“Kathleen Parker Splits From CNN’s Parker Spitzer,” The Wrap reports; but get a load of what the retooled show is calling itself now, according to the New York Post:
CNN ousted Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Kathleen Parker from its show “Parker Spitzer,” that she co-hosted with former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the cable network said today.
CNN executive Ken Jautz told staff members of the change this afternoon, saying the show will be redubbed “In The Arena.”
If that’s true, presumably, unless Spitzer or his producers think that he’s Russell Crowe in Gladiator, that’s a reference to Teddy Roosevelt’s famed speech from 1910 in which he said:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Of course, it’s Spitzer who teleported out of the arena of politics and transformed himself into a critic on the sidelines via his extracurricular activity while governor. And while residents of New York are fortunate that he’s now in a position where he can do much less damage to the state, I wonder if Spitzer or his guests will realize the irony of his show’s new title.
Update: Title confirmed in email from CNN’s PR department.
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