Kara Swisher was on The Bullwark podcast and, as always, spoke frankly. Here are her thoughts on some media personalities:
On the Maggie Haberman imbroglio: “I think one of the problems that Maggie has is she’s … literally covering the most hated and reviled and also beloved — depending on where you’re sitting — person. And there’s no winning in that case. Secondly, I don’t think that I see a lot of that commentary around the men that cover (Trump) exact;ly the same way … she’s become something of a lightening rod ..”
On her recent Chris Cuomo interview: “I think (Cuomo) was relieved to be, like, pressed like that … ‘oh, finally, someone just says it aloud, this was a shitty ethical thing I did, — to my face’ … he did have a very good point is that everyone loved it until they hated it. I bet he didn’t get much pushback within CNN to what he was doing … here’s one thing that I thought was super weak was — if I thought there’d be a grudge, and I kept saying, ‘what about the thing itself, not the reaction, so you’d do it no matter what and if you didnt get pushback you’d think it was a great thing?’ (Chris Cuomo) didnt have a point of view whether what he did was wrong or not, the actual thing, not the reaction … he didn’t have any regrets, you could hear it in his voice.”
On Christian Walker, son of Herschel: “That young man needs a hug. As a mother of 4, that man needs a big hug, for an extended period of time … (Christian Walker on TikTok) talks about absent fathers, almost every other couple of screen fests he does … unfortunately, in a lot of ways …these social media tools provide us with the inside of families … and the people who arent being heard by their parents — in this case, Herschel Walker — this is the way that he’s talking to him.”
On Elon Musk: “I mean I think he very much styles himself after (Tony Stark) … he loves shitposting … its one of his release valves … Twitter’s a very small business, a shitty business … I think what he’s done around SpaceX is astonishing … there’s very clear daddy issues there … brilliant and so restless, also, a bit of Aspergers (syndrome), you can see it if you’ve spent any time with him.”
“Only Herschel Walker—arguably the worst Republican Senate candidate of the worst crop of Republican Senate candidates in history—could fail to capitalize on what is, otherwise, a moment built for the GOP. On Monday, over the course of a few crazy hours, the already embattled Walker was thrust into two of the biggest crises of his campaign. First, The Daily Beast reported that Walker—who has billed himself as a Christian family man but had already acknowledged having four children outside of his marriage—had paid for a woman to have an abortion in 2009. Shortly thereafter, his 23-year-old son, Christian Walker—a rising right-wing media star himself—tweeted that his father had abused him and his mother. It wasn’t the first time that Herschel Walker’s hypocrisy had threatened to undo his campaign. Earlier this summer he acknowledged—amid unrelated reports about his business failures and that he’d lied about his law enforcement credentials—having at least four children by women he was not married to. As New York’s Ed Kilgore observed, these scandals tarnished Herschel Walker’s carefully cultivated self-image as a self-sacrificing man who used his faith to overcome a number of hurdles, including mental illness which had led to past violent behavior. On Monday, it felt like that house of cards finally came crashing down: Herschel Walker’s presentation as a humble man of faith looks increasingly like a sham … Herschel Walker threatened to sue The Daily Beast—though not his son Christian, whom he tweeted he ‘loves no matter what’—for defamation on Monday evening and claimed he would be filing suit on Tuesday morning. That has yet to happen, a suggestion that Herschel Walker and his campaign may have gotten cold feet based on the possibility of discovery—or that they never intended to do anything but just wanted to get the threat into headlines. In any case, the story seems airtight: The Daily Beast has literal receipts and a ‘get well soon’ card from Herschel Walker.” (TNR)
“On Monday night, inside the upscale Parisian restaurant L’Avenue at Saks in midtown Manhattan, MSNBC President Rashida Jones hosted an intimate dinner to celebrate Alex Wagner. The glitzy event was attended by some of the most elite names in media, including MSNBC host Chris Hayes, Vanity Fair Editor-In-Chief Radhika Jones, former White House press secretary-turned-MSNBC host Jen Psaki, the New York magazine writer Olivia Nuzzi, and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza, among others. They were greeted by champagne and treated to a three-course dinner, which I am told featured delicious French fries and concluded with a memorable riff on campfire s'mores for dessert. Jones had called the group together to salute Wagner, who in mid-August took over four nights of the all-important 9pm hour, which was previously hosted by Rachel Maddow. ‘We’re so happy to have you back in the family and could not be more excited to celebrate you,’ Jones said as she toasted ‘Alex Wagner Tonight.’ But, from a ratings perspective, Wagner's show has been anything but a success. And while the matter has been whispered about in certain circles of industry wonks, it has surprisingly received little attention in the press. In September, on evenings ‘Alex Wagner Tonight’ aired, MSNBC saw a stunning year-over-year drop from 2021, when Maddow hosted. In the key 25-54 advertising demo, Wagner's show lost 50% of Maddow's audience, sinking from an average in 2021 of 304,000 demo viewers to 151,000 in 2022. And in total viewers, the numbers were down 34%, from 2.4 million to 1.6 million.” (Oliver Darcy/ Reliable Sources)
“As I mentioned Thursday, money is always a factor in these situations, and (Trevor) Noah makes millions as a top-grossing touring comic, with lucrative specials like the one he filmed Friday in Toronto for Netflix. But it’s not like there was bad blood at Comedy Central. McCarthy and Noah have had a good relationship and a pretty open dialogue, according to two sources close to the show. (Comedy Central and Noah’s reps declined to comment.) According to one well-placed source, when McCarthy gained oversight of the network in 2019, there were two years left on Noah’s eight-figure-a-year deal. McCarthy quietly extended it three additional years, with a series of options potentially going through 2025. The most recent two-year option was triggered by McCarthy this past June, which should have taken Noah through the 2023-24 season. (There was a one-year option left after that, which I’m told McCarthy likely would have picked up as well.) As is customary, the deal included pay increases with each pickup, so Noah ultimately would have been paid in the same neighborhood as his late-night peers in broadcast TV. But it wasn’t a secret that Noah, who was already rich and a big star in his native South Africa when he joined The Daily Show in 2014 as a correspondent, struggled to balance his other endeavors with shooting a talk show in New York four nights a week. In fact, during the lunch last week, and at a separate dinner during the summer, McCarthy had discussed with Noah possible ways to make The Daily Show’s schedule less onerous. Options included shooting four episodes in three days, or having certain correspondents take over nights here and there. Remember, The Daily Show went on a summer hiatus in 2021; Jimmy Kimmel has taken the past few summers off, and that didn’t stop ABC from re-upping him another three years. These late-night guys are valuable faces of their networks beyond just the shows they host, and given the declining TV ecosystem, it’s really hard to make new stars. So, if Noah was under contract, why would McCarthy let him go? Good luck keeping a big star against his will, especially if Noah’s agency, CAA, gets involved.” (Puck)
“Lynn, who was famously born to a coal miner in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, in 1932 and gave birth to four of her six children with her husband, Oliver, known as ‘Doolittle,’ by the time she was 19, has meant many things to country music. She was insistent on writing her own songs at a time when even the genre’s closest thing to a feminist anthem, ‘It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,’ was written by a man. She was adamant about being an entertainer and reframing the idea of what that could look like: not only a man in a suit (or, now, a trucker hat and jeans) but a woman wielding a guitar and directing her own band. And perhaps most importantly, she wrote true stories ripped from real rural life about what it meant to be a woman: the red letter of divorce, the freedom of birth control, the desire to clock a feisty husband who is philandering around town and the refusal to cater to his drunken desire to get laid when he stumbles home. That fearless path birthed everyone from Miranda Lambert to Mickey Guyton to Margo Price, Carly Pearce, Kelsey Waldon, Musgraves, and everyone in between. She also proved that fearless truths could sell: 24 of Lynn’s songs were No. 1 singles. But what made Lynn work within the Nashville Establishment — and made her resonate so strongly across the country — was that all of this subversive stuff lived alongside stories of country hams and bleeding fingers in the coal mine and true Kentucky girls who weren’t ashamed of their accents or upbringings. In fact, they were damn proud of it because Lynn was proud of it. The movie about that life and raisin’, Coal Miner’s Daughter, would be nominated for an Oscar, with the album of the same name transforming Lynn into a full-scale star following its 1971 release. She became the first woman to win Entertainer of the Year at the CMAs and, in 1973, the first country artist to appear on the cover of Newsweek.” (NYMag)
“Ezra Miller did not, to put it mildly, invoke their right to remain silent. This past March, the actor was arrested in a tiki bar called Margarita Village in Hilo, Hawaii, after shouting profanities, spitting in a patron’s face, and grabbing a microphone from a woman singing karaoke to ‘Shallow’ from A Star Is Born. Miller claimed to have been accosted by a Nazi and to have evidence. In fact, one of the first things you hear the actor say in the three-minute police body-cam video that circulated after the arrest is something the officers had likely never heard from a disorderly dive bar patron before: ‘I film myself when I get assaulted for NFT crypto art.’ Once outside, Miller—sweaty and disheveled in a black suit jacket, burgundy pants, and a red tie—barks at the cops to state their full names and badge numbers. When one attempts to search Miller’s pockets, the actor says twice, rapid-fire, ‘I’m transgender nonbinary. I don’t want to be searched by a man.’ After being called ‘sir,’ the actor responds, ‘That is an act of intentional bigotry and a technical hate crime.’ Miller, whose pronouns are they/them, registers their objection to being ‘unlawfully persecuted for a crime of no designation,’ says they have preexisting nerve damage from police handcuffs, and expands on the Nazi’s assault. ‘You should have told us that instead of running away,’ an officer replies placidly. ‘We could have took care of everything real quick. But you wanted to play the game.’ When the police empty Miller’s pockets, they find styrofoam Nerf bullets and place them in a plastic bag, along with the single accessory linking the person in cuffs to the movie that their acclaimed career, as well as $200 million of Warner Bros.’s money, is riding on: a ring emblazoned with their DC Comics superhero character. By now, Miller seems to have burned out their rage. ‘The Flash ring means a lot to me,’ the actor says quietly. ‘It’s very valuable.’” (VF)
“Fans have been theorizing for years, but now clips from the new movie Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! appear to confirm it — the character Velma Dinkley is attracted to women. ‘It honestly did not occur to [me] that we were doing something so groundbreaking until right now,’ the movie's director, Audie Harrison, told NPR in an email. ‘While writing and directing this, I just set out to have fun with the comedy of an awkward teenage crush.’ He added, ‘I actually thought it was a bigger deal for Velma's character that she is in love with the villain of the movie. The fact that she is a girl is just... well, a fact. That being said, it does feel great to be a part of normalizing representation, especially with such a well-known franchise like Scooby-Doo!’ The animated movie, which was released for purchase on digital platforms Tuesday, includes a new character, the head of a costume crime syndicate named Coco Diablo. The object of Velma's infatuation, the Mystery Inc. member's glasses fog up and cheeks flush as she swoons in multiple scenes.” (NPR)
“And The Onion, the long-running satirical news site, filed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court in support of Anthony Novak, who was charged in 2016 with disrupting police functions after he created a Facebook page parodying the website of his local police department in Parma, Ohio. Novak was found not guilty, and sued the department as well as the city for violating his civil rights, but an appeals court ruled against him; his attorneys have asked the Supreme Court to take up his case. In its eighteen-page brief, The Onion argued that the case against Novak was a threat against its own business model, defended the importance of parody and freedom of speech, and referred to the Supreme Court as ‘total Latin dorks.’” (CJR)