It's no big news that Keith Olbermann hates Bill O'Reilly, and vice versa, but the Washington Post today reports that the feud between the newsmen has gone from funny to scary, sparking some very real insidious scheming at O'Reilly's employer, Fox News.
If you've foolishly been watching Fox News in recent weeks, perhaps you've noticed that O'Reilly et al have been ramping up their attacks on General Electric, parent company of Olbermann's network, MSNBC. Veiled as outrage over GE's business dealings with Iran (and thus terrorists), Fox's finger wagging was culminated by O'Reilly declaring that if he had a kid killed in Iraq, he'd "blame the likes of [GE CEO] Jeffrey Immelt." Typical Fox fearmongering, right? Wrong, according to the Post, which claims that Fox's negative portrayals of GE are just the network's way of attempting to get MSNBC to rein in Olbermann's nightly attacks on O'Reilly. If MSNBC agrees to reprimand Olbermann, says the article, Fox will make its negative coverage of GE go away. Neat, huh?
Despite it all, The O'Reilly Factor is still the most-watched cable news show on television.
Click through for one of Olbermann's many blistering attacks on "Bill-O."
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FOX NEWS GROWS STRONGER "Tribune Co has reached agreement in principle to sell Newsday to News Corp for about $580 million in what would be a joint venture, according to a source familiar with the matter. Under the terms of a deal, Newsday would be part of a joint venture with News Corp's New York Post and other News Corp assets, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. News Corp would own most of the company and Tribune would keep a stake of less than 5 percent."
IS COURIC LEAVING? WHO CARES? "O.K., out there: Raise your hand if you've caught any of the Big Three's evening news in the past year? I know I haven't. Like most folks I know, I'm not home when it airs at 6:30 p.m., and even if I was, I've already had my fill of news from Google, Yahoo!, or the news alerts from the Washington Post that show up on my e-mail. There's a reason why only about 25 million folks get their news from the Big Three news readers each night, according to Nielsen. 'It's appointment television in a world where no one gets their news by appointment any longer,' says Brad Adgate, senior vice-president at advertising buyer Horizon Media."
Chick flicks are in trouble, according to The New York Times. Recent additions to the "romcom" market — 27 Dresses, The Holiday, PS, I Love You — have proved to be shit compared to the bad bitches of the 90s like Sleepless in Seattle and Notting Hill, so Hollywood's out to save the genre! How? By casting cute women in funny/awkward/romantic situations to which men can also relate.
For instance, the upcoming Isla Fisher vehicle, Confessions of a Shopaholic, sure sounds like a chick flick (that title!), but producer Jerry Bruckheimer swears it's totally not: "We all have spending habits, a lot of us do." Good point: idiotic conspicuous consumption is genderless.
And what about Julie & Julia, the seemingly estrogen-spiked cryfest described thusly: " … a complex exercise … based on both the life of the cooking enthusiast Julia Child and the 2005 book of the same title by Julie Powell, who, stuck in place as an office temp as she approached 30, spent a year whipping up every recipe in Ms. Child’s 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking.'" Strictly for the ladies, right? Wrong! Says one of the film's producers: "We hope this will be a movie for everyone who likes eating." That means the models will absolutely hate it, but they hate everything, so you can't listen to them. Men love to eat, and so do many women. Winner!
Chill, Times, the chick flicks are gonna be fine. Now run along and fill another page with obvious drivel marketed as analysis.
The Los Angeles Times, a paper that often struggles to maintain a sense of status, is today running an article whose main point is as follows: " … Too many [TV stations] are running shows that resemble the same stuff everyone else is doing. … The marketplace has gotten more competitive for nonfiction product … " This from the paper of record in Hollywood, obviously forgetting that the only things staler than reality programs are 1,100 word articles sussing out the decline of reality programs. Why has the public not yet given up on newspapers? Oh, wait …
The LA Times' bitchassness is showing.
New evidence proves that a recent LAT article accusing industrious mouth breather Diddy of knowing in advance of an assassination attempt on rival Tupac Shakur was based on fabricated documents.
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