Newt Gingrich, right off the bat: Accusing Obama for “class warfare” on job creators.
We’ll be doing a low-key liveblog of tonight’s Iowa debate, airing on ABC News tonight at 9 p.m. EST. The livestream will be here, and hopefully the debate will remain fun without Herman Cain. We’ll be using the hashtag #abcdebate to cover this on Twitter. Enjoy!
This is a frustrating interview, friends. In it, Bashar al-Assad essentially denies the obvious — that there’s a bloody crackdown happening against anti-government protesters, led by the Syrian government. Example: Walters references a series of pictures showing pictures of violence — including against children. “People went from house to house,” she said. “Children were arrested. I saw those pictures.” Assad’s response: “To be frank with you, Barbara, I don’t believe you.” Like we said, supremely frustrating. Assad says that “terrorists” are behind the months-long violent crackdown, rather than Syrian troops. source
Via Mediaite, part of the Gabby Giffords interview. To have come so far in such a short time is amazing. Giffords says she will not return to Congress until she is “better.” But the way she jokes with her husband Mark, as well as with Diane Sawyer (whose hair she fixes), definitely shows that she’s far closer to “better” than anyone could’ve imagined.
There is a crass angle to the NBC News interview, guys. Remember all, it’s sweeps month. Pick your poison — the feel-good story or the feel-bad story?
ABC-7 News in the Bay Area is providing an aerial livestream of the Occupy Oakland protests and march. It’s pretty engrossing, you should most definitely check it out — and hats off to the helicopter pilots working hard to get this quality (and socially important) footage.
It has a lot to do with Romney. He is rising as more and more Republicans come to the conclusion that the Republican Party has found its Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor running on competence, not ideology.George Will • Discussing the rise of Herman Cain on ABC’s “This Week,” and in the process dropping a welt-producing comment about Mitt Romney — a comparison to Michael Dukakis, perhaps the weakest presidential candidate in the past 25 years. Expect this line to crop up again during the campaign, because it’s not a flattering comparison, especially coming from the guy who doesn’t like blue jeans. source (via • follow)
Big kudos to ABC World News Now host Dan Kloeffler. Not only did he come out while broadcasting on-air — itself an incredibly courageous thing to do — but he did it in a casual, nonchalant way. No big, dramatic announcement; Kloeffer just off-handedly dropped it during a story about actor Zachary Quinto. “He’s thirty-four, I’m thirty-five,” Kloeffler said about Quinto, who also just came out. “I’m thinking, I can lose my distraction about dating actors for that one.” Kloeffler didn’t present it as a game-changing fact of outsized importance, but just a part of who he is. This is the kind of thing that helps encourage — however slightly — mainstream acceptance of different sexualities, even. source
That’s different from being a content company, although Yahoo is that, too (see Associated Content, which is a giant content farm). While the company under Carol Bartz had a lot of trouble figuring out which direction it wanted to go, killing or neutering popular products along the way, this move effectively shows where Yahoo plans to put its eggs in the future — with journalism. ABC News, which has a reasonably strong online presence, nonetheless doesn’t have one as diverse as Yahoo does. This is what AOL HuffPo has been trying to do to some degree, but Yahoo’s reporting is starting to show some serious chops that might make it better-suited for such a merger. They’ve broken at least one major story — the University of Miami’s booster scandal — and have put a ton of emphasis on quality news. Yahoo has needed focus for a while. This could be it, guys.
In her last days, my mother occasionally became confused....
”The reporter...
I can’t add much to what’s already been (and will be) ...
One of the perks of being an early employee...
Over the last 90 days, the Digg...
#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
Jake Tapper is officially awesome. So, that’s it. We stumbled upon Jake Tapper’s Wikipedia page and are officially fanboys. This guy drew a cartoon for Roll Call called “Capitol Hell.” He dated Monica Lewinsky before she was infamous. He wrote a book about Jesse Ventura. Officially considering starting up a fuckyeahjaketapper page. A question to our politically-minded Tumblrs out there: Have you ever seen any of this man’s cartoons? We can’t find them online, and we’re super-curious. (above photo from Tapper’s 2007 interview with Fred Thompson, via Flickr)
She’s going to comment on missing persons cases to give people the perspective from the family. This is pretty good, because this is a unique perspective that she can do well — and it’s one that is often overlooked. What’s better is that she’s willing to do this, despite what happened to her in the past. But one has to wonder if this gives into the tabloidy nature some of these stories fall into. That said, it will certainly be interesting to see what she has to say, and hopefully adding her voice to those kinds of stories will help people see the bigger picture. source
Award for dumbest headline of the year goes to ABC News
This one’s pretty bad too, though.
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
