Elizabeth Smart first came into our consciousness nearly a decade ago as a 14-year-old girl kidnapped from her Salt Lake City bedroom. She was found alive nine months later, some 18 miles from her home, and the man and woman who seized her were ultimately convicted.
Now The Daily Beast has learned that Smart is about to start a new job at … ABC News.
Does that strike anyone as odd?
Just you, Howard. Just you.
Other than fame—as the victim of a horrifying crime—what exactly are her qualifications?
What are Luke Russert’s, Meghan McCain’s or Peter Doocy’s qualifications to be pundits or work at their respective networks? None, save they are all the children of famous people. One of the trio can barely write a coherent sentence. Where’s Kurtz questioning their qualifications, especially since McCain writes for the same Daily Beast that Kurtz writes for?
Kurtz goes on in the article to make a pretty flimsy case against Elizabeth Smart’s hiring, about which I don’t really care one way or the other, but that just brings a question to my mind: What are Howard Kurtz’s qualifications to be a pundit? Who died and made him such a high rolling critic of every media outlet but whichever one he’s working for at the moment?
Let’s see: Joy Behar is untalented, nasty, ignorant, and unatractive, while Elizabeth Smart is 1) good-looking, and 2) has serious musical talent, and 3) and has a sweet disposition. She can be an ABC commentator as far as I’m concerned.
As for Kurtz, he’s not even a good economist (Pulitzer and Nobel prizes are given to frauds these days anyway). He’s not qualified to pontificate on anything except at his local bar.
I just might be in danger of watching ABC News to see her, based on your description. Sweet dispositions make my tail wag.
“What are Howard Kurtz’s qualifications to be a pundit? ”
That’s massa Kurtz to you, Mr. Preston.
First off Doocy doesn’t act as a pundit, only a reporter. But that aside, as Don says, she would be much easier to watch than Behar, I’m sure is more intelligent and articulate, and she is a beauty to look at. Actually I wish she was working for FOX since I don’t watch ABC.
and as far as I’m concerned, Kutz is a no talent hack.
Let’s set aside Howie’s reporting, analysis and opinionating for a moment, and examine his expertise within his own bailiwick, the media business, with respect to his own career path.
As media critic and columnist, he was long associated with the Washington Post, owned by a media company that has been hemorrhaging red ink on an operational basis for a decade. It dumped its ship-of-the-line weekly, NewsWeek, to stanch the flow, for a dollar to Sid Harman, a complete novice at the news biz. WaPoCo is now kept alive by regular transfusions of cash from its for-profit education sub, Kaplan.
Howie skedaddled from that sinking ship, falling into the open arms of Tina Brown. The Queen of Sizzle, the Grande Dame of Buzz . . . in the 1990s. Her Daily Beast wed Sid’s Newsweek dog, soon after he adopted that pooch. The newlyweds are on track to lose between $20 & $30 mm this year.
But all’s not lost. Howie held onto the low-rated Reliable Sources airing each week on CNN, a net which brings up the rear in cable news ratings month after month.
Yep, he certainly understands the media business.