Hillary Clinton, Butter-Grubbing Date From Hell [Awkward]

Lewis Lapham Hates On Tim Russert [Tim Russert]

New Washington Post Editor This Week [Jobs]

"Marcus Brauchli, who recently stepped down as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, is believed by people familiar with the search to be the leading candidate... staffers expect one of the new editor's first tasks may be further downsizing the newsroom." [WSJ]

Greta Van Susteren Bays For Blood Of Anderson Cooper [Feuds]

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.As a member of two vindictive cults — Fox News and Scientology — cable news anchor Greta Van Susteren is an absolute pro at channeling rage. Witness the blog post she typed up on the 4th of July holiday. The executive producer of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 last week called Susteren's On The Record "not a news program. It's missing-person of the day." Hoo-boy. Susteren's 1000-word response swiftly pinned blame for the comments on Cooper, since he should be able to control his producer, then basically called the silver-haired anchor a coddled, commercialized, Katrina-exploiting, polygamy-obsessed pretty boy. Susteren, meanwhile, has a magical law degree that obviates the need for a teleprompter, ever. A breakdown (and partial refutation) of her rant, after the jump.

• Cooper is spendy: "It has been rumored that in one year they spent about 27 million dollars in advertising of Anderson Cooper in their experiment. No network has ever spent that kind of money just to market one person. By the way, the President of CNN told me that Anderson Cooper has a staff of nearly 60. We beat them with our staff…of about 12." Cooper has led in ratings share the past two quarters; Van Susteren is ahead in Nielsen's separate count of total viewers (as opposed to households).
• Cooper is a commercial whore: "hey have even done some rather bizarre (demeaning?) marketing. They have put Anderson Cooper on plastic bags like they are selling breakfast cereal. Here is another example and you decide: CNN sells T shirts of Anderson Cooper not just promoting the show (all networks sell T shirts) but [also of the headline "Anderson Cooper, 'you're not my boo']. Not my boo? yikes…not exactly Walter Cronkite…"
• Cooper exploited Katrina! "You would think with all their marketing that Anderson Cooper was the only one who covered Katrina….we were there, all producers were there, all my colleagues were there…but guess what? so was every one else in every news outlet in the nation!! The fact is that all the other news organizations had the dignity not to try and make a marketing experiment out of a giant catastrophe! Only one anchor wrote a book and thus collected money from Katrina. The rest of us saw the suffering and simply reported it rather than exploit it." Anderson did not write a Katrina book, thank you very much. The dreamy anchor kept a "diary." Totally different.
• Cooper needs a teleprompter, because he didn't go to law school: "Plus, unlike those on the side lines, I am the real thing - I spent 15 years in the criminal courts trying criminal cases and don’t get my information from a teleprompter…I get it from both investigation and experience."
• Cooper thinks a lot about multiple wives: "It is true….CNN does polygamy better. I will give that to them — but it is because they have so much more experience with the polygamy story than any other network. They were obsessed with it…night after night after night…even assigning multiple correspondents to the story to report only for Anderson Cooper."

I don't know — that's pretty harsh, even though Cooper's producer did throw down some fighting words. Susteren's response even drew out feelings of kinship with the CNN anchor from right-leaning internet publisher Matt Drudge. Notice how it's not "Cooper," it's "Anderson:"

Do I detect a little wistfulness in that "not my boo" headline, Matt?

[Gretawire, TVNewser]

Glamour's Dating Blogger Seeks Pimp [Struggling Writers]

The ranks of Glamour dating bloggers are nothing if not distinguished. There was tardblogger Alyssa Shelasky, whose dim-witted adventures in wannabe social climbing were amply documented here. Then there was dudeblogger Mike Cherico, fired for being a womanizing jerk who sparked an insurrection in the Glamour.com comments. Now there's Erin Meanley, pictured, who just debuted with a post about being 29 and not having a husband, already. Sigh. An even more ominous sign: In an email to friends, reproduced after the jump, Meanley explains that, now that she's a dating blogger, "I need some help with pimpage. Set me up!" Well, at least she's being honest, somewhere, about the transactional aspect of her "dating." We've redacted Meanley's email address, but no doubt she'll be combing the comments here for top-shelf prospective mates, so feel free to make like a pimp there.

Did Fox News Smear Timesman Tim Arango? [Evil Corporations In Action]

Last week, Fox News aired nasty Photoshopped pictures of two Times journalists responsible for a story about Fox losing ground among younger viewers. But it sounds like the cable network may have done much worse to another Times reporter, Tim Arango, who wrote a similar article in March. In his column for tomorrow's paper, Times media columnist David Carr recounts tales of Fox's dirty-politics-style PR tactics against journalists from his paper, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and others. One story, in particular, stands out:

Earlier this year, a colleague of mine said, he was writing a story about CNN’s gains in the ratings and was told on deadline by a Fox News public relations executive that if he persisted, “they” would go after him. Within a day, “they” did, smearing him around the blogs, he said. (I did not ask him for a comment because the information was of a private nature.)

Carr never names the colleague in question, but we hear it is media reporter Tim Arango. The facts line up: For the March 5 edition, Arango wrote a story about CNN gaining on Fox News among young viewers thanks to the Democratic presidential primary.

The day the story appeared, Jossip reported rumors that Arango "just returned to the Times after two months of 'medical leave,' which many allege may have been a stint in rehab."

Fox PR, it seems, delivered the revenge they promised Arango, and in a particularly personal form — all for basic journalistic coverage of their ratings dip. Arango once worked at the Post, and as a former member of the News Corp. tribe may have been targeted for especially harsh treatment. But the smear against him would clearly have been meant to send a message to all journalists covering Fox News, or at least those clued in enough to know what was happening, such as Arango's colleagues at the Times: any attempt at fair and balanced coverage of the network itself would be severely punished.

Fox News chief Roger Ailes, like his former boss Richard Nixon, has been running a down-and-dirty campaign against opponents who, due to self-imposed ethical constraints, feel unable to respond in kind. As more of his tactics are exposed, the question becomes whether Ailes will be pressured to rein in his PR machine, or whether his self-created enemies, like the Times, will start throwing some mud of their own.

As Carr noted in his column:

Part of me — the Irish, tribal part — admires Fox News’s ferocious defense of its guys. I work at a place where editors can make easy sport of teasing apart your flawed copy until it collapses in a steaming pile, but Lord help those outsiders who make an unwarranted or unfounded attack on me or my work. Our tactics may be different, but we, too, are strong for our posse.

A Times "posse??" Please let it involve leather chaps and boots with spurs on them, and also an alliance with a bandana-wearing Keith Olbermann.

[Times]

NBC To Buy Weather Channel, Jazz Up Coming Apocalypse [Which Way The Wind Blows]

Because global weather patterns will only get more catastrophic until the last human finally starves in a sea of sand and fire, NBC Universal is wisely buying the Weather Channel for $3.5 billion. The deal includes website Weather.com, but more exciting for NBC is surely the cable channel, carried in 97 percent of U.S. homes. Imagine the cross-promotional possibilities that will emerge as global warming engulfs both coasts, and their advertiser-coveted demographics, in slow but steady ruin!

You could bring Saturday Night Live characters onto the Weather Channel, in the mold of former SNL cast member Chris Farley when he personified El Niño (clip below).

There will surely be plenty of real-life dramatic material to draw on. Here's the latest depressing summary of the coming hellscape from Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker (attached to what was supposed to be an uplifting story about Danish windmills):

The consequences of this warming are difficult to predict in detail, but even broad, conservative estimates are terrifying: at least fifteen and possibly as many as thirty per cent of the planet’s plant and animal species will be threatened; sea levels will rise by several feet; yields of crops like wheat and corn will decline significantly in a number of areas where they are now grown as staples; regions that depend on glacial runoff or seasonal snowmelt—currently home to more than a billion people—will face severe water shortages; and what now counts as a hundred-year drought will occur in some parts of the world as frequently as once a decade.

Sounds like a ratings bonanza!

How Pixar Joined The Liberal Bandwagon [Movies]

Frank Rich of the New York Times, disappointed by Barack Obama's "small-bore" campaign since he won the Democratic nomination, has transferred his affections to a new liberal hero: Wall-E, a computer-generated cartoon of a waste-disposal robot from the brilliant animated film of the same name. It's not as much of a stretch as usual for the Times columnist to ascribe political meaning to the hit Pixar movie, as he does in today's newspaper.

The stifling corporation that serves as government in the year 2700 is a composite of McDonalds, Wal-Mart and Halliburton; the bloated humans in their floating barcaloungers represent the evolutionary destiny of a species sedated by automation, fast-food and electronic displays; and the call to save the planet could have come from Al Gore, had he the wit and computer graphics skills. Rich is not the only commentator to tease out Wall-E's political agenda: some conservatives have even called for a boycott of the movie and its merchandise.

Now it's entirely predictable that Frank Rich adopted a planet-saving robot as his fantasy presidential candidate; he loves a good pop-culture reference; and any flesh-and-blood politician, even one from central casting such as Barack Obama, can only disappoint 2008's fervent liberals. Nor are Pixar's own political leanings that surprising: the studio is run by former hippies and based in the ultra-liberal Bay Area; and the writer-director of Wall-E has a particularly worthy pedigree: his credits include the writing on Sam Mendes' anti-war drama, Jarhead.

But the success of Wall-E does still provide a useful barometer of the mood. One reason for the conservative disappointment with the movie is because Pixar is the cultural equivalent of the swing voter: despite its hippie culture, the studio has been attuned to shifting public attitudes; indeed, given the lead-time on Pixar projects, it's successfully anticipated them.

The studio's most political project before Wall-E was The Incredibles, a cartoon tale of a family of superheroes, who contend with frivolous lawsuits and the resentment of those without such talents; the 2004 movie is a not-so-disguised argument against enforced equality and political correctness, and was adopted by conservatives as a morality play of their own. This time, however, Pixar is voting Democrat.

Happy 4th [Pic Of The Day]

A photo editor at the New York Times—forced to work on a public holiday—has decided to make mischief. From a gallery of pictures of the day on the newspaper's website, here's a revealing shot of dancers preparing for the start of the Independence Day parade in Washington, DC.

Jesse Helms [And Now He's Dead]

One is told not to speak ill of the dead, and even the obit writers of this ill-mannered site usually find some praiseworthy note—Hitler was kind to animals!—in even the shabbiest of lives. But it would be dishonest to pretend that Jesse Helms was anything other than a caricature of a Southern bigot.

The long-time Republican senator from North Carolina—who died today at the age of 86—disliked using the term "gay" to describe homosexuals because "there's nothing gay about them." The Hands ad (featured here) during Helms' 1990 re-election campaign played into the most basic of white fears of black political power and racial quotas. And the cranky politico took seeming pleasure in opposing every cause dear to the liberal heart, such as foreign aid or support for the arts.

Helms—who never secured more the 55% of the vote even in conservative North Carolina—foreshadowed the Republican political strategy of the last four cycles, ever mindful of the base and content to govern with the narrowest of coalitions. The only thing that can be said of the former senator is that he recognized race-baiting became less effective over time as older conservative voters died off, and the wedge-driving politics that he so symbolized has run its course.

The latest polls put Barack Obama—amazingly—only 5 points behind in North Carolina. An ad as crude and divisive as Hands—"You needed that job," the narrator tells a white man who's just received a rejection letter—won't play so well this time.

• Helms' courtly manner and mossy drawl barely masked a hard-edged conservatism that opposed civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art. [New York Times]

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