The Washington Post Company’s Desperation Is Showing [Media Crack]

In your nubilous Tuesday media column: the WaPoCo’s nervous about Kaplan, Seth Godin to reap more revenue from his followers, AARP Magazine is the king of all magazines, and a newspaper is bringing back a formerly scrapped section. Unheard of! More »

Christiane Amanpour: Too Brunette, Persian For TV? [Bias]

There is some controversy over Christiane Amanpour taking over ABC’s This Week. Longtime Washington Post critic Tom Shales, for example, is upset that she hates Israel and has bad hair.

Now, normally, there’s nothing wrong with Tom Shales. He’s become a kind of boring TV critic, and being merely “kind of boring” instead of “actively terrible” at the Washington Post is actually doing pretty well for yourself. His SNL book was great and I am looking forward to his ESPN book.

But it is increasingly apparent that he brokers no dissent in television figures when it comes to the subject of Israel, and he also has a really nasty tendency to suspect non-Jews with family ties to the Middle East of bias. Like, did you know that Helen Thomas is criticizes Israel because her parents were Syrian immigrants (like three hundred years ago)? And Amanpour—certainly sounds French, but she’s actually half-Persian.

This is over the line, really. Amanpour is anti-Israel because 60 people joined a Facebook group and she’s from (pre-Islamic Revolution) Iran? Ugh.

And then Tom made some sexist cracks in his livechat today.

During his Washington Post chat today about his column, Shales called Amanpour “one of the most over-rated and hyped personalities of our day” and then added: “neither you nor I has stooped to mentioning that hair of hers — yipe. What’s the deal with that, as David Letterman might say.” He also wondered whether ABC will “try to turn Amanpour into Little ms Politics.”

I… I don’t know what is up with her hair. It seems pretty normal to me? Besides, you know, not being blonde. To say “ooh that hair” is mildly chauvinistic, but it’s also just the sort of thing people say about people on TV, male or female. (No one ever thought Sam Donaldson’s hair disqualified him from being taken seriously, but they did indeed make a lot of fun of it.)

But yes, “Little Ms. Politics” is pretty gross. (It also sounds like a title that a lady Fox correspondent would happily accept.)

And Glenn Greenwald makes the obvious point that no one serious (like, newspaper critic-level, not nutty blogger-level) ever really talks about the Jewishness of Wolf Blitzer or David Gregory and wonders whether or not that affects their objectivity. (Nor does anyone mention that former AIPAC employee Blitzer is also a complete moron. Seriously, there are not thoughts in his head. He just emits sounds. He is a professional sound-maker.)

I, for one, think Amanpour-to-This Week might be a dumb idea and a shame because we’re taking one of our very few television celebrities who does anything to educate television-watching Americans about foreign affairs and sentencing her to a career of eliciting canned responses from the same idiot elected officials. Seems like a waste of her experience and expertise. But she’s earned a rest from real journalism and CNN is an identity-less third-place joke, so ABC might be good for her.

Still: a prominent 52-year-old half-Persian woman is being subject to attacks based on her sex and ethnicity! Color us shocked! Time to watch Megyn Kelly explain some poll she read that told her 99% of voters spontaneously weep when they even think of Obamacare .

Mandy Moore Helps Highlight World Water Day [Photos]

Singer/actress Mandy Moore and Alexandra Cousteau, environmentalist and granddaughter of explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, takes photographs with schoolchildren to highlight the plight of people worldwide who do not have access to clean water and sanitation on Capitol Hill in Washington March 23, 2010. The international observance of World Water Day is an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro.

Scoring Sunday’s Nuptials: From Blogger to Bride in 31 Days

Blogging will inevitably keep me isolated and alone from the rest of the world forever. But in this week’s NYT Weddings & Celebrations, Weddings Expert Phyllis Nefler notes someone who blogged themselves to happy matrimony! *Cries in fetal position.*

Want a boyfriend? Start a blog! It worked for Tamara Duricka, who had her own personal Year of Magical Thinking at age 30 when she suffered two breakups and the death of her dog. Wanting “a gimmick” to “pull herself out of a funk,” she did what any early thirtysomething with creeping malaise and a career in media would.

She started a blog.

Called “31 Dates in 31 Days” (and hosted on Blogspot, natch) Duricka’s project involved going on 31 dates in 31 days. Because this was not ‘Nam, this was dating, there were rules:

Each date lasts at least 31 minutes.
Each date costs less than $31.
Dates will take place in a public setting.
No drugs.
No alcohol (Yes, seriously. None.)
No married men.
AND… date #31 (Valentine’s Day) will be a second date!

Faced with these dealbreaking set of restrictions, it should come as no surprise to any of you that the man who ultimately wiggled his way into the Valentine’s Day second date was … a Mormon. (Which reminds me, by the way: there was not nearly enough Sarah in last week’s Big Love, and I hear she is not really going to be in the show much this season. Is this true? This is really upsetting. Also, how hot is Ben getting?)

And “about 70 dates later,” Duricka found herself engaged. Julia Allison, there’s hope for you yet! Time to revive that 24 dates in 24 hours thing that never happened!

But a word of warning: despite hoping to turn her blog into a book, Duricka has yet to find a publisher. Might I suggest HarperStudio?

Back in ancient history, before people wrote anonymous blogs, they were just dudes with pen names. Like this father of the bride, who landed a column in Esquire magazine under his pseudonym of Stanley Bing while climbing the corporate ladder at CBS in his day job under his real name, Gil Schwartz. (“Since then, he has also written for newspapers, a cigar magazine, Seventeen and, most recently Fortune, current home of Bing’s monthly business column.” Man, I miss Old Media sometimes!) Anyway, he climbed the corporate ladder pretty high: he’s now the chief communications officer for CBS. Meanwhile, here I am blogging on Gawker—under the name of a Shelley Long character in a roundly-panned (but cult classic!) Lateighties movie—about Gil-Stanley Schwartz-Bing’s daughter Nina getting married to a Google employee. This, folks, is progress.

The featured couple this week is really attractive and nice-seeming. I really like the bride’s veil-hairnet thing, and they are one of those great opposites-attract pairs: she’s a Quaker girl who used to pose so her parents could sculpt her, and is now a NBC anchor who wakes up at 2:30 every morning; he, a “wild-sounding cousin” of her friend who “wore earrings, listened to hip-hop, had lots of girlfriends, did flips on snowboards and persuaded his father, Eric S. Nathan, to put a trampoline in the living room.”

Aren’t they cute? When the groom wanted to ask her parents for permission to marry her, he fooled them at first by saying he needed a loan. And the dad opened his checkbook and everything! It’s like that thing in A Bronx Tale about reaching over and opening the car door, kind of.

Maybe not. Here, read this paragraph and feel happy.

Once they started dating, Ms. Low and other friends began noticing some changes in Mr. Nathan. He invited people over for wine and cheese, for instance, instead of brownies from a box. “Erika was the first girl who made him nervous,” Ms. Low said.

May we all find the one who makes us nervous. What’s the Quaker equivalent of mazel tov? Oh, probably complete silence.

Elsewhere, some well-intentioned parents tried to set their friends’ 24-year old aspiring comedienne daughter up with their 29-year old son, but the plans backfired when she ended up with his 38-year old brother instead; if I were this couple I would see how many structures at the Lapidus family summer camps I could christen (come on, the ceramics studio?); and if I may offer a bit of constructive criticism to Alexandra Johnson, Harvard graduate-cum-”store planning analyst in Manhattan for J. Crew”: this is a photo I took of your SoHo store last year; as you can see, it is indistinguishable from a photo of my hall closet. Get your shit together, sister!

This week’s matchup:

Margaret Ashton Bensfield, Edward Matthew Sullivan

• The wedding was officiated by an Episcopal priest: +1
• The bride graduated from Vanderbilt and received a master’s degree in French from Middlebury College: +1
• The groom graduated from Duke and received an MBA from Harvard: +4
• The bride’s mother is named “Llewellyn W. Bensfield” and she is “a trustee of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation”: +2
• Both fathers are partners in Washington law firms named “Miller & Chevalier” and “Williams and Connolly”: +2

TOTAL: 10

Allison Kay Deutermann and Robert Thomas Dennis

• The bride is keeping her name: -1
• The bride graduated magna cum laude from Penn and the groom graduated magna cum laude from Harvard: +13
• The bride received a Ph.D. in English and comparative literature at Columbia: +1
• The groom received a master’s degree in creative writing from Florida State: +0 [Ed. What, no love for Keith Gessen?]
• The groom works at Bridgewater but is “also a poet whose work has appeared in the Paris Review, Fence, and Tin House”: +1
• The bride’s mother taught elementary school: +1
• The groom’s father “retired as a career counselor with the University of Phoenix” (isn’t that school online? Please tell me his dad just posted job descriptions to chat rooms!): +1

TOTAL: 16

Why are you still reading this? You should be blogging.

EVENTS: 3rd ANNUAL BET HONORS IN WASHINGTON D.C.

The 3rd Annual BET Honors was held at the Warner Theatre in Washington D.C. on Saturday night (January 16th). Whitney Houston, Queen Latifah, and Sean “Diddy” Combs were among the people that were honored at the Gabrielle Union hosted event.

The show will air on February 1 at 8pm on BET and also features performances from: Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Hudson, Mary J Blige, India.Arie, Patti LaBelle, Maxwell, Trey Songz and more.

Jessica Biel Covers US Vogue February 2010

Actress & Justin Timberlake’s on again off again girlfriend Jessica Biel wearing Ralph Lauren graces the February 2010 cover of US Vogue.  The cover was shot by Mario Testino. 

Below is a glimpse of the interview by Jonathan Van Meter:

On her parents: Her father, Jon, worked for GE for many years and ran his own business consultancy in Boulder. "He is extremely motivated and ambitious," she says. "I get those qualities from him." Her mother, Kim, grew up one of six kids in a small town a few hours southwest of Denver where Jessica and her parents both own cabins on adjoining properties. Her mother’s side of the family is part Native American: Those crazy-high cheekbones are shared by her younger brother, mother, and grandmother.

On her run of bad luck with great directors. Cameron Crowe cast her in Elizabethtown, a film that flopped on a grand scale, and David O. Russell gave her the lead in Nailed, based on Kristin Gore’s novel Sammy’s Hill, about a woman with no health insurance who gets a nail lodged in her head and goes to Washington to fight for justice. "Jess was tired of being cast as merely sultry and was more than ready to throw down for all the weird behavior a nail in the head gives her character," says Russell. "She auditioned and went for it—she is fearless." Gore (Al’s daughter), who co-wrote the screenplay with Russell, spent three months with Biel on the set in South Carolina. "I think her range is something that has yet to be discovered by the larger world," she says. "She also has this preternatural self-assurance." The production shut down because of money problems with just one thing left to shoot: the scene where Biel gets the nail shot into her head. That was in 2008, and with each passing month it grows ever less likely that her most challenging film work to date will make it to the screen. 

To read the rest of the interview visit Vogue.

Cate Blanchett: A Streetcar Named Washington D.C.

Cate Blanchett goes for a morning walk with a friend on Saturday (November 7) in Washington D.C.

The 40-year-old Aussie actress is in town performing her critically acclaimed play, A Streetcar Named Desire. Last weekend, Cate attended the opening night reception of the play held at the Kennedy Center’s Embassy of Australia in D.C.

A Streetcar Named Desire continues through Nov. 21 at the Kennedy Center. The show is sold out!

The Killer Inside Me looks like an awesome film….if your into screwing and killing (w/video)

Check out this nearly six minute trailer for the new movie, The Killer Inside Me, staring Jessica Alba, Casey Affleck and Kate Hudson. Great to see Jessica loosen up a bit, thought she was going to be the next UN embassador for something the way she’s been carrying on down in Washington DC. This movie looks like 2 hours of softcore porn, abuse of women and murder. Sounds like a killer date with Chris Brown:)

Click here to view the embedded video.

RANDOM PICS: FEFE DOBSON PERFORMS IN D.C.

Canadian pop rock star Fefe Dobson performs at the unveiling of the OMEGA official countdown clock to celebrate the 100-Day countdown to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver at the Embassy of Canada on Wednesday, November 4th in Washington, DC. Fefe’s third studio album, Joy, is expected to drop on March of 2010.

Jay-Z Announces 2010 North American Tour Dates

Young Jeezy will open; tickets go on sale November 13.
By MTV News staff

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Jay-Z


Photo: Larry Busacca/ Getty Images

Mere hours after Jay-Z rocked the MTV Europe Music Awards in Berlin, he announced the North American dates for his 2010 BP3 Tour via a press release from promoter Live Nation. The tour will begin on February 22 in Houston, with more dates to be announced soon.

Young Jeezy is scheduled to open all dates on the tour, tickets for which go on sale beginning November 13.

The first leg of the tour is still under way, with dates in Fresno, California (Saturday), Los Angeles (Sunday), Austin, Texas (Tuesday) and Champaign, Illinois (November 12).

The second leg will make stops in Dallas; New Orleans; Atlanta; Greensboro, North Carolina; Washington, D.C.; Boston; Pittsburgh; St. Louis; Indianapolis; Denver; Los Angeles; and more, according to the press release. Additional day of show and on-sale information will be announced shortly for stops in East Rutherford, New Jersey; Uniondale, New York; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Detroit.

Citi cardmembers will have access to presale tickets beginning Tuesday through Citi’s Private Pass Program, and will also have access to VIP Ticket Packages.

Jay-Z‘s 2010 North American tour dates, according to Live Nation:
» — 2/22 Houston @ Toyota Center
» — 2/23 Dallas @ American Airlines Center
» — 2/25 New Orleans @ New Orleans Arena
» — 2/27 Atlanta @ Philips Arena
» — 2/28 Greensboro, North Carolina @ Greensboro Coliseum Complex
» — 3/3 Washington, DC @ Verizon Center
» — 3/7 Norfolk, Virginia @ Scope Arena
» — 3/11 Boston @ TD Garden
» — 3/16 Pittsburgh @ Mellon Arena
» — 3/19 St. Louis @ Scottrade Center
» — 3/20 Indianapolis @ Conseco Fieldhouse
» — 3/22 Denver @ Pepsi Center
» — 3/24 San Jose, California @ HP Pavilion
» — 3/26 Los Angeles @ Staples Center

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