Full-page ad in Thursday’s New York Times:
Got that?
#1 Bestselling authors of Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln.
There’s also the boffo Killing Lincoln documentary that just ran on National Geographic Channel.
Bottom line: Bill O’Reilly’s making a killing on killing.
Damn.
Via Mediaite:
MSNBC’s Axelrod And Gibbs Deny ‘Pro-Obama’ Allegations, Claim Mantle Of ‘Independent’ Analysis
MSNBC’s hiring of former high-ranking Obama staffers David Axelrod [Obama’s Narrator] and Robert Gibbs [former Obama White House press secretary] once again puts the network in the position of having to defend itself against allegations of being decidedly “pro-Obama” in its reporting and analysis. Speaking with CNN’s Howard Kurtz this morning, the two pushed back against such accusations and instead claimed the mantle of “independent analysts.”
Idiotic quote #1:
“I don’t see it either as being a cheerleader for the president or as a spokesman for the administration’s point of view,” Gibbs said.
Idiotic quote #2:
“My role is not that of a surrogate, but an analyst and commentator,” Axelrod told the CNN media reporter. “I’m proud of my work for and with the president. But in this role, I will offer observations, based on my experience over 35 years in journalism and politics.”
Idiots.
Today’s Boston Globe tucks the news of its imminent sale discreetly below the fold on Page One:
The Schadenfreude Gazette, on the other hand, goes a bit bolder . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
The Boston Globe has a nice Page One piece about the Great Mentioner throwing Sean O’Malley’s hood into the bakeoff for a new Pontiff, but our feisty local tabloid goes all Poparazzi over the prospect.
Page One:
Inside spreads . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
When last the hardreading staff heard from estimable local author Dennis Lehane, he seemed to have come to his senses regarding the Lehane family’s Javertesque search for its lost dog, Tessa. Via the Boston Herald (the go-to site for Tessanalia) last month:
Lehane says he’ll take down missing dog fliers
Crime scribe Dennis Lehane says he’ll take down the fliers volunteers have posted around Brookline in the quest to find his missing dog after the town said they violated town bylaws.
“I can see the town of Brookline’s point. And there’s no reason we should expect preferential or selective treatment because of my last name,” Lehane said today in the statement.
The town yesterday told Lehane that the hundreds of fliers put up all over town had to be taken down by Monday.
Cut to the We Hear section of yesterday’s Inside Track . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R-Appalachian Trail) is back on the campaign trail, running for the First Congressional District seat vacated when Tim Scott was appointed to the U.S. Senate.
Sanford’s first TV spot (via Politico’s Morning Score):
Nut graf:
I’ve experienced how none of us go through life without mistakes. But in their wake we can learn a lot about grace, a God of second chances and be the better for it. In that light, I humbly step forward and ask for your help in changing Washington.
We’ll see if America is still the land of second chances. Don’t bet on it in this case.
Today’s Boston Globe features this story Metro Page One:
Alliance cracks down on teens’ sagging pants
Cable TV ad campaign seeks to discourage the rogue fashion
If there is a look that defines hip-hop, then 13-year-old David Dollar Montana has it. He talks the talk, walks the walk, even dresses the part — down to his loose-fitting Levi’s, which sag below his buttocks, exposing his underwear.
Now Dollar, as he is known around his Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood, and other young males who let their jeans hang below their waist are the target audience for a new cable TV ad campaign that aims to get them to pull up their sagging pants or face fines or prison time.
In the ad, an actor dressed in police uniform looks sternly at the camera and warns: “It’s the law.”
The Black Mental Health Alliance of Massachusetts, which launched the public service announcement in January, said that sagging is an obscene offense and an assault on common decency in the African-American community. It adds that sagging heightens thug-like behavior and contributes to how young men are perceived and treated by police, teachers, and other adults. “The PSA says respect yourself and respect your community,’’ said Omar Reid, a 54-year-old education psychologist from Grove Hall who is helping to lead the ad campaign. “Our community and our people are tired of these kids walking around like this.”
First things first: The hardworking staff (and The Atlantic and Mediaite) had this story weeks ago.
And two: This is a Potemkin ad campaign with virtually nothing behind it except a desire to get press coverage. (See the video here.)
It started out with a press release claiming the ad was “running on major television outlets in the Boston market,” but never specified which ones (the hardworking staff had several phone calls seeking specifics go unreturned). Now the Globe reports this:
Reid said the alliance launched the campaign after mental health clinics across the state were being besieged by parents who brought their sons in for behavioral treatment. The sons were skipping school, smoking marijuana, and acting thuggish — conduct the parents attribute to the saggy pants, Reid said.
He said the alliance is paying $2,000 a month for the ads and will soon expand the campaign.
Not sure we believe the first statement, and would like to see some paperwork backing up the latter. Plus, the broadcast outlets remain unspecified.
One last thing: The hardworking staff will win a Pulitzer before anyone is either fined or jailed for wearing saggy pants. That you can believe.
The gun nuts (both divisions) are at it again with dueling TV spots that exist in entirely parallel universes.
From TPM:
NRA Returns To Message Calling Obama’s Plans Elitist In High-Capacity Magazine Ad
Forget the softer tone. The National Rifle Association on Thursday returned to the hardcore style of messaging that drew so much derision to the group just last month.
The gun lobby group rolled out an ad that flew in the face of the softer tone the organization struck earlier in the week by once again attacking President Obama’s gun violence prevention plans as elitist hypocrisy.
“So they want to ban high capacity magazines. Not for the security that surrounds the president, congress, Mayor Bloomberg, rock stars, CEOs and wealthy big shots,” the ad’s narrator said. “And the mad men, drug cartels and home-invading killers will still get them from the same black market that sells drugs, stolen cars and everything else that criminals buy.”
“It’s just the rest of us, the law-abiding average people, who will have to defend our families with limited capacity magazines,” the narrator continued.
The TV spot:
No indication (as far as the hardsearching staff can gather) of how much the NRA will spend on the ad, but so far it has 2689 views on YouTube.
On the other end of the gun control spectrum, a TV spot from MoveOn.org (via The Guardian):
NRA-backed Congress members under attack in new TV ad
Liberal campaign MoveOn.org will launch 30-second commercial to air on mainstream cable channels
The National Rifle Association, the gun rights group that has vowed to oppose President Obama’s reforms in the wake of the Newtown shooting, is coming under mounting attack from progressive organisations seeking to break its hold over members of Congress.
The latest assault on the gun lobby comes from the internet-based liberal campaign MoveOn.org, which is launching a 30-second TV adthat aims to hit members of Congress as they arrive in their home constituencies next week for recess. The film features a gun owner from the sensitive electoral state of Ohio, who delivers a pointed message to those Congressmen and women who enjoy close relations with the NRA.
“The NRA doesn’t speak for me, and it doesn’t speak for the vast majority of Americans, so stop taking their money,” says Jerry Thompson, star of the film, who makes a point of introducing himself as a gun owner and “proud defender of the second amendment”.
The TV spot, which MoveOn says it’s “spending a six-figure sum to broadcast . . . nationwide on cable channels such as CNN and MSNBC”:
YouTube views: 144,403. (An Ohio version targeting Sen. Rob Portman has gotten 3708 views.)
Round One: Gun control advocates.
The Boston Herald does the full Whitman again, celebrating itself and singing itself over the latest Department of Transitional Assistance, well, transition.
The chronology of the feisty local tabloid’s coverage . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
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