Cynical Nation

yes, why is this front-page news? God...CBS News with KATIE Couric...CBS NEWS with Danny Rather....CBS NEWS with Wally Cronkite.

The announcement was greeted at my office with high-fives all around.

But seriously: What do you think about Mandisa being voted off of American Idol? Can anyone honestly say that Bucky Covington is a better performer or vocalist than any of last night's bottom three?

Mandisa was no doubt better than Bucky overall, but she had a crap night Tuesday, for whatever reason. That one bad night proved fatal.

I missed all of AI this week. From what I understand, I missed nada.

Mrs Feathers says it is all about the skin tight jeans Mandisa has been wearing on stage lately: "...it was just too disturbing to watch anymore."

For the record, the featherless family liked Mandisa's vocal skills a lot and we both felt that she looked very good when properly dressed and styled.

"I missed all of AI this week. From what I understand, I missed nada."

Second worst Idol show ever...topped only by last week's.

Looking forward to Kellie Pickler singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" next week.

"Looking forward to Kellie Pickler singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" next week."

Seriously? That sounds...awesomely awful.

I have noticed recently that 'Idol' has become the rage with highly educated people. Will Katie have the same effect? Don't let me down, please.

"Seriously? That sounds...awesomely awful."

Combination of idle speculation and wishful thinking...

Will not let you go, let me go
Will not let you go let me go
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
Calamari, calamari, calamari let me go
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me

I am fascinated that NBC chose to go older with Meredith Vieira. And I read somewhere that it was because NBC is still smarting from the backlash of Jane Pauley's ousting. Which I think is amazing since I didn't think television remembered things from 5 minutes ago let alone, how long ago was that?

Now instead of pitching softball questions to celebrities, Katie can pitch softball questions to politicians.

If she does another one of those colonoscopie specials, though, I recommend they turn it into a pay-per-view event. They'll make a killing.

I kinda like Camille Paglia's recent remarks on the subject of Katie Couric and AAR as well;

"Culture critic Camille Paglia, who calls herself a Democrat, doesn't have much nice to say about media icons...

...Paglia's thesis was that civilization was created by men rebelling against the forces of nature, as personified by women.

"If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts," Paglia told an interviewer in 1995.

She packed the upstairs of Borders West last year when she read and discussed poems from her best-seller "Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's Best Poems."

Media, schmedia: In the interview this week, Paglia was in the mood to take shots at publications and pundits on the liberal-to-left end of the media spectrum.

• The New Yorker: Although she has a weakness for the cartoons, she calls the writing "glossy" and says there is a "slipperiness" in the way articles are packaged. "I despise the New Yorker. ... I perceive the agenda underneath it. ... I don't respect it and I think the feeling is mutual. The New Yorker ignores me and I ignore it. It's been going on a very long time."

• The New York Times: It had a glory period in the 1970s, when she never missed a day reading it, but eventually she grew disillusioned. "Their political agenda became very slick. ... I really object to the distortion of journalism by ideology, either overt or covert." The writing? "Upper middle class comfortable elitist liberalism."

• Hollywood: It has the same problem, she said. "It's the reason my party, the Democratic Party, is in such bad shape. It's because of the insularity and the arrogance of those views."

• Al Franken: "Good lord! I want to fall asleep. Narcolepsy."

• Air America: It isn't even broadcast in Philadelphia because of low ratings. "It's even slower than NPR. Like a record being played at the wrong speed."

• Terry Gross: "Oh god. Awful. I never listen to her show." Gross broadcasts "Fresh Air" from a studio a couple of blocks from where Paglia teaches. "She is such a PC queen that when I first came on the scene in the early '90s with 'Sexual Personae,' she refused to have me on the show."

• Katie Couric: (Laughs) "I was on that show once. Katie Couric is such a little hypocrite." She says it's amazing that "in America, you would consider a person without the slightest news experience to occupy the chair of Walter Cronkite! Apparently that is what is going to happen at CBS."

Paglia added, "I don't watch Katie Couric for a second. Not for a microsecond."

Paglia reads her city's paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, for its local news, but even though she generally shares its political views, she knocks its ideology. "It's even worse than the Times."

She also goes to the Web for her news, first looking at the Drudge Report, then checking CNN.com, the BBC and the New York Times.

But mainly she loves to listen to talk radio, she said, even when the politics is different from hers.

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do great radio, Paglia says.
"People on the liberal side, people on my side, have not mastered that medium yet and they need to figure out what it is. They are out of touch with the mass audience, that's for sure. If there is any sign of the problems with my party, it is that."

By Samara Kalk Derby
The Capital Times
April 7th, 2006

http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/topstories/index.php?ntid=79336&ntpid=1