Tag: Media Watch

HBO Will Relive 2000 Recount

Trish

HBO has chosen Jacksonville for the main location of its big screen feature, “Recount,” based on the 2000 presidential election and rumored to be staring Kevin Spacey and William Hurt.

Droves of local amateurs answered the call for extras.

“I’m not sure, but I think they cast me as a Democrat. Honestly, I’d rather be Green Party.”

A number of scenes in the movie involve crowd shots of protesters and will require thousands of voting-age extras, Davidson said. Senior citizens and college-age extras are in high demand for the shoot.

Lara Randall said she and her friend Melissa Lamanna learned of the open call online…

“It was a positive experience,” Randall said. “I’m not sure, but I think they cast me as a Democrat. Honestly, I’d rather be Green Party.”

And there’s one of the problems, but don’t get me started.

Speaking of casting, two roles are still open.

Representatives from Martini Shot [Casting] also have been actively looking for look-alikes to portray the major political figures from the 2000 presidential race. Davidson said they’ve found actors for George Bush and Al Gore, but they’re still trying to find some for Laura Bush and George Bush Sr.

Anyone got any suggestions on who could play the Lauratron or Poppy?

O’Reilly Goes to Harlem, Finds It Suprisingly Similar to America

Jon Ponder

Billo’s narrative about a recent trip to Harlem offers keen insight into the rightwing’s inner monologue on race:

You know, I was up in Harlem a few weeks ago, and I actually had dinner with Al Sharpton, who is a very, very interesting guy. And he comes on The Factor a lot, and then I treated him to dinner, because he’s made himself available to us, and I felt that I wanted to take him up there.

Note the adverb: He actually had dinner with Sharpton, which translates as “believe it or not, I had dinner with a liberal, and an African-American liberal, at that.” But the takeaway point: Bill paid for dinner.

And we went to Sylvia’s, a very famous restaurant in Harlem. I had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful.

Not just some dive nobody’s heard of. Bill went to one of the most famous restaurants in the African American universe.

They all watch The Factor. You know, when Sharpton and I walked in, it was like a big commotion and everything, but everybody was very nice.

Bill would have us believe that Sylvia’s was packed with Fox News watchers, but what he probably couldn’t imagine is that black people have cable television and may have seen him in his almost nightly presentation as Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World,” or in any number of other shows where he is mocked and lampooned.

And I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same, and that’s really what this society’s all about now here in the U.S.A. There’s no difference. There’s no difference. There may be a cultural entertainment — people may gravitate toward different cultural entertainment, but you go down to Little Italy, and you’re gonna have that. It has nothing to do with the color of anybody’s skin.

Is Bill O’Reilly truly as unsophisticated as he comes off here, or is this part of his everyman shtick? If he’s reporting his true impressions here, it appears he experienced more than a little trepidation in advance of his visit.

What is truly revelatory here is the fact that O’Reilly is so out of tune with his own prejudices that he would broadcast them to his audience without a trace of irony or self-deprecation.

Journalistic Ethics: When to Out a Guy

Buck Banks

In his “Everyday Ethics” column, Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute mulls over the question of when it is appropriate or germane to a story to identify a public figure or politician as gay. He notes that there were intimations that the latest scandalized pol was gay almost a year ago:

Last fall when a gay activist and radio show host claimed that Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, was secretly gay, newsrooms around the country agonized over how and what to cover. Since Roll Call ‘s revelation Monday evening that Craig was arrested in a sting operation in a men’s restroom at the Minneapolis airport, I have been fielding calls from reporters asking if and when journalists are justified in covering the sexual orientation of a politician.

Because Craig pleaded guilty, McBride argues, his alleged gayness is certainly part of the story. But on the axis of reasons to cover a person’s assumed sexual orientation, Craig also qualifies on several other measures:

  • Hypocrisy: It is fair game if a certain politician has consistently voted on public policy issues that appear to undermine the rights or the political agenda of gay and lesbian citizens and if there is evidence that he is gay himself. I actually support a higher threshold. Merely voting a certain way on issues doesn’t quite cut it. The only time the hypocrisy argument really works is when an individual has railed against gays and lesbians as a campaign platform. We don’t call women who vote against public policy that would be beneficial to other women hypocrites.
  • Honesty: If a guy says he’s not gay and it turns out that he is, he’s a liar and voters deserve to know. Here again, I believe a higher threshold is in order. Has he deceived a spouse? Has he actively created a false impression?
  • Infidelity: We don’t care if he’s gay. We care if he is having affairs and breaking his marriage vows. Then focus on the infidelity, not the sexual orientation. We’ve cared about philandering ever since the days of Gary Hart.
  • Criminal behavior: This is the clearest justification. If a politician is engaged in or charged with behavior that is deemed to be against the law, then we usually care. But go one step further and explain why such behavior is criminal, especially when it involves tapping ones foot in a men’s room.
  • The impact the rumors/story have on the voters and politics: We don’t care whether he’s gay. We report on the effect the story has on the political scene. This is a cop-out, a great way to back into a salacious story without taking responsibility for the information at the heart of the story. News editors, executive producers and political hacks, take your pick. If you’re going to cover the Senator Larry Craig story, find a journalistic purpose for the space and time and energy it consumes.

Boffo Box Office for ‘Sicko’ Coming Soon Thanks to George Bush

Jon Ponder

The Bush administration is set to give Michael Moore’s new film “Sicko” millions of dollars in free publicity, potentially boosting it into the stratospheric range of Moore’s previous hit, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which grossed $222 million worldwide in 2004.

On Thursday, Moore announced that he had received a subpoena from the Justice Dept. He says the Bush administration is accusing him of failing to file some documents that are required to film in Cuba and that he thereby violated the Cuban embargo. Moore says journalists are not required to submit the documents in question.

This smacks of a classic Bushie vendetta, a petty swipe at a critic based on the silly hope that a subpoena and perhaps an indictment will silence him. As if. It is also the latest example of the White House political shop using the Justice Dept. to attack an opponent. Note the timing — the subpoena to Moore came within hours after Karl Rove received a subpoena from Democrats in Congress.

Subpoenaing Moore, like so many Bushevik tactics, is also a strategy designed to fail. If silencing Moore was the objective, his legal battles with the government will only give him a bigger soapbox. If tying him up in an expensive legal battle was the goal, the additional publicity will make him much richer than he would have been if the government had stayed out of it and more than offset the legal fees.

Not that “Sicko” isn’t doing quite well without Bush’s help. Despite rightwingers’ dire predictions that ticket sales would be anemic, in the three and a half weeks since “Sicko” went into wide release it has already grossed $20.3 million, and will soon surpass the $21.5 million in total domestic receipts made by “Bowling for Columbine,” for which Moore won the Best Documentary Oscar for 2002. “Sicko” hasn’t yet opened overseas.

With the free high-profile publicity from the government, especially if Moore is indicted, ticket sales for “Sicko” could surge into $200 million range of “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

And at this early stage, “Sicko” appears to be the strongest contender for the Best Documentary Oscar this year. If Hollywood types come to believe Michael Moore is being persecuted by George Bush, “Sicko” will be a shoe-in.

[…]

O’Reilly Blunders, Unintentionally Ratchets Up Netroots Support for Sen. Clinton

Jon Ponder


Via: Blogometer: Howard Wolfson, spokesman for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, went on Bill O’Reilly’s show Tuesday night to defend DailyKos from O’Reilly’s recent attacks. This line stands out:

Hey Bill: We’ve been attacking you for years, so, how about it? Show us some hate. It’s good for business.

Unfortunately with all due respect for you, the days where you can dictate where Senator Clinton and other Democrats go, who we talk to, are over.

Bill O’Reilly just can’t get it through his head that he is seen as such a bully that it actually helps his opponents when he attacks them. Just ask Al Franken, whose book, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” made millions more than it would have if Bill hadn’t sued over Franken’s depiction of him.

Or ask Keith Olbermann, whose almost daily attacks on O’Reilly as the “Worst Person in the World” have helped make “Countdown” the most popular live show on MSNBC.

Now O’Reilly has turned his guns on DailyKos, labeling it a “hate speech” site, a charge he bases on a few vile and nasty statements cherrypicked from the site’s comments section — one of the largest boards on the Internets. O’Reilly’s campaign against DailyKos has had some success. He forced JetBlue to reneg on its promised level of sponsorship for the upcoming YearlyKos conference. Now he’s trying to bully the presidential candidates into skipping the event.

Predictably (to everyone but Bill), his attacks on the Kos community have had the unintended consequence of improving Sen. Clinton’s popularity among the Netroots. Until now, conventional wisdom considered the online left to be a big obstacle for Clinton in the primaries because of her conservative positions.

That dynamic appears to be shifting — thanks entirely to Bill O’Reilly. As a DailyKos member put it:

[O’Reilly] thinks he’s destroying kos’ credibility when in fact what he is doing is causing all the candidates to stand behind the [YearlyKos] conference and the web site, and by Hillary being so up front in defending Daily Kos, he is helping people here who don’t like her start to rally around her.

Hey Bill: We’ve been attacking you for years (the cartoon of your big giant head with a loofah background is a little something we worked up in 2005) — so, how about it? Show us some hate. There’s some pretty salty stuff — and some of it is about you — in our comments section, so please feel free to call us a hate speech site. It’s good for business.

Olbermann Not Always an Uber-Good Guy

Buck Banks

Co-editor Jon thinks MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann is the cat’s pajamas. He’s fond of posting Olbermannic diatribes and lambastings and bully-pulpit blatherings of the increasingly distinguished-looking anchor of Count Down with Keith Olbermann. Jon even posted an angry seven-minute-plus Obermann oration today.

Now that one was a real tour de force, but as the folks at FishBowl NY note, Keith and Count Down don’t always take the high road:

Considering its “Nappy ‘Hos” history, MSNBC should’ve learned a lesson or two about off-handed, misogynistic remarks. Still, no one should be surprised — Olbermann and Countdown have done this kind of thing before. One example, as we reported way back in October, involved a pre-penitentiary Paris Hilton. At that time, it wasn’t the “A Slut and Battery” that drew our attention — it was what he said: “Paris Hilton claims she was punched in the face yesterday morning at a nightclub in Hollywood. [pause] ‘Course she’s had worse things happen to her face …”

Appears you can take the pundit out of the locker room, but you can’t take the locker room out of the pundit.

Celebrity Dirt Goes Green

Trish

We welcome a new addition to our blogroll, er, sorry Jon, “web sites list.” This one was discovered by Buck during his live reporting from Florida’s “Serve to Preserve” global warming conference.

Ecorazzi bills itself as The Latest in Green Gossip, with current features on Rob Lowe’s testimony in Washington on behalf of hybrids, Courtney Cox’s line of global warming awareness t-shirts, and Madonna’s new movie on Malawi. At last, a way to waste time on celebrity scoop while feeling virtuous. Thanks, Ecorazzi!

If You Read This, You Probably Have a Mac

Trish

I’m not sure if it’s the Mac person or the marketer in me but I find this likely meaningless bit of trivia fascinating. It seems Mac users have an edge over Dell owners when it comes to “social participation” online, which would include sites like this one. Here’s what they found:

Apple Dell
Creators — Blog, publish web pages, upload videos 21% 12%
Critics — Comment on blogs, post ratings and reviews 25% 19%
Collectors — Use RSS, tag web pages 24% 14%
Joiners — Use social networking sites 26% 19%
Spectators — Read blogs, watch video, listen to podcasts 55% 30%
Inactives — Don’t participate in “social” activities online 34% 54%

Here at Pensito Review, one of us is totally Mac (hey, is that Uncle Tupelo on my Pandora station?), one of us is totally PC (Jon), and one of us goes back and forth, as expected from a registered Independent (Buck).