CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour moderates a discussion on changing the world at the Women's Conference 2008 in Long Beach, California October 22, 2008.
It’s official: Christiane Amanpour is trading in her bulletproof vest for the button-down uniform of a morning news anchor. After 27 years at CNN reporting from volatile countries and deadly war zones, the 52-year-old is leaving for ABC to host the Sunday morning program “This Week.” Basically, she’ll be dodging explosive beltway rhetoric instead of bullets. (Although she does plan to report abroad and more generally bring her international expertise to the D.C.-centric show in hopes of making “foreign news less foreign,” she says.) Not only is this a dramatic career change for Amanpour, but it also makes her “the first woman to be the solo anchor of a network Sunday news program,” as the Los Angeles Times points out – which makes me feel all the worse for being, well, a little disappointed by the news.
I mean, “where there’s war, there’s Amanpour,” right? In my mind’s eye, she is something of a dream female action figure. She’s earned viewers’ respect and trust, and with remarkably very little attention paid to the fact of her happening to be a lady. She embodies all of the crucial traits Katie Couric was roundly criticized for lacking when she took the helm at “CBS Evening News” — namely “gravitas” (which many apparently translate to “balls”). Of course, it’s easy for me to complain that I liked it better when she was risking her life on the front lines, and it certainly isn’t her responsibility to chart her career according to the types of female role models that are sorely lacking in the world. It’s just, damn, I’ll miss seeing her in a bush jacket.
In honor of her 18 years as an international correspondent, behold this cheesetastic CNN commercial (which, OK, totally gave me chills).
Speaking at a roundtable on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, New York Times columnist and economist, Paul Krugman repeated his long-held position, that we should not slash spending while the economy is depressed.
“The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash government spending, since that will depress the economy even further,” he wrote in the Times Sunday, with a sentiment echoed during his Sunday show appearance.
Before party leaders Sunday night announced a debt ceiling deal that is “all spending cuts,” as House Speaker John Boehner described it, Krugman offered a grim analysis. He predicted that unemployment would rise again to nine percent again and that America will experience economic consequences comparable to Japan’s “lost decade,” (when an economic program of frugality hindered recovery from an asset bubble collapse in the 1990s).
Krugman criticized the debt negotiations:
Basically the Republicans said we’ll blow up the world economy unless you give us exactly what we want, and the President said OK. That’s what happened. . . . We’re having a debate in Washington which is all about, “we’re going to make this economy worse, but are we going to make it worse on 90 percent of the Republican’s terms or 10o percent of the Republican’s terms?” And the answer is 100 percent.
Watch Krugman’s appearance below, including a brief spat with conservative columnist, George Will:
Although the French media disclosed Nafissatou Diallo’s name weeks ago, in the American press she has been known only as “Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s accuser” or the “DSK maid” — until now.
Guinean-born Diallo, who goes by “Nafi,” spoke out about her sexual assault charges against the former IMF chief, first in a lengthy Newsweek interview and then in an interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, which aired Monday on “Good Morning America.”
“I want him to go to jail. I want him to know there are some places you cannot use your power, you cannot use your money,” Diallo told Newsweek. She repeated a similar sentiment to Roberts.
ABC’s Roberts called Diallo’s media blitz “an unusual and risky move.” But Diallo and her team are trying to regain control over the narrative after several weeks of stories in which her background and credibility have been questioned. “Because of him they call me a prostitute,” Diallo told ABC.
Prosecutors are currently undecided on whether to proceed with the charges against Strauss-Kahn, after raising doubts about Diallo’s credibility, largely based on issues unrelated to the alleged incident in Strauss-Kahn’s New York hotel suite. These include lies found on Diallo’s asylum application and findings that she had ties to petty criminals.
Diallo’s account of events, as she told them to both Newsweek and ABC News, cohere with hospital records detailing minor injuries on her body — including the fact that “doctors observed five hours afterward that there was ‘redness’ in the area of the vagina where she alleges Strauss-Kahn grabbed her.”
However, as Newsweek notes, “If there is one inconsistency for defense lawyers to dwell on in the hospital records, it is a passage that says her attacker got dressed and left the room, and ‘said nothing to her during the incident.’ In her interview with police and her account to Newsweek, Diallo recalled several statements Strauss-Kahn made during the alleged attack.”
Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers have described Diallo’s interviews as “an unseemly circus,” but Diallo says she felt she had “no choice” but to go public after staying silent for almost two months.
Watch the video below of Diallo speaking with ABC News’ Robin Roberts:
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the Republican Study Committee chairman, far left, leaves the Capitol with fellow House GOP members after passage of the conservative deficit reduction plan known as "Cut, Cap and Balance" that prevailed 234-190, in Washington, Tuesday, July 19, 2011. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (Credit: AP)
A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that nearly two-thirds of registered voters say they plan to “look around” to vote for someone other than their current member of Congress in 2012. Just 32 percent say they’re content to vote for their incumbent.
This is the highest level of dissatisfaction with Washington ever seen in Post/ABC polling, which dates back to 1989, notes the Post’s Chris Cillizza. A striking 80 percent of all respondents said they were either dissatisfied or angry about the way Washington works.
This discontent — although spread almost evenly across party lines — is more likely to more negatively impact Republicans, says Cillizza, simply because they are the majority party in the House.
Friday the 13th is the one time of the year that everyone gets together, renounces their religions, and starts believing entirely in the power of luck for a day. It’s true! Superstition trumps common sense on the 13th, and as someone who once got fired and evicted on one of these days, I’m more of a believer in its power than anyone. Still, I know how ridiculous it sounds to be scared of a day because of bad mojo. That’s why it’s always funny to watch news anchors try to cover Friday the 13th. Is it a holiday? Should they make fun of it? (Or is that just tempting the bad luck gods?)
We take a look at some of the more egregious examples of stations trying to make this non-story work below.
In 2009, Katie Couric did a short segment on Friggatriskaidekaphobia, a phobia of Friday the 13th, which raises the question: Why do we need a name for something everyone has?
Then this year, Jeff Glor repeated Katie’s segment almost verbatim.
Also in 2009 was the amazing CBS exposé on the Friday the 13th Insane Clown Posse show. One of the most unintentionally funny segments in news history.
Other network news anchors took a different tack, asking if this could mean a bad day for the markets. But first: walking under a ladder!
ABC affiliates take a nontraditional route and go out to find some fun stuff to do on this bad luck holiday, because why not?
I’m starting to think the worst part of today is making it through corny TV spots.
The whole spectacle of shows like “Toddlers and Tiaras” is unappealing to me, because it strikes right at that “Celebrity Rehab”/”Hoarders” voyeurism but adds a cherry topping of sad children to the mix. If I wanted to watch innocence lost in real time, I’d go down to a jail and ask to be locked up, because who wants to see that?!
So when the Sun first broke the story of 8-year-old Britney Campbell and the routine Botox injections foisted on her by her pageant mom, I tried not to pay attention. What this little girl needs is less public attention, not more. She also needs Child Protective Services, but somehow none of the media outlets that have jumped to interview Britney’s mom, Kerry (who administers the injections, as well as waxes her daughter’s upper thighs), have bothered to call the authorities.
Next stop on the Campbells’ tour of horrors would be”Good Morning America,” where Kerry today went on with Britney to discuss the controversy as well as defend her decision to put needles full of poison into her daughter’s face to “get rid of the lines.”
Man, calm down, everyone! What’s the big deal? This all seems totally safe and legitimate: The mom does it to herself (she’s a part-time aesthetician so it’s kosher) and she gets the Botox to inject into her child’s head through an unnamed source who is “behind the doctor scene.” It’s all on the up-and-up. If anything, Kerry Campbell’s only crime is being too good of a mother.
Dropping Out of School Lunches 
Santorum Dials 911 for Sex Police 
Gingrich Rushed To Hospital 
A match made on Craigslist adult services 
Can’t see the forest for the wood 
The things I carry 
When I lost the ability to type 
Pop art, the beaded edition 
The beautiful banality of high school 
The unemployed meet MacArthur’s tanks 
Demi’s last night out 
One day you’re in 
Pitch and catch 
