KBearlog

Michael Richards, Kramer from Seinfeld had a complete meltdown at the Laugh Factory comedy club in West Hollywood. Unfortunately for Kramer his meltdown was caught on film. Kramer was doing his routine and was being “playfully heckled” by two black guys. Kramer took exception to this and responded to these brothers saying, “Fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass.” Kramer continued, “You can talk, you can talk, you’re brave now motherfucker. Throw his ass out. He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! A nigger, look, there’s a nigger.”

I hope that Michael Richards has invested his money from Seinfeld well because there’s a good chance he won’t be working again for a long time. Tonight he began damage control. Jerry Seinfeld was already scheduled to appear on Letterman. To help his old cast mate out, Jerry had Richards appear on Letterman. Michael Richards appeared to be very nervous. He apologized for what happened and appeared to be confused by what happened himself. Letterman’s audience was nervous as well and laughed at in him the beginning. Seinfeld asked them not to laugh. It was a totally uncomfortable experience. David asked some tough questions and Richards seemed flustered. It was good he apologized but I don’t think it helped him that much. His career has been in the toilet since Seinfeld went off the air. The last time I’ve seen him on TV was in 2000 in his short lived show The Michael Richards Show. While he’s been off the radar, the other people associated with the show have been successful. Larry David has gained great acclaim in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld has successfully restarted his standup career, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has a hit show on CBS and while Jason Alexander doesn’t currently have a show, he was recently on Everybody Hates Chris. Michael Richards during this time period, nothing. With his meltdown, this should continue.

Here's a link to Kramer's apology on Letterman last night.

While channel surfing, I have come upon Glenn Beck on CNN Headline News a few times. I hadn’t heard of the guy before and after listening to him for a few minutes he seemed like your average rightwing nutcase. Judging from the interview he did with Rep.-elect Keith Ellison on the November 14 edition to his show Glenn Beck on Headline News, he’s placed himself in the upper echelon of rightwing nutcases. Mr. Ellison is the first Muslim to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. This of course raised a red flag for Mr. Beck, compelling him to say to Mr. Ellison:

No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. I’ve been to mosques. I really don’t believe that Islam is a religion of evil. I – you know, I think it’s being hijacked, quite frankly.

With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, "Let’s cut and run." And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."

And I know you’re not. I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.

When someone begins a statement with I know (blanks) and I like (blanks) and usually they say I have (blank) friends, you know that the next statement coming out of that person’s mouth is going to be hateful and ignorant. Mr. Beck didn’t let me down. He played to every stereotype of the arrogant, ignorant, racist blowhard who just wants you to know he isn’t attacking you, even though he is. This isn’t Beck’s first day at the rodeo. He’s made a career of saying things like this. On May 18, 2005 on his radio show he said he was thinking about killing Michael Moore. Of course later he said this was just part of a humorous monologue. On September 9, 2005 on his program he called the Hurricane Katrina survivors who stayed in New Orleans scumbags and he also stated how he hated some of the 9/11 families. On January 19, 2006 he called anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan "a pretty big prostitute". There are too many other incidents for me to mention even though Media Matters lists many of them.

I think I’ll use Mr. Beck’s line of questioning on him. Since you’re a recovering alcoholic and addict, prove to us that you aren’t high and drunk when you make your asinine statements. Since you’re a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, prove to me you aren’t a bigamist. Since you say some of the most hateful and mean spirited things on the airwaves, proof to me you aren’t a scumbag. I think we definitely have an answer for the scumbag part.

FOX's ratings have been pretty bad this fall, even worse than it normally would because of baseball. Instead of waiting for January when American Idol and 24 saves their sorry butt, Fox has decided to be proactive this November. Ladies and gentlemen I present to you FOX's two night sweep event "O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened." The Juice will be on FOX helping to publicize his new book "If I Did It" which comes out a few days after his inteviews. ReganBooks is publishing this masterpiece, it is based at Harper Collins, and guess who owns Harper Collins, you guessed it Fox's parent company News Corp. The person helping to bring this to the small screen is Mike Darnell whose alternate programming division at Fox brings us American Idol. Before he hit paydirt on Idol, Mike was more famous for bringing us gems like When Animals Attack!, Temptation Island, Joe Millionaire and the granddaddy of them all, Who Wants To Marry A Multi-Millionaire. So it's good to know that Mike isn't afraid to get his hands dirty again.

I'm torn about this. Accept for Who Wants To Marry A Multi-Millionaire, I don't usually watch programming like this, but man this is the Juice. The delusional crap that will be coming out of his mouth is too hard too miss. Maybe in the interest of keeping you all informed I'll subject myself to watching it and report on it later. See I've elevated myself to being a martyr for you. Now I'm being delusional. Thanks Juice.

On May 31, 2006, WTOK in Meridian Mississippi ran a news story on global warning. From the Center for Media and Democracy: WTOK-11 anchor Tom Daniels introduced the segment by saying, “Hurricane seasons for the next 20 years could be severe. But don’t blame global warming.” Viewers were not told that what followed was nothing but hot air, paid by and scripted for oil company lobbyists. In fact the report was a Video News Release (VNR): a propaganda tool that corporations, government agencies and non-governmental agencies use to push their agendas. VNRs are video clips that are indistinguishable from traditional news clips and are sometimes screened unedited by television stations without the identification of the producer or sponsor. The VNR WTOK ran was titled “Global Warming: Hot Air?” TCS Daily a website then published by DCI Group funded it. DCI Group is a PR and lobbying firm and one of its clients is ExxonMobil. So basically WTOK’s viewing audience was getting an infomercial from ExxonMobil. What gets me about WTOK’s action was that they took the original narration of the VNR and had the WTOK anchor rerecord it, making it look and sound like the staff at WTOK did this “news story” by themselves. You can see the original VNR and WTOK's version of it.

VNRs are a national problem. In April 2006 the Center for Media and Democracy issued a report that 77 local new stations were using VNRs. In August 2006 the FCC began an investigation of the 77 stations. The Center for Media and Democracy continued investigating the story and discovered that 46 stations were still using them. Most of these stations actively conceal the fact that these aren’t news clips. Now why would these stations take part in such an unethical and dubious enterprise? Here’s a shocker, BENJAMINS. The VNRs are free, instead of spending money to send a reporter and news crew to report a story; you can just put a VNR on and pretend like its news. There could be ideological reasons behind it too, but money is always the safe bet.

You might ask why I’m specifically writing about WTOK when there are other stations doing this. Well it’s because I’m originally from Meridian Mississippi, so when I saw that WTOK was involved, it really peaked my interest. There is a good chance your local station has run a VNR and you didn’t know it. How can we trust what the media is reporting to us? These last six years have really shaken my faith in the mainstream press. I'm sure your trust has been shaken too. With the NY Times helping the Bush administration lead us to war, to WTOK telling an audience that was badly affected by Hurricane Katrina that global warming is a joke and isn’t affecting our weather, well I think I’m sticking with the Weekly World News.

If you want to do something about this go to Freepress.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip has been picked up for 22 episodes this season. There has been an incredible amount of speculation about whether this show would be picked up for the whole season, or be cancelled before Thanksgiving. There seems like there are a lot of people who want it cancelled, and these people aren’t network executives at CBS, ABC or Fox. It seems that just the thought of this show antagonizes them. So you kept reading all of these death watches or gleeful announcements that the show was finished. I personally like the show but I can understand why a lot of people hate it. The show can be smug and patronizing at times, and the comedy sketches for the show within the show are generally unfunny. The episode where Tom’s parents from Columbus Ohio had never heard of “Who’s on First” made me want to throw something at my TV (and I love my TV) so I can understand where the haters are coming from. I like the show because it’s generally well written and I really love the cast. I hope Sorkin will get the time to fine tune the show and bring out the show’s better attributes. Even though I can see the weaknesses of the show the hostility towards this show still blows me away. Why do so many people want to see this show cancelled? If you don’t like the show, here’s a novel suggestion, just don’t watch it. A lot of people have decided to do that and they probably haven’t given the show a second thought. If the show’s cancelled, how does it make TV any better? Is the show keeping some better show off the air? I wonder if some of this anger is from conservative viewers who hate Sorkin imposing his liberal views on them. Like I said before I like the show, but I’ll admit I don’t love it, so if it’s not renewed next season, I won’t be leading any letter writing campaigns for it. Of course if the show really improves between now and May, then I reserve the right to change my mind.

Another show that seems to be polarizing people this season is Battlestar Galactica. The polarizing issue is the Cylon occupation from the first four episodes this season. A lot of people see it as a direct parallel to our occupation in Iraq. Many people see the humans representing the Iraqi insurgents and the Cylons representing the good old USA. They think that the producers of the show are trying to make the actions of the Iraqi insurgents, like using suicide bombers, sympathetic. The humans on New Caprica are using these tactics and we’re supposed to automatically agree with everything they do. I think these critics overlook the fact that the producers of the show are also drawing on other conflicts in world history, like the Germans occupation of France during World War II, or the Algerian War of Independence and others I can’t think of right now. My take on this is that the producers aren’t a bunch of terrorist sympathizers but they just want to examine what each side of a conflict like this feels and how they justify their actions and react to what their opponent does next. So as the insurgents hit an occupation target and the occupation force cracks down on the insurgents, forcing the insurgents to escalate their retaliation, creating a never ending cycle of violence. There’s a lot of grey area in all this, and the Galactica writers are exploring this grey area by placing our heroes in some murky moral grounds. For me it makes for riveting drama, some of the best on TV.

One other thing about Battlestar Galactica I’d like to address. It’s not with the show itself, but with some of the critics and fans who endorse the show. One of the things these critics write in their publications or what fans write in blogs and message boards is how this show transcends its science fiction roots and is a great drama despite taking place on spaceships, and how they generally don’t like science fiction but were surprised to find out how great this show is. They always feel like they have to insult the science fiction genre to keep their street cred. Well as someone who likes Sci Fi and other genre type programs, I wish you would CUT IT OUT. If you don’t like science fiction or fantasy shows, that’s fine, but don’t try to wear it like its some type of badge of honor. It might not be that you’re so sophisticated that you don’t like Sci Fi; it could be that you just lack the imagination to enjoy it. Yeah a lot of it isn’t that great, but that can be said for most dramas and comedies too. If you cut yourself off from genre shows, you could be missing great shows like Galactica, Farscape, Supernatural and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s your lost.

I have some very sad news to report, 60 Minutes' correspondent Ed Bradley died today at the age of 65 from complications of leukemia. Mr. Bradley was a long time correspondent on 60 Minutes and a TV pioneer. I first remembered him as a small boy when he was a war correspondent in Vietnam. At that time there weren't many blacks on TV and seeing one who was a reporter made a great impression on me. He was the first black White House correspondent for CBS. He's of course most famous for his work on 60 Minutes where he did some of the best and most important stories on that program. I offer my condolences to his family and his CBS family. He will be greatly missed. Here's further information on his life from CBS.