Howard Kurtz Has a Blog

Clive James once decribed a particular best-selling bodice-ripper as like “a long conversation between two not very bright drunks”.  Howard Kurtz’s blog, in which he promotes his promotional tour for his book Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War (don’t worry, he doesn’t mean Iraq), is like a short conversation between a especially dumb goldfish and a piece of fake seaweed. 

I would much, much rather read Redstate.  I would rather stare at a pile of sand.

At the Harper’s Magazine website, Scott Horton described Kurtz as “one of the dumbest figures in print or on the airwaves”.  After reading Kurtz’s blog, I’m inclined to add “or in an oxygon-rich aptmosphere” to the list.

This must be seen to be believed. 

Saturday, October 20, 2007:

Wet and Wild

One of my favorite radio interviews was last night’s hour long chat with Jim Bohannon, who’s been holding down Larry King’s old late-night radio spot for more than two decades. Unfortunately, getting there was another story. There was a driving rainstorm that, by the time I parked a few blocks away in downtown D.C., had become a monsoon. As the minutes ticked away, I had no choice but to make a break for it, armed only with a flimsy umbrella. I was utterly drenched — my jeans were soaked through — when I stumbled into the CBS bureau. Fortunately it was radio, so nobody noticed.

Posted by Howard at 8:32 PM 0 comments

Did you want to read that?

“Wet and Wild”.  “Fortunately it was radio, so nobody noticed.”  Kill me.  Just kill me. 

October 13, 2007, from a post titled “Film at 11”: “Thanks to the magic of the Internet, my Daily Show appearance is up. (Just click on my face.)”  October 9, 2007 (“Moving on Up”), “Okay, I admit I’m checking Amazon every few hours.”

I have been reading Kurtz’s prose for all of 2 minutes and I want to punch him.

Nothing like a live audience to get your adrenaline flowing (plus the hired hands whip up applause before each segment). Jon didn’t say whether he liked the little picture of him on the back cover.

After a while on the book tour, Kurtz, the long-time media critic for the Washington Post, discovered that conservatives tend to view TV coverage of the war in Iraq as too liberal, while liberals view it as too conservative. 

Thursday, October 18, 2007

On Message

I’ve done so many book interviews that I can now anticipate every question. I know when they’res going to ask why Katie’s ratings have tanked. I know when they’re going to ask how Charlie got to be No. 1. I know when the question about Dan suing CBS is coming. Toward the end they always ask whether network news will survive. When I talk about war coverage, the conservatives ask whether the anchors have an antiwar agenda, and the liberals ask why they didn’t stand up to the administration during the rush to war. I’ve got it down to a science.

Posted by Howard at 11:04 PM 4 comments

What was Kurtz doing as media critic for the Washington Post all this time, that he didn’t already know that?  Or is it that he is so afraid of saying something original that he’d rather make himself look like a fool on his own blog?  Or is he just a fool?

Curious, I clicked on Kurtz’s kind link to an excerpt of his book at the Washington Post.

For [Brian] Williams, it all went back to Sept. 11, 2001. As a citizen, he thought on that fateful day, thank God that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell were on the team. How together we all seemed. There was something about the murderous attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that, in the eyes of the White House press corps, gave Bush a stature that could not be violated. And that was no accident. The administration’s deft use of 9/11 against its critics had created an impenetrable shield. It was political magic.

“There was something about the murderous attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon”.  Is Kurtz nuts?  Does Brian Williams appreciate having his thoughts and feelings filtered through the narration of this muppet?  More from the book:

Every day, Williams asked the question: Did Baghdad correspondent Richard Engel have any news other than another 20 Iraqi civilians killed when an IED detonated, leaving the same smoking carcasses and pathetic scenes of loved ones crying? That, Williams felt, was the problem: The horrible had become utterly commonplace. To most Americans, he believed, the war could not be more ephemeral. It was half a world away, and it required no sacrifice by those who did not have a family member in the armed forces.

It is not likely that Williams asked “the question” after the colon, the one about 20 civilians and Richard Engle,  “every day”.  What is likely: Kurtz needs an editor to take care of: colon overuse.

Recently, Digby posted a critique of Kurtz and Kurtz shot back.  Digby chronicles the event here and gets some backup from Glenn Greenwald here.  Good for Digby and Greenwald for keeping on Kurtz.  But Kurtz, it is clear, is a powder-puff, not fit to shine their shoes. 

The sad thing is that Digby and Greenwald are presences only on the internet, while Kurtz slums there, in between his vapid, brain-dead appearances on TV and radio.

October 10, 2007:

More Kurtz TV

The series hasn’t been canceled yet! I’ve been pumping REALITY SHOW around the clock. Survived GMA and Chris Cuomo, Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, and Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin Zone. On tap Thursday: CNN’s American Morning at 8:30, Keith Olbermann in the 8 pm hour, and at 11, I try to liven up the always-serious Jon Stewart. And I’m playing Hardball with Chris Matthews on Friday. Plus I have to talk to all these radio people and print reporters!

Sweet Jesus.