As a general rule, if you don't work for the Onion, it's best to stay away from parodies. Sports parodies, especially, can be treacherous. But as a colleague who sent me a link to one story from eTrueSports.com observed, the site's article about Lou Dobbs, the border fence and the NBA is actually pretty funny.
From the story:
The news that the NBA’s percentage of Mexican-born players plunged from 2% in 2008 to 1% in 2009, was hailed by CNN television personality Lou Dobbs as proof of the efficacy of tall border fences.
“Mexicans can’t jump,” said Dobbs, a longtime anti-immigration activist, who attributed the new, higher fences along the Mexican border for the reduction of Mexican players in the NBA.
I'll leave a few jokes to the parody itself -- just know that President Obama makes an appearance, too, and it's pretty great. But I did have to share my favorite part of the story, which I like because, based on my experience, it rings very true:
An emotional CNN spokesman, when Dobbs' statement was read to him by a reporter, said, "Oh no, not again," before abruptly ending the telephone interview. CNN is currently last in cable network news ratings.
A female celebrity has lost weight, and the Internet is burning up with speculation as to how and why she did it. And this is ... a surprise? It is to L.A. Times columnist James Rainey, at least when the celebrity in question is CNN political correspondent Candy Crowley. Sniffs Rainey, "A career of sophisticated political observation, graceful writing and determined fairness earns you this: speculation about your metabolism and guesses about your turns under the surgeon's knife. Such is the wonder of our ever-freer public discourse."
Naturally, I agree with Rainey's point that the intense focus on Crowley's weight is bullshit. I just can't help boggling at his apparent failure to see it coming, or his perception that this is a new development in public discourse. Is it really a big secret that any woman in the public eye who loses weight is inevitably placed under the journalistic microscope (both tabloid and legit) -- whether because everyone wants to know how she did it or because everyone wants to chide her for getting too thin, and crack "eat a sandwich" jokes in the same breath as they armchair-diagnose her with a serious eating disorder? If there was any doubt that people go bananas for weight-loss stories, I think it was put to rest on the day of the Fort Hood shootings, when the Web site of Crowley's venerable employer kept an article titled "Newborn inspires mom to lose 71 pounds" in the most prominent cover spot all afternoon and evening. And as for the attention paid to celebrity weight loss in particular, a newly thin Nia Vardalos wrote on Anderson Cooper's 360 blog last summer, "In the last year, I got to star in a movie, wrote and directed my next one, and adopted a three year old from American Foster Care. But guess what I'm asked ... how did I lose the weight?" Exactly. Also, perhaps Rainey has heard of Oprah Winfrey?
But Candy Crowley is a distinguished political commentator, not an actress or Internet-famous mom or lady lifestyle guru! Surely, someone of her stature shouldn't be hounded by such frivolous gossip? Well, yeah. It sucks how no woman in the public eye, not even one who's primarily known for her brains, is immune to relentless scrutiny of her appearance. (Perhaps Rainey has heard of Hillary Clinton?) The media's obsessive and deeply sexist focus on prominent women's looks is enough of a no-brainer that Joan Walsh and Sarah Palin are on the same page about it, for crying out loud. So really, I want to offer Rainey a cookie for writing a pretty good article about just that (and -- of course -- about how Crowley lost the weight), but come on!
To be fair, even Crowley herself claims to be surprised. "It's stunning to me that something I consider so separate and apart from what I do for a living has taken up so much space in some people's thoughts," she told Rainey. "I am a hard-news journalist. That is what I do." To those of us who occasionally consume soft journalism, though, it's no surprise that a serious job offers zero protection against appearance policing. Dude, how embarrassed were Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel when they showed up to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down in practically the same outfit? Fashion faux-pas!
Rainey notes that "Crowley can count herself in a select company of women -- Andrea Mitchell and Lesley Stahl are also in the club -- whose news careers on national TV continue to flourish into middle age. The truism has changed but only a little: Newsmen get more 'distinguished' with age, while their female peers rush to dye their hair or find a safe haven in academia." Good on him for both noticing and saying that (not to mention getting in a dig at CNN for overlooking Crowley as a replacement for Lou Dobbs). But if he's really surprised that a highly respected, 60-year-old hard journalist would be subject to a shallow and demeaning public analysis of her looks, he's not paying nearly enough attention -- to how powerful middle-aged women or 20-something starlets are treated by both old and new media. If you own a vagina, your looks will always be part of the conversation, if not the whole thing. And if you've lost weight, any other accomplishments automatically pale in comparison. That's not the result of "our ever-freer public discourse" but of a culture that prizes women for conventional beauty above all else. And that ain't nothing new.
A lot of people in the Latino community have reason to be happy that Lou Dobbs decided to quit CNN. Dobbs was, after all, fiercely anti-immigrant (his supporters would say he was fiercely anti-illegal immigrant, but he often blurred the lines) and much of his ire was directed at Latino immigrants. That often meant that he'd air spurious accusations about Latinos, giving things like a smear about immigrants bringing thousands of cases of leprosy to the U.S. a large audience.
So one Spanish-language newspaper based in New York City, El Diario La Prensa, took the opportunity to celebrate a little. As you can see in the image that accompanies this post, the paper's cover on Thursday was a photo of Dobbs with a strikeout superimposed. The accompanying headline borrowed a bit of Spanglish that Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous: "Hasta la vista, baby."
For a time, Lou Dobbs was one of CNN's biggest stars. Now, though, after having watched his ratings steadily fall, he's leaving the network.
Dobbs announced his resignation, which is effective immediately, on his show Wednesday night. There's been some speculation recently that he could be heading to Fox News or its sister Fox Business Network, but that doesn't appear to be the case now.
“Some leaders in the media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond my role here at CNN and engage in constructive problem-solving,” Dobbs said. “I’m considering a number of options and directions,”
A CNN spokeswoman has not yet responded to an e-mail from Salon seeking comment.
The latest rough patch for CNN illustrates the two contradictions at the network's heart.
In a brutal time for the news business, CNN is one of the few media organizations thriving while its most visible part in the United States -- prime-time on the flagship network -- is hurting. The company has built its brand on nonpartisan reporting, while CNN's audience tilts Democratic as much or more as Fox News Channel's audience is Republican.
CNN's average prime-time audience was third behind Fox and MSNBC during October, and it was even eclipsed by sister network HLN among younger viewers, according to the Nielsen Co. Perhaps more ominous, CNN finished well behind Fox when big news was breaking -- Election Night and the Fort Hood massacre. Big stories usually sent viewers flocking to CNN.
Prime-time success isn't a new problem in a place that has long lived and died by the news cycle, to which former hosts such as Aaron Brown, Connie Chung and Paula Zahn can attest. It seems more acute because CNN's younger rivals were faster in figuring out a way to make appointment viewing at night.
"We sometimes scratch our heads and wonder, 'Why can't they figure this out?'" said former CNN correspondent Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Mass Communication and Information Studies at the University of South Carolina, describing his talks with another old CNN hand on his faculty.
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, whose reruns often beat Anderson Cooper's first-run newscast on CNN, mocked his rival for trafficking in news rather than analysis at night: "CNN seems to still think it is the primary source for its viewers, that they know nothing until they tune in. This is, ever increasingly, nonsensical."
At CNN, they suggest critics take a narrow view of what it does.
The network could cast aside Cooper, Larry King and Campbell Brown for opinionated analysis and probably see its ratings go up, said Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide.
The benefit for one arm of the company isn't worth the potential damage to others, he said.
CNN has built its business -- encompassing international networks and wholesale news reports, mobile device services, a Web site, a wire service to print publications and radio -- around the notion that it is delivering nonpartisan, straight news reporting, he said. The company has shown double-digit growth for the past few years and is on pace to continue. It invests by hiring more personnel, and this month opening a new production facility in Abu Dhabi.
"People hear what's being said and it's branded CNN and (they say), 'OK, that's news. That's nonpartisan, that's factual, it's timely," Walton said. "That's what we want to deliver around the world. We compete against a lot more than Fox and MSNBC."
The rising fortunes of HLN means the company makes money off opinion, too. One of the reasons that network's name was changed from CNN Headline News was to avoid having CNN's name associated with that type of programming.
Of the flagship network's sagging fortunes, Walton said, "It matters to us. Trust me, it matters. We want all of our networks to grow their audiences. But the fact is, (CNN) is a vibrant, healthy company that's growing in an industry where we're pretty much one of one."
MSNBC's move to the left and Fox's ownership of the right would, theoretically, give CNN a wide middle to conquer. The problem is, that middle might be more inclined to watch Tom DeLay on "Dancing With the Stars" than on "Larry King Live."
Statistically, CNN's audience is far from nonpartisan.
Of people who say their main source of news is CNN, 46 percent identify themselves as Democrats and 13 percent as Republicans, according to a July survey by the Pew Research Center (the rest say they're independent or don't identify themselves politically). The same study found that Fox's main source audience was 38 percent Republican and 18 percent Democratic.
To a certain degree, it stands to reason: If so many Republicans find Fox a comfortable home, there are fewer remaining for CNN, particularly in a country where Democrats have an enrollment edge.
One-third of news viewers questioned by Pew this fall said they didn't perceive CNN as advancing an ideology, more than Fox (24 percent) or MSNBC (27 percent). Still, 37 percent of those questioned view CNN as liberal, and 11 percent as conservative.
It wasn't always this way. In a pre-Fox world, many on the right saw CNN as a good alternative to the broadcast networks, said Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the conservative Media Research Center. They loved "Crossfire," he said.
But conservatives began to identify CNN with President Bill Clinton, in part because a president is a natural time-killer for a network on 24 hours a day, he said. They believe conservative voices are weak and outnumbered on CNN.
"Could they claim to be in the middle?" Graham asked. "I think they could. I don't think they're doing it."
Liberals are suspicious about CNN because of Lou Dobbs and his anti-immigration efforts, said Karl Frisch of Graham's liberal counterpart, Media Matters. CNN points out that Dobbs' show has become less opinionated this year. In the meantime, Fox News Channel and the Obama administration have publicly squabbled.
What CNN needs is to find a way to bring the passion to stories that its rivals bring to arguments, said Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief and now professor at George Washington University.
"Will people sit down in the evening and find news reporting interesting?" Walton asked. "That's the question, really."
CNN is still searching for the answer.
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EDITOR'S NOTE -- David Bauder can be reached at dbauder"at"ap.org
As a general rule, I try to avoid cable news at all costs -- watching it is often just too painful. But Election Night is one of those times when, like some horrible thing out of "A Clockwork Orange," I'm forced to watch. Tuesday night has, so far, been every bit as bad as I imagined.
True story, could not make this up: CNN's Larry King, just a few minutes ago, had a special panel on to discuss election results. The panel consisted of -- and I want to stress again that I could not possibly make this up -- former Minnesota governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura, former game show host and Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein and, as a topper, James Carville.
I've had nightmares that now, by comparison, seem like a trip to some wonderful island paradise where the free piña coladas never stop flowing.
Maybe Fox News Channel's "We Report, You Decide" tag line is accurate, after all. Unfortunately for the network, though, it seems anyone who doesn't already agree with the Fox worldview is deciding against it.
The network has seen its ratings increase during the course of the last year, but a new poll shows the cable news station, much like its brethren, remains a polarizing news outlet to many viewers.
According to the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, only 34 percent of respondents said Fox News was a reliable source, compared to the 41 percent who called it unreliable. Its competitors, CNN and MSNBC, didn't fare much better in the poll. CNN matched its 44 percent reliability rating with a 44 percent unreliability rating, and MSNBC raked in a 23 percent reliability rating compared to a 17 percent unreliability rating. The poll was conducted earlier this month and surveyed 2,400 people with a 2 percent margin of error.
But broken down by party identification, the poll shows impressions of the networks are even more split. More than two-thirds of Democrats -- 68 percent -- rated Fox News as unreliable, compared to just 11 percent of Republicans. Sixty-one percent of Republican respondents called CNN unreliable, compared to 20 percent of Democrats. MSNBC tallied 31 percent unreliable marks from Republicans and just 7 percent from Democrats.
CNN, the Pentagon's "military analyst program" and Gitmo
Huge numbers of Americas who were subjected to this propaganda by their own Government still don't know that they were, because the television networks which broadcast it to them refuse to tell them about it.
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon
Method anchor
Star newsman Anderson Cooper is defined less by his experience than by an old-fashioned Hollywood marketing campaign.
By Neal Gabler, Salon
Viewer discretion
CNN's al-Qaida tapes were grisly and important, and offered a promising look at what a news channel could actually be.
By Carina Chocano, Salon
Out-Foxed
How Rupert's red-state cable channel waved the flag and beat CNN.
By Geraldine Sealey, Salon
Ladies of the nightly news
How the most electrifying campaign of our time changed everything for Katie Couric, Campbell Brown and Rachel Maddow.
By Rebecca Traister, Salon
Lou Dobbs challenges his own CNN network
Lou Dobbs' support of the birther movement has opened up a rift between him and his network.
By David Bauder, AP
My Visit to the Botox Torture Doc
Banks to Hike Card Rates Ahead of New Restrictions
Sexiest Man Living
Thanks, CNN, for making Lou Dobbs