I’m supposed to do Donny Deutsch’s show (with Linda Stasi) later today regarding Bernie Goldberg’s 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. And, yes, I should be ashamed of myself for giving this unimportant exercise in unjournalism more publicity. The nice folks at CNBC spared me reading the thing and sent me a nice summary by email. All Goldberg is doing is taking the most basic trick of soft news editors, unnews editors — that is, city magazines, feature sections, talk shows: He’s making a meaningless list and having a meaningless debate about it. But his list isn’t just meaningless. It’s just mean. Oh, I also hold some of his choices in less than high esteem. But what Goldberg is doing here is lumping together people who are truly hateful (terrorists) with people who don’t agree with him. He’s holding his own cable TV shoutfest without having the other side on to shout back. It’s silly. But what’s even sillier is that he uses this to pontificate about how he thinks America should be run. SpeakSpeak is giving him hell for it. But I like Jon Stewart’s response to his pompous prudery best:
Goldberg: Once upon a time, not too many years ago, a drunk in a bar wouldn’t use the f-word. Now-he may be your pal-but Chevy Chase goes to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC at a gala where people are wearing tuxedos-and-gowns and calls the president of the United States a dumb blank.
Stewart: Once upon a time, Thomas Jefferson f**ked slaves.
Perspective, people.
LATER: Well, I hope the appearance goes better than this:
John Davison, editor at 1UP.com, deserves kudos for having the guts to walk off of the set of The Big Idea (CNBC) when it became evident that he’d been tricked into appearing on a show designed to do nothing but bash video games. It takes balls to walk off a show like that when things go sour because of manipulation instead of honest debate. It also takes more than a little self-respect. The nice thing about being a member of the media, though, is that you can still get your opinions out when you’re comments are edited from existence by a two-faced TV broadcast.
Here’s Davison’s saga.
AFTERWARDS: Bernie sure comes off as the angry, nasty, self-important, humorless prig. He went after Linda Stasi, who was very nice, and played the paranoid victim with Donny Deutsch. It’s on tonight at 10p, if the Supremes don’t preempt it.
OH, AND: My first point: America isn’t screwed up.
: HUH: Well, now I have no idea what’s happening. Deutsch has an entire show on polygamy.
