A different view

Tearing Down the Competition

What is it with the personal attacks between pundits these days?

I really like Keith Olbermann, but his relentless attacks against Bill O'Reilly are getting tiring. I don't see any purpose to it. Bill has his own problems, and the two certainly don't share the same audience.

But the worst has to be Arianna Huffington's attacks on Tim Russert. Week after week she's devoted a Sunday column of Huffington Post to attacking Tim.

Tim's style is pretty regular. He prepares a list of questions, asks them, waits for a reply, then moves on. Sometimes he lets the guests spew their talking points, some times he follows up to get a straighter answer. But rarely have I heard any bias in Tim's questioning.

There are certainly a lot of other talk show hosts that I'd rather see attacked for spin. There just aren't many liberal talk show hosts anymore. But you could go after Wolf. Certainly Brit Hume is one of the worst for misleading viewers. There are guests like Ann Coulter that are just borderline nuts.

Instead, Arianna attacks probably one of the most likeable hosts on the Sunday morning networks. Then squeals like a stuck pig on rumours of a little hardball.

A warning to them both. The old IBM addage, the higher you climb the ladder the more you show your butt. Let's get respectable and move on. If you need someone to attack, attack Tom Cruise, it'll bring you much higher ratings.

posted by don1one @ 11:07 AM