Seeing BS at CBS

CBS stock has taken a tumble since the Ronan Farrow article about sexual harassment allegations made against CBS bigwig Leslie Moonves.

Too bad Moonves isn't like the late James T. Aubrey, who had "friends" like Keefe Brasselle, who in turn had mob connections.

Speaking of which, I am trying to get through Brasselle's thinly veiled novel about his tenure at CBS called The CanniBalS.  It isn't very good, I will say that.  I don't know if I will be able to get through the 400-page potboiler, as I don't read fiction as a rule.  And then I am getting Brasselle's sequel, called The Barracudas, which like everything else he did flopped.

I may end up getting Triangle, a novel written by Brasselle's ex-wife (his second) Arlene DeMarco, who was once a member of the DeMarco Sisters, a popular vocal group in the 1950s.  Unlike Brasselle, DeMarco actually had talent.  Apparently her novel was much better than the two her ex-husband penned.  Like his books, hers was thinly veiled "fiction." Furthermore, I have read that in her book, DeMarco claimed her ex-husband was not just best friends with Aubrey, who was the head of CBS from 1959-1965 before being dumped, but the two were actually lovers.  I had read somewhere else Brasselle had come out of the closet sometime before his death before going back into the closet of well-deserved obscurity.

I found this article about Arlene DeMarco which was published a year before she died.  DeMarco had numerous health issues.  She was 79 when she died in 2013.

Yesterday I Posted a YouTube

clip of the old CBS Morning News with Hughes Rudd and Sally Quinn. Well, CBS has an hour of this show, so it must be about complete:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Sally Quinn evidently was sick during the initial broadcast, but she didn't get any better as time went on.

CBS

Miscellaneous

Celebrity deaths are supposed to come in threes, not in dozens, as has been the case this past summer.
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CBS was out of luck today in the Dan Rather lawsuit.
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Looking for young pussy, a cat is being blamed for downloading kitty porn, in a case which has created a boatload of bad jokes, including from yours truly.
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Media Follies.

The idiots at CBS should have known better than to hire Katie Couric in the first place.

Leslie Moonves is a disaster.
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Campaign Notes.

Chelsea Clinton let a questioner have it when he asked about the idiotic Lewinsky mess.
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It may be true, George that it would be easier for a black man to be elected president than a woman, but that does not mean Barack Obama is more electable than Hillary Clinton.

In fact, Obama would lose so badly to John McCain it would make McGovern's landslide loss to Nixon look like a landslide itself.

Obama can't win a single state against McCain. Clinton would do much better, although I doubt she could pull off a victory in the Electoral College.
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CBS wants a debate in the worst way, and that's probably the way it will get it.
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A Panicked CBS

is trying to have Dan Rather's lawsuit dismissed.

Hopefully it won't be.

I Have

been looking at some DVDs today, including the 80th anniversary edition of Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer. What a great job Warner's did with that film and the extras.

And in the mail I received a couple of DVDs which I ordered from a site called "Second Running" of the original CBS broadcasts of the 1973 Triple Crown. These are either public domain kinescopes or they are bootlegs, but whatever the original source, those races are good to see again within the context of the broadcasts.

I am hoping CBS and perhaps Secretariat.com can get together and come up with a 35th commemorative of the original broadcasts next year. I would like to see the video cleaned up with the original videotaped broadcasts and with some extras.

What was miraculous in the Kentucky Derby was that Twice a Prince, who was second to the legendary Secretariat in the Belmont, didn't fall over backwards in the starting gate. That was terrifying to watch. I had forgotten how badly he acted up (after all, I hadn't seen the complete television broadcast since 1973 until today), but fortunately he didn't get hurt. He was trained by the late Johnny Campo, as was Torsion, who was in the Preakness that year.

Anyway, I am hoping there will be an official release of these great broadcasts. The broadcast crew including Jack Whitaker, Heywood Hale Broun (a real wordsmith), Frank Wright, and of course announcer Chic Anderson were great.

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I also want to note Secretariat's half-brother, Straight Flush, mentioned on the Secretariat.com site, passed away in September. He was 32 years old and died in his sleep.

Jesus,

talk about a conflict of interest:

A profile of Lynne Cheney, the vice president’s wife, that appeared on the CBS News program “Sunday Morning” last weekend included a statement of disclosure. The correspondent, Rita Braver, told viewers that her husband, the Washington lawyer Robert B. Barnett, had represented Ms. Cheney in the publishing deal for her new memoir, “Blue Skies, No Fences,” which served as the main peg for the story.

Yesterday, after questions about the propriety of Ms. Braver’s assignment were raised on several media Web sites, including that of CBS News, the division’s senior vice president for standards, Linda Mason, defended it.

I'll bet Dan Rather finds that a bit funny and proves his point in his lawsuit against the network.

It's Time

to put television viewers out of their misery and sack BOTH Katie Couric and CBS head Leslie Moonvies.

Couric is ill-suited for a news anchor job while Moonvies is totally incompetent.

No Matter

the fact Katie Couric has driven the CBS Evening News ratings even further down the toilet, the tarnished Tiffany network is standing by her.

Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave.

Imusgate.

CBS decided to sack Imus no doubt because of advertisers bailing out.

Moonves is a piece of shit; he proved that with the sacking of Dan Rather and the hiring of Katie Couric. He's scoring perfectly in the asshole department.

A suspension was appropriate; this was ludicrous considering how many pundits and talk show hosts are far worse.