Columnist Perils, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #131
June 7, 2011 Arthur Tebbel 9 Comments
Dear Art,
We all know the life of an Internet columnist is pretty glamorous. With your unmatched access to people of fame and influence, to say nothing of the incredible cachet it provides with the opposite sex. It can’t all be free meals at five star restaurants and partying with Hollywood starlets, surely there must be some perils associated with this gig. What don’t you like about your job?
-Link Hogthrob, The Muppet Show
Link,
Ugh, fictional pig puppet you have no idea. Some weeks you write a column and then your entire premise slowly unravels over the course of a week until, six days after publication, it turns out you were basically 100 percent wrong. There isn’t a lot to take solace in after that. Even when The Daily Show does a bit very similar to your first paragraph, a real “great minds think alike” moment can be ruined when something like that happens. The jokes can work but it’ll never make the hypothetical compilation book (call me publishers).
I suppose some of this is self-inflicted. The crush of weekly deadlines combined with a refusal to repeat topics can lead to some tricky situations. Chris and I covered health insurance reform before anyone used the phrase “death panels.” That story went on another six months and was consistently hilarious and there was nothing we could do. I’m not certain I haven’t done this topic before. It’s pretty hard to search the old documents folder for this topic. If you think you’ve read this before I’m awfully sorry. Maybe next week something that isn’t sports will catch my attention. Rejected topics for this week included: LeBron James: Best Athlete on Earth, Second Best Player on His Own Team, and Who on Earth Could Root for Boston Over Vancouver?
It isn’t that bad though. There are two big trade shows this week that might pay off for next week. The Electronic Entertainment Expo and Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference both have a pretty good history of producing some mockable products. Blake Lively seems to be having trouble deciding if pictures on the Internet are really of her. Maybe she can start dating Anthony Weiner. I wish I had a Green Lantern joke here for her. Maybe someone will come up with one in the comments. I mean at the very least she’s having an awfully hard time escaping people’s sight.
anthony weiner
June 7, 2011 - 4:12 pm
Who is Blake Lively? Is she hot? I need to know right now..
Doug Abramson
June 7, 2011 - 8:03 pm
Wait. Link’s not real?!
Bill Mulligan
June 8, 2011 - 5:19 am
Seriously, Arthur, despite the much merry fun I’ve had this past week, this was a good column. Kudos.
As for Weiner, all the sympathy I’ve been starting to develop at the sight of a man brought low by his own foolishness dissipated when I saw this–http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/06/weiner-flashback-i-was-the-victim-of-this-.html
Knowing what we now know, this is watching a narcissistic possible sociopath. At the very least, he’s an arrogant scumbag and the Democrats will be well rid of him.
John Tebbel
June 8, 2011 - 6:06 am
While the narcissist sociopaths Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld started a war for fun and profit. Yeah, it’s pretty equivalent.
Bill Mulligan
June 8, 2011 - 7:33 am
Nobody is making any claims for equivalency. But your reply illustrates one reason why politicians of all stripes feel they can get away with things; they have loyal followers who will mitigate any offense with the cries of “The other guys are worse!”, an excuse that no parent of an adolescent would accept as valid.
Let us accept that your premise that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are every bad thing you suppose of them and worse still. Water will still be wet, the sky will still be blue, and Anthony Weiner will still be a preening, self indulgent sorry excuse for a man. I can well understand why republicans would be happy to have him serve out his term as a living breathing punchline. Other than pure denial, I can;r imagine why Democrats would feel the same way.
Martha Thomases
June 8, 2011 - 12:46 pm
Anthony Weiner didn’t dump his wife while she was recovering from cancer. Anthony Weiner didn’t inform his wife that he was divorcing her at a news conference. Anthony Weiner didn’t troll for a hook-up on Craigs List. All he did was (stupidly) flirt online, and with his wife’s knowledge.
So much for equivalency.
Bill Mulligan
June 8, 2011 - 2:03 pm
And again…where exactly has anyone made the argument FOR equivalency? Talk about a strawman.
I can see where folks might prefer to change the subject but you have to do it with a bit more subtlety than that.
But hey, he’s your guy, if you willing to take anyone who is just better than Newt Gingridge, well…you’ll have little trouble jumping over THAT high hurdle.
And if this week has shown us anything it’s that one should pause a bit before declaring that Mr Weiner did not do anything. This sad story may have twists yet to come.
Bill Mulligan
June 8, 2011 - 2:52 pm
Now the NYTimes is reporting that Weiner’s wife is pregnant. And a fairly broad cross section of Democratic polticians are openly calling for his resignation. At this point I’d actually rather folks backed off a bit, unless some other things come to light. You have to figure this guy is right on the razor’s edge and as much as I think he has pretty much behaved like a dick, no pun intended, he’s paid as heavy a price as anyone can. I can understand why Democrats would rather he go away (though, obviously, some will put up with anything). I do wonder though, what exactly would be in it for him to resign? What does he get? If he sticks it out there is always the slim possibility of redemption or some far worse scandel will hit someone far more important and people will say “Hey, at least Weiner was attracted to women. Human women.” or something like that.
Once he quits he has exactly what?
Unless Martha is correct that all this was with his wife’s knowledge, something I had not seen reported before, in which case things could be a lot worse.
Arthur Tebbel
June 8, 2011 - 3:32 pm
To break my rule for the second week in a row, here is my favorite article on this topic that I have seen today.
http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2011/06/gramm-example.html