No Surprise Spitzer's CNN Show Garners Horrible Reviews; Ratings

It should come as no surprise that Eliot Spitzer's attempt at a television show was a failure out of the gate.

The show comes to the screen with a whole host of negatives even before one starts digging into the show. Spitzer, the former New York Governor who resigned over a prostitution scandal, is someone that few people want to hear from - particularly when it comes to issues on ethics and morals.

Yet, that's exactly what he was doing in his first show opposite Kathleen Parker.

The show aims to be something like a toned-down Crossfire, but it simply misfires.

The political discussion program, featuring the hosts Kathleen Parker, the conservative columnist, and Eliot Spitzer, the one-time governor of New York, fizzled badly in its initial outing Monday, attracting only 454,000 total viewers.

That not only left CNN far behind its main rivals — Bill O’Reilly on Fox had 3.1 million on Fox News and Keith Olbermann had 1.1 million on MSNBC – but it also trailed Nancy Grace on the HLN channel, who had 468,000 viewers.

Even worse for the new CNN program, it lost viewers from the show on just ahead of it, “John King USA,” which had 471,000 viewers. Perhaps more troubling for CNN, “Parker Spitzer” was down sharply from the show it replaced, “Rick’s List,” hosted by Rick Sanchez, who was recently ousted from CNN. And it even fell short of the show that had long occupied the 8 p.m. slot on CNN, with Campbell Brown.

CNN doesn't have many alternatives for the time slot, so they'll likely let Spitzer/Parker continue for now. After all, they just canned Rick Sanchez after his anti-Semitic outburst and Brown left the time slot because she wasn't competitive with Bill O'Reilly or MSNBC. Brown had at least been garnering 500,000 viewers. No one since has come close in that time slot for CNN.

Parker/Spitzer can't even hold their lead-in audience, and it isn't likely to get better.

Hizbullah Pissed CNN Sacked Pro-Hizbullah Journalist

Let me get out the wahambulance for Hizbullah. Hizbullah is busy complaining that CNN sacked this disgraceful "journalist".

The Lebanese militant Hezbollah has denounced CNN's decision to fire a Middle East editor for posting a note on Twitter expressing admiration for the country's late top Shiite cleric.

Octavia Nasr later apologized for her tweet in which she described Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah as "one of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot." But CNN officials said her credibility had been compromised.

Hezbollah's spokesman Ibrahim Moussawi says CNN's decision amounts to "intellectual terrorism" and reflects the West's "double standards" in dealing with the Mideast.

That Twitter posting was a glimpse into the mindset of Nasr and was all too revealing. It showed where her true interests lied.

They benefited from the fact that a CNN journalist who was responsible for setting the tone of reporting from the Middle East and on the Arab-Israeli peace process was a Hizbullah-loving sympathizer who found that Hizbullah's spiritual leader was someone who was praise-worthy when he died, even though Hizbullah is a terrorist group, is dedicated to Israel's destruction, and refuses to comply with UNIFIL disarmament.

CNN had no choice but sack Nasr because it revealed a bias that was all too prevalent in CNN reporting and the organization had a media mess on its hands if it didn't take action. Hizbullah loses a propaganda mouthpiece in the process, which is why they're pissed.

Asnine Speech Analysis of the Day

CNN tries to figure out the disconnect between President Obama's most recent speech on the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the public's reaction.

Their conclusion?

It's our fault that we didn't comprehend the speech.

President Obama's speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.

Tuesday night's speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. The Austin, Texas-based company analyzes and catalogues trends in word usage and word choice and their impact on culture.

Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence "added some difficulty for his target audience," Payack said.

He singled out this sentence from Obama as unfortunate: "That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge -- a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation's secretary of energy."

Really?

That's why Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and a whole litany of media types panned the speech?



Matthews did post-graduate work in Economics. Olbermann graduated from Cornell. So the speech was over their heads?

Those are some of the Administration's biggest media supporters, and they panned the speech because it contained nothing really new and nothing we hadn't already heard in the last 57 days. I'm not a fan of either Olbermann or Matthews, but this speech was panned across the board by people of all kinds of educational backgrounds - including those who attended Ivy League universities.

Maybe it wasn't so much how he said it but what he said - or didn't say?

You know - maybe it was the content of the speech that upset so many people.

This isn't about the audience's inability to understand the President. It is that the President's speech was lacking on the specifics and general policies that will help get the oil spill under control and make sure that BP does everything within its power to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf.

The speech was ineffective because the President wasn't offering anything that we haven't already heard from the Administration through its multiple sources.

Lou Dobbs To Run For US Senate In New Jersey?

A New York Post report indicates that Lou Dobbs, who just left CNN after spending his entire career at the cable news network, may be contemplating a run for the US Senate in New Jersey.

For years, Dobbs has dogged rumors that he was eyeing a political career. But with the conservative Gov.-elect Chris Christie poised to take control in Trenton, many Jersey political watchers feel the timing could be right for Dobbs, a self-described "Rockefeller Republican."

"This is something that has been talked about, particularly for 2012 against Senator [Robert] Menendez," said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor with Montclair State in New Jersey.

The ex-CNN anchor has two key advantages that would make him a particularly attractive candidate.

As host of a highly rated national show, Dobbs would start any race with higher-than-average name recognition.

In addition, because of his national prominence, he'd also likely be an effective fund-raiser.

Dobbs switched his party affiliation in 2006 from Republican to independent, but his views on a number of issues -- most notably for tougher border control -- have endeared him to many conservatives.

He certainly has the name recognition, but does he have the policy positions that people would support? I'm not sure of that, and I think that once people understand that he's a birther - someone who thinks that President Barack Obama isn't a US citizen qualified to be President under the US Constitution, and I think that he wouldn't be a good fit. In fact, it may be Dobbs' support for the birther conspiracy nonsense that sent CNN boss Joe Klein to give Dobbs an ultimatum - quit the nonsense on his network or quit the network. Dobbs chose to quit the network.

I would not support Dobbs on that basis, and it isn't healthy for the GOP to do so either. The GOP has seen a resurgence in New Jersey because their standard bearer, Chris Christie is a moderate who isn't pushing nonsensical conspiracy theories.

That isn't to say that Republicans might not embrace him in any event, as an outsider and someone who is independently wealthy to take on current Democrats Bob Menendez or Frank Lautenberg.

Moreover, Dobbs' position on immigration would be out of line with the liberal politics of New Jersey, which has a significant immigrant population. It is interesting that Menendez took a cheap shot at Dobbs leaving CNN by claiming that his departure was addition by subtraction, when anyone objectively looking at CNN would know that the network is in serious trouble and Dobbs was among the more watched shows on the network. In fact it's in the rear view mirror of the other news networks, and is falling behind the Travel Channel; a situation that isn't easily reversible.

For Menendez to take that kind of shot shows the allure of Dobbs running for the Senate; the Democrats know that they'd be in for a real fight. I just think it would be a real bad move on the GOP's part to embrace someone who clearly espouses conspiracy theories that are unsupportable by the facts. It's something that his Democrat opponents will latch on to and attack relentlessly because it's unsupportable; the race will not be about the issues, but about Dobbs' character and fitness for the job.

That should send warning signs to the state GOP.

It is possible that Dobbs could make a third party run, which would likely split the vote and make predicting the outcome of a race exceedingly difficult at such an early stage.