Tim Gunn Jumps The . . . Shark

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Mr. Make It Work turned into Project Runaway on the George Lopez show this week, riffing on Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits.

Via Mediaite:

Gunn sat down with Lopez earlier this week to talk about his new movie (yes, he’s in that feature-length CGI version of  The Smurfs) and he talked about everyone from Michelle Bachmann to Sofia Vergara. But his comments about Hillary Clinton (and her trademark pantsuits) stopped the audience dead in its laugh track.

Said comments:

“She’s the secretary of state, she’s the former senator from New York, she’s the former first lady. Why must she dress that way? I thinks she’s confused about her gender. All these big baggy menswear tailored pantsuits. George, I’m really serious.

I have great respect for her intellect and for her tenacity, and for what she does for our country in her governmental role. I just wish she could send a stronger message about American fashion.”

About 5:45 of the video:

Really, Tim – reel it in.

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Stop The Presses: PolitiFact ‘Barely True’ Is Now ‘Mostly False’

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

This is how we roll in the mediarati:

A change in the meter: Barely True is now Mostly False

Today, Barely True becomes Mostly False.

It is a change we don’t make lightly. The Truth-O-Meter has been the heart of PolitiFact since we launched the site four years ago, and we were reluctant to tinker with it.

Barely True has served us well. On our national site, for example, we’ve awarded 267 Barely Trues since we launched in 2007, accounting for 13 percent of our ratings.

But over the years, we heard many complaints about the rating. Many readers said it put too much emphasis on “true” when the rating actually describes something without much truth.

Related complaint: How many media analysts can dance on the head of a pin?

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A Good Walk Foiled

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Here at the Global Worldwide Headquarters of Campaign Outsider, we take our annual summer outings very seriously.

There was, for instance, the legendary trip to Williamstown where we stayed in one of the worst motels ever (can’t remember the name – healthy sign) and saw one of the worst theater productions ever (The Torch-Bearers – still working through that).

Then there was the mosquito-bitten excursion to Walden Pond, of which the less said the better. (Simplify, simplify, simplify!)

So this year the hardworking staff trundled off to Newton Commonwealth Golf Course, the postage-stamp-sized links adjacent to Boston College.

Of course, we never got on the course (leagues ‘n’ stuff, don’t you know).

But as we were leaving, we saw what we thought was a putting green about two feet away from the Clubhouse, so we figured – hey! – let’s work on our chipping and putting before we depart.

Toss a few balls out, chip and putt (badly for the most part), and then suddenly, three guys were there asking if this or that ball was ours.

Turns out it wasn’t a putting green, it was the 9th green.

D’oh!

See you next summer.

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That’s Just So Mean! (Hillary Clinton Edition)

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

From Tuesday’s New York Times:

Memo to New York Times: Really?

Memo to Madame Secretary of State: Maybe time to visit the salon?

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Idiotic Quote o’ the Week (pat. pending)

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

So far, anyway.

A Tuesday New York Times piece reported that 14 Anonymous hackers were arrested last week for “being part of a criminal conspiracy to damage the Web site of PayPal, the online payment company owned by eBay, which announced last December that it would stop processing donations for WikiLeaks after it exposed classified government information:”

In defense of the suspected hackers, Eugene H. Spafford, a computer security profesor at Purdue University, told the Times:

“This was kind of the equivalent of a spontaneous street protest, where they may have been throwing rocks through windows but never thought that was against the law or hurting anybody.”

Really? Throwing rocks through windows isn’t against the law and doesn’t hurt anybody?

The hardworking staff is not signing up for Prof. Spafford’s courses anytime soon.

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NYT Correction o’ the Week™

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

So far, anyway.

From Tuesday’s New York Times:

NEW YORK

An article last Tuesday about the death of Ketzel, the cat who wrote a piano composition, misspelled the surname of a founder of the Paris New Music Review and misstated his role in its One Minute Competition, which gave Ketzel’s piece a special mention. It was Guy Livingston, not Livingstone, who co-founded and edited the review. But while he oversaw the contest, he was not one of the judges. The errors also appeared on Nov. 10, 1997, in a brief article about Ketzel.

Got that? We done with Ketzel now?

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Let The $4 Billion Rumpus Begin! (Crossroads GPS Edition III)

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Before we jump back into the Campaign 2012 adstravaganza (compliments of Crossroads GPS), the hardworking staff offers a musical interlude:

(LP version here.)

To resume (via Politico’s Playbook):

FIRST LOOK VIDEO – Crossroads ads hits debt-ceiling issue in swing states – Obama’s ‘blank check’: a phrase Boehner used in his response David Catanese: “A little more than two weeks after its initial infiltration of five key battleground states hosting 2012 Senate elections, Crossroads GPS is back. The outsized third-party conservative group is attempting to seize the high ground as the debate over the debt ceiling reaches its climax, launching the next phase of its $20 million summer ad blitz. Its latest 11-day $1.6 million purchase lands in the five familiar states of Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska and Ohio, accusing the Democratic Senate incumbents of voting for ‘billions in new taxes and trillions in debt.’

Representative sample:

For GOP gunsel Karl Rove, the architect of Crossroads GPS and kissin’ cousin American Crossroads, this is just the beginning. Hundreds of million dollars in advertising is yet to come.

Fasten your seat belts and etc.

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It’s Good To Live In A Three-Daily Nation

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

The national dailies provide a nice compare and contrast and contrast in clear idiomatic English exercise regarding Pres. Obama’s debt sealing address last night.

New York Times:

Parties Head to Showdown as Obama Warns of a ‘Crisis’

The Democratic-led Senate and Republican-led House on Monday barreled toward a showdown on competing plans to cut spending and raise the debt limit as a resolution to the intensifying crisis remained farther from sight just one week before a possible federal default.

Wall Street Journal:

Obama Warns of Default Risk

President and Boehner Spar Over Competing Debt Plans as Deadline Approaches

With Congress deadlocked a week before the government runs out of cash to pay its bills, President Barack Obama warned Monday in his starkest terms yet that the U.S. is on the brink of a default that could trigger an economic upheaval.

USA Today:

Obama, Boehner take cases on debt limit to nation

After a weekend of failed talks punctuated by walkouts and worries of a downgrading of U.S. debt, both sides in the showdown over the debt ceiling retreated into their own corners Monday and emerged with two competing plans.

Campaign Outsider InstAnalysis (pat. pending):

The Times is alarmist, the Journal is journalistic, USA Today is useless.

But that’s just us.

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The Boston Globe-Advance

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Seriously, none of you splendid readers (besides the exemplary Mike and Bob) want to weigh in on whether the Boston Globe should give questions in advance to interview subjects?

The hardworking staff is bitterly disappointed.

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Did The Boston Globe Give Questions In Advance To Charlie Sarkis? (II)

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Yes they did.

The hardworking staff initially asked the question after seeing this paragraph in Sunday’s Boston Globe feature on the Fall of the House of Sarkis, written by staffer Jenn Abelson and correspondent Walter Robinson:

Charlie Sarkis and his second wife, Jolene, agreed to an interview with the Globe but later canceled the meeting. Jolene Sarkis, a former publisher of Fortune magazine, asked for a detailed list of questions by e-mail and then said she would not answer them, citing what she said were restrictions in the sales agreement with Tavistock [the private equity firm buying 19 of Sarkis’s 33 restaurants].

We weren’t sure, so we asked Abelson if the Globe had provided the questions to Sarkis, and she wrote back:

The globe provided her the list of questions

So here’s the other question: Is there anything wrong with that? The hardworking staff always thought standard journalistic practice was not to provide questions in advance.

Are we hopelessly behind the times? Foolishly fastidious? Just plain dopey?

Help us out here, splendid readers.

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