THE DAILY BLADE: Inconvenient Truths
† The New York Times speculates that if Jimmy Kimmel hangs on to his job as host of ABC’s late night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live” after his presentation to advertisers and the media at the fall 2009 “upfronts” it’s only because of luck, talent or “great blackmail photos of the network executives”:
Mr. Kimmel … delivered a withering, blistering monologue that took direct aim at ABC, its potential advertisers and his NBC late-night rival, Jay Leno. The assembled advertisers received his performance with a mixture of uneasy laughs and the occasional gasp.
[I]n a “Jerry Maguire”-like moment of clarity, Mr. Kimmel said, “Everything you’re going to hear this week is” nonsense. “Let’s get real here. Let’s get Dr. Phil-real here. These new fall shows? We’re going to cancel about 90 percent of them. Maybe more.”
If ABC is so confident in its new fall shows, he asked, why is it announcing them at the same time it announces the midseason shows that will replace those fall shows? “This show ‘Shark Tank’ has the word tank right in the title,” he said.
To the ABC advertisers, Mr. Kimmel said, “Every year we lie to you and every year you come back for more. You don’t need an upfront. You need therapy. We completely lie to you, and then you pass those lies onto your clients.” …
In closing, Mr. Kimmel said, “I think all our shows are going to work this year. I really do.” He paused. “I don’t, really.”
† Syndicated columnist and FOX News pundit Susan Estrich admits that “half the people I run into every day” can’t stand first lady Michelle Obama:
"Do you really like her?" they say in a whisper. "Leaves me cold," I hear all the time. "Ice cold." I should add that most of the people saying these things are Democrats, and many of them are women who will be the first to admit that they might actually have a lot in common with her. …
Do I just know a lot of weird outliers? Maybe.
But what about all those people in markets who sidle up and say the same thing? What about the flight attendants who tell me how much they like him, but that she makes their skin crawl?
Estrich is at a loss to explain why people “resent” MO and think she’s “pushy” and “power hungry” so she blames “unconscious discrimination based on unspoken assumptions about how powerful women are supposed to act.”
The Stiletto thinks Estrich is over-analyzing. Although she dismisses MO’s declaration that she had never been proud of her country until her husband’s run for the presidency being something she said “a long time ago,” it still rankles many. So too all those dour, depressing stump speeches she gave about what a hellhole America is. She came off (sixth item) as bitter, resentful - and yes, angry. Many could not understand her ingratitude and ungraciousness, considering the opportunities for upward mobility she and her husband were given. It’s going to take a long, long time to live down that image.
† Even though they have the presidency, both houses of Congress and 28 out of 50 governorships, Dems and libs remain inexplicably angry and disaffected, whereas Repubs and conservatives - especially those 65 and older - defy all expectations and continue to be as happy as they ever were, according to a new Pew Research Center telephone survey of 2,969 adults conducted in March and April, reports LiveScience:
Past studies have found that happiness is partly inherited, that Republicans are happier than Democrats, and that old men tend to be happier than old women.
And even before the economy got nasty, seniors were found to be generally happier than Baby Boomers. …
Many people 65 and older retired and downsized their lifestyles before the economy imploded, according to Pew analysts. Most aren't raising kids and many are not so worried about being laid off. …
If you're thinking that Republicans are happy just because they perhaps make more money, that does not seem to be the case. The study that found Republicans to be happier than Democrats also showed that it held true even after adjusting for income.
Bonus Item: Professor Robert G. Picard, a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, explains “why journalists deserve low pay,” even though they “like to think of their work in moral or even sacred terms,” despite not having “a unique base of knowledge such as professors or electricians” and merely “distributing the knowledge of others” using standardized “processes and procedures for news gathering [that] are guided by standardized news values” which produce “extraordinary sameness and minimal differentiation” across the media landscape.
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