CNN Rings in the New Year…
…As only they can. Another year, another train wreck debacle featuring Kathy Griffin and the public face of CNN, Anderson Cooper:
No matter what vulgar thing Kathy Griffin does on CNN’s live New Year’s Eve broadcast, the folks at the supposedly most trusted name in news continue to invite her back on.
On Monday night’s program, after first telling co-host Anderson Cooper “I’m going to tickle your sack,” she shortly after midnight actually kissed his crotch (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
[Click over to Newsbusters for the video -- Ed]
Roughly eleven minutes into the program which began at 10 PM, Cooper commented about how on Twitter folks were suggesting that there should be a game that whenever he giggles nervously during the show, contestants have to take a drink.
Then, completely out of the blue, Griffin said, “I’m going to tickle your sack. You can say sack. That’s not bad.”
An obviously nervous Cooper responded, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have no sack of gifts here.”
Griffin then suggested the camera pan lower so the audience can see her “naughty gestures.”
* * * * * * *
As Tuchman finished his report, Griffin in the left split-screen bent down and kissed Cooper’s crotch.* * * * * * *
“I’m going down,” she said. “You know you want to.”“Believe me, I really don’t,” said Cooper as he once again pulled her upright.
As Noel Sheppard writes at Newsbusters:
Consider that during the 2009 show, Griffin dropped an F-bomb. The year before she directed a vulgar oral sex reference to a heckler. Last year she stripped down to her underwear.
Yet CNN keeps inviting her back.
Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?
Not at all — why else would we be talking about the network today?
Say what you will about the myriad biases of Walter Cronkite — which became increasingly out there as he aged, and even more so after he left the airwaves — but at least in terms of tone, he acted the part of senior newsreader to perfection. I don’t recall him ever having an annual on-air debacle that embarrassed himself and his network. But hey, at least CNN has set the bar as low as possible to begin the new year, both for themselves and Jeff Zucker, their incoming new boss.
Meanwhile, regarding Piers Morgan, CNN’s wannabe Bible amender and Constitutional scholar, Kathy Shaidle proffers “No Tears for Piers”:
Shortly after Morgan joined CNN, fellow broadcaster Adam Carolla was asked to assess King’s replacement, whose new show was already faltering. Carolla’s instant-classic rant became a minor YouTube hit and is more entertaining than anything Morgan’s ever done.
Carolla bellowed:
Who’s Piers Morgan? We should’ve run you outta here….Who decided we had ‘Chubby-Guy-In-His-50s-From-England-Who-We’ve-Never-Heard-Of’ Fever?’
Carolla then served up an eerily prescient modest proposal that would likely attract far more than 100,000 signatures, not to mention rare bipartisan enthusiasm:
We need to send Ted Nugent to London to annoy them.
Carolla’s comments about society’s rampant malignant narcissism dovetail well not just with Morgan, but with last night’s debacle at the network:
Update: Heh. Oh, and never let it be said that the struggling network is anathema to change; an experimental new content delivery system is demonstrated in the video below:
More: Matt Drudge has a little juxtaposing fun:
And here at PJM, Michael Walsh adds:
CNN should pay a high price for this little stunt, as indeed it’s already doing; were it not for its monopoly on airport TV screens and its dominance, via CNN International, of overseas hotel television, it might already be out of business.
Dr. Helen posited a related ethical dilemma recently:
I thought people were watching less TV, but maybe this is at home where they have the choice. Or are people just turning to other gadgets and devices to give them something to do constantly? Is it too much to ask just to be able to sit quietly, ride the treadmill without the mayhem, or just read or stare into space in a public place? Apparently so. I often think about getting one of those TV-B-Gone remote controls that allow me to turn those darn things off. They give me a headache.
Am I the only person left in America who doesn’t want a running negative news report everywhere I go?
Should you use TV-B-Gone yourself? Its use is doubleplusungood for Outer Party members, but officially sanctioned for the Inner Party. Crimethink accordingly.
In all fairness to Anderson Cooper, I think she came close to taking a knee in the chin.
The truth about the Valerie Plame case. (10 years later)
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2013/01/01/the-truth-about-the-valerie-plame-case-10-years-later/
Subtext: CNN hits bottom and keeps right on going.
I almost preferred Cooper’s giggling to Megyn Kelly complaining – constantly – that she was so, so, so cold and she really, really missed her husband.
Yeah, right. As if she didn’t claw past six other Fox Foxes to get that New Year’s Gig.
I would rather ring in the New Year with Charles Krauthammer frowning at the fiscal cliff. At least his off-the-cuff remarks are entertaining…
Somewhere, Edward R. Murrow is weeping.
Jim Whittaker
Hemet, ca
Cronkite was/is a lot like Jim Lehrer. They are both pretty good at playing objective and impartial mediator/interviewer/presenter. However both are establishment types, and the New Left is the Establishment, like it or not. These folks hold Establishment opinions, and the resulting Leftwing bias is inevitable.
What needs to happen is that we take back the Establishment from the Marxists and their gaggle of “minority” Identity Politics groups. But that is easier said than done. It will take dogged commitment of masses of people. Think, the latter version of Bill Ayers. Ideologically driven Conservatives who are primarily concerned with promoting Conservative agendas, rather than the business of any given institution.
First, the public schools have to be de-loused/de-unionized. Union education, mostly run by lefty thugs and ideologues, is responsible for a great deal of the rot. Then go after academe and the media — including ENTERTAINMENT, not just news. A viable alternative to Hollywood/New York has to be created in these areas if we’re ever going to get back to the American idea. Yes, it’s a very tall order — but it has to be done to avoid catastrophes like ’08 and ’12 (the second worse than the first).
Contemporary American culture. The end is near.
ps:
I remember sitting at a restaurant in Manhattan, lunchtime, listening to a local 30ish at the next table anouncing that she would be happy to give Bill a blow job. Such is the state of American (sic) civilization.
She is just another Fluke. Why would anyone be surprised? I mean, it gets CNN better ratings than they otherwise would have.
Hey, how about some respect here!! Just because Kathy Griffin is a cheap, no-talent skank doesn’t change the fact that she is a journalist working for a news organization. She was just trying to do to Cooper what most of her fellow journalists have been doing to Barry Husein Obama for the past several years.
Is she trying to convert him to heterosexuality? Does she have any idea how many other sex partners she is caressing?
I hope she gives Cooper a case of herpes to play with. Anybody letting that foul mouth close to their genitals is asking for a serious STD.
I thought he was gay.
Which made the whole episode even creepier.
Trying to shock people with gross sexual innuendo is the go-to substitute for comedians who cannot come up with something genuinely funny. What was interesting about this was that had she not been on a national stage where the only real crime you can commit is political incorrectness, she would have peppered him with gay jokes. So instead we had this creepy role reversal in sexual harassment where a member of one protected class (women) could toy with another (gay) in a manner that would land a white male in jail.
isn’t this episode showing that sexual harassment is okay if the victim is gay?
Indeed, the episode smacks of homophobia, that it is okay to humiliate the host on TV if he happens to be gay.
Unlike most of the staff of CNNInternational (which is what we see here in the Philippines), Cooper is not anti American and is usually a gentleman in the old fashioned sense of the word. Yes, he happens to be gay, but he doesn’t go around getting picked up naked in Central Park like another CNN correspondent (who is very anti American) or getting fired for using government money to solicit prostitutes, as a heterosexual CNN commentator did. Nor is he known for pushing fake anti American photographs, as a certain talk show host on that network has done.
Why does your website comments section not ork in the ipad with safari?
Have you filed your flight plan with the Cloud? Could be a conflict with the VC pathnik.
So…..is sexual harassment of gay men on live TV just peachy now?
If Griffin were a man and Cooper were a woman, she would be fired and maybe even prosecuted for sexual harassment.
tioedong
Yeah…good points…but being superior to Piers Morgan or Chronkite is easy…
Yeah well it all depends upon your prospective….your place in place and time.
Now I am a senior, I am amazing myself with my outlook…..and my practice of being bluntly candid.
I can somewhat emphasize with a “maturing” red headed woman. Women are not allowed to mature physically….more so than men….and even I am very conscious of my nose hair/ear hair.
Red headed women do not age well…freckles are just the most obvious thing….Kathy Griffin cannot succeed with close ups…for years…despite obvious face lifts. However, even this critical old fart will admit to doing a double take on the longer shots….maybe dirty old man syndrome.
CNN and Griffin have declining ratings…..Griffin gets more outrageous and CNN knows that will sell their New Years show….that’s just business.
Anderson Cooper…fair game….it’s indifference not homo-phobia….
Although I don’t like Anderson Cooper for his smug liberalness (being gay isn’t nearly as bad as being liberal) I feel bad for the guy. I bet he’s asking his agent and himself how he sank so low that Kathy Griffin is an acceptable broadcast partner.
He seems to go along quite willingly with the idea year after year after year.
Only in America…..
I started to comment that this exhibitionism between two whores was disgusting, but after considering that it was a CNN presentation and they went over it again the next night on the same nutwork, I have to conclude it was three exhiitionist whores, not just two.
As much as I detest CNN, I was asking myself how bad CNN could possibly be for my tween daughter to watch while I went to bed. Then I wake up the next morning and I learned how far down CNN can go.
Really, someone should have hit the switch and gone to dead air. This was uncharacteristically poor, even for them.
I’m sure there were plenty of moms who said stay away from women like Kathy Griffin.
Kathy Griffin, who is to comedy what Cher is to music, that is to say, irrelevant and old and weird looking from plastic surgery, continues scrabbling at her last possible handhold of cultural relevance.
LOVE Adam Carolla.
In the 90′s when commuting for the night shift I would listen to ‘Loveline’ because the guy was honest, held nothing back whereas I agreed with him ~98% of the time.
Self made, hard working blue collar guy. Good on him.