will learn anything?  And when exactly did the Learning Channel become the Learning Deficiency Channel?

Well, I say good for her.   If there was ever a person who was destined to be on one of those dysfunctional reality shows it would be Sarah Palin.  Maybe she will eat a rat like that little one on the The View. I hope she has huge ratings and gets out of politics for good.  Because stupid on television is one thing.  But stupid running our nation… well George Bush proved that to be a really bad idea.

Before that jackass preacher down in Florida decided not to burn the Quran, Ms. Palin sent out a little one of those face tweeter things.  She said she thought burning the Quran was as bad as building that mosque in Manhattan.  Leave it to an idiot to denounce one form of religious intolerance by promoting another form of religious intolerance.

It’s a damn Burlington Coat Factory.  Did you know that Margaret?  This building they consider to be on sacred ground – or at least sacred ground for everyone but Muslims – is a Burlington Coat Factory.  Has everyone gone crazy?  It’s not at ground zero and it’s not even a mosque, honey.  It’s a cultural center.  And as far as sacred ground goes, we really should be careful.   They have a whole lot of “sacred ground” in the Middle East and it tends to cause never-ending wars.   This country already goes to war too often for sacred oil.  We don’t need to add sacred ground to the list.

More:  Margaret and Helen.

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September 20, 2010 · 11:19 pm

Arrest warrant issued for Lohan, jail possible – Yahoo! News

One Question:  Who the hell cares???

All the important subjects that really need media coverage and analysis and they wastes pages of paper, miles of internet space, hours of television time  and tons of resources on one marginally talented, semi-famous starlet who hasn’t had a hit movie in years.  I just don’t get it….

Do people actually care about this stuff????

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – A judge issued an arrest warrant Monday for Lindsay Lohan after the actress acknowledged failing a drug test less than a month after she was released from inpatient rehab.

Superior Court Judge Elden Fox also revoked Lohan’s probation in her three-year-old drug case while issuing the bench warrant in Beverly Hills.

However, the warrant was stayed, and Lohan was allowed to remain free pending a hearing Friday to determine if she violated her probation.

Fox previously threatened the actress with 30 days in jail for each violation. He must now decide whether to send her back to jail or into treatment.

via Arrest warrant issued for Lohan, jail possible – Yahoo! News.

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September 12, 2010 · 2:35 am

Liberace Museum to Shut Down in Las Vegas

What can I say?  This is really sad when you think of the pre-Stonewall world.  Liberace was the most visable Gay Man in America.  He just didn’t think so…

Middle class women in the South spent their lives denying that Liberace was gay…He was just “flamboyant.”

Love it or hate it.  It’s a fact:  Liberace is part of our Gay history.  And it’s going to be harder to find him in the future…

The Liberace Museum, long one of this city’s best-known and unusual attractions, is shutting down next month, the latest victim of a brutal recession that has hit Nevada particularly hard.

A singular landmark since its opening in 1979, the two-building spread topped by a skyward sculpture of a keyboard contains thousands of artifacts from the career of its namesake, who once reigned in the Strip’s showrooms by pounding sonatas out of rhinestone-encrusted pianos while donning outlandish sequined capes.

The museum is operated by the Liberace Foundation, whose board chairman announced plans for closure today and said his organization would narrow its focus to raising money for the music scholarships it has awarded for decades. More than 30 employees will lose their jobs.

via Liberace Museum to Shut Down in Las Vegas.

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September 1, 2010 · 7:08 pm

Cable News Ratings August 2010: CNN Viewership Plummets, Fox News Still On Top

There have been several recent articles about the demographics of the Fox viewing audience.  Most of them are over 65.  I figure they are like my Mother, a woman with dementia, who just leaves the TV on all the time.  I think having Fox News playing all the time may be a cause of dementia….or at least a symptom.

I just can’t watch TV anymore and I suspect there are many more Progressives like me who get most of their news on line….

The dog days of summer took their toll on cable news in August, as ratings for all three of the main channels were down this month. Even so, there were some bright spots.

MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” had its best month ever, especially in the coveted A25-54 demo. The show, which was the second-fast growing in all of cable news in August, drew 625,000 total viewers and 176,000 in the demo.

Overall, MSNBC averaged 681,000 total viewers in prime time, and 232,000 in the demo.

If MNSBC had something to celebrate, CNN, which is in a period of extreme transition, had yet another month of bad ratings news. The channel had its lowest prime time viewership since 2000, averaging just 486,000 total viewers, with 144,000 in the A25-54 demo. The 10 PM repeat of “Countdown” even beat “Anderson Cooper 360” in both the demo (202,000 vs. 172,000 viewers) and in total viewers (560,000 vs. 559,000.)

Of course, while CNN and MSNBC were tussling over second place, Fox News towered over the competition as usual. The channel averaged 1,821,000 viewers in prime time and 441,000 in the A25-54 demo–nearly three times the ratings of second-place MSNBC.

Below, see the top 30 programs in cable news for August 2010:

via Cable News Ratings August 2010: CNN Viewership Plummets, Fox News Still On Top.

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