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Houston Chronicle:

CNN said it shouldn't have used a former U.S. attorney who quit his job after allegedly biting a stripper as an analyst about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal.

No mention of Kendall Coffey's past was made when anchor Tony Harris interviewed him Tuesday on the legal questions surrounding Spitzer's case. Coffey quit his job in May 1996 after being accused of biting a topless dancer on the arm during a visit to an adult club after losing a big drug case.

Coffey talked on CNN about what kind of charges the New York governor could face. Spitzer is accused of having a high-priced call girl visit his hotel room during a visit to Washington last month.

While Coffey's past is known to CNN's booking department, it wasn't to the person who set up Harris' segment. CNN spokesman Nigel Pritchard blamed a "miscommunication."

"Coffey has been a guest on CNN in the past but was probably not the right one for this story," Pritchard said.

Oopsie! It's a little like having Bill "Phone sex with a loofah" O'Reilly lecture you about moral rectitude.

The Washington Post, for reasons that defy comprehension, published a 1,700-word thought piece yesterday on women in America being dumb, shallow, and generally kind of pathetic. The author, Charlotte Allen, made her spectacularly dumb case with the kind of nonsense one might expect from a misogynistic child — women are bad drivers, they have physically smaller brains, they’re awful at math, they have bad taste in entertainment, etc.

The problem, it seems to me, is not Allen. Her foolish attack on women is easy to dismiss as petty nonsense, best suited for a He-Man Woman-Hater’s Club blog. Instead, the fault lies with Washington Post editors who thought Allen’s anti-feminist hit-job deserved to be published on the front page of the paper’s Outlook section.

The WaPo’s Outlook editor took a moment to respond to criticism.

“If it insulted people, that was not the intent,” Outlook editor John Pomfret told me this morning, calling the piece “tongue-in-cheek.” […]

Pomfret said that being an opinion article, he’s not surprised readers reacted to it strongly. But added: “Perhaps it wasn’t packaged well enough to make it clear that it was tongue-in-cheek.”

I found it hard to believe Pomfret would publish such tripe. I find it even harder to believe this is his explanation for such poor judgment.

Continue reading »

Welcome To Bedwetter Nation:

We are now officially a nation of hysterics:

Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge. The sprinkled powder forced hundreds to evacuate an IKEA furniture store Thursday.

New Haven ophthalmologist Daniel Salchow, 36, and his sister, Dorothee, 31, who is visiting from Hamburg, Germany, were both charged with first-degree breach of peace, a felony. Read more...

Here's another edition of "The Stupids," written by Tom Grubisich. The newest straw man is an attack on the pseudonym. First it was the civility of our commenters (Read Howard Kurtz on The Huff Post) and now this. It's really simple. Some people feel the need to protect themselves when they express a "freedom of ideas." Others are working in an environment that doesn't allow them to reveal themselves publicly and want to speak out. Why are certain reporters so afraid of blogging?

Marcy Wheeler has a take on it. So does the Agonist and even Ben Franklin.

Ezra writes:

Grubisich thinks the public square has become too open, and he wants to erect some new barriers to entry. That's what the pseudonymity discussions are always about: Privileged members of the media feeling great anxiety that they're no longer set apart simply by access to microphones and looking for ways to keep the barbarians off the stage. But whatever, I'm willing to meet them halfway. I'll start running background checks on my readers if Grubisich and his colleagues consents to some symmetrical constraints: If they write something stupid, inflammatory, or wrong, they will lose their jobs. If what you want is for new entrants to the public sphere to feel more vulnerable when participating, it's only fair that you do the same.

Duncan: This is it in a nutshell. And, as Ezra suggests, the club that they want to use is the "consequences," which for most of us is about having current or future employment prospects threatened because someone googles our names and discovers that we don't like George Bush enough, or we hate her favorite rock band, or some other reason. This, of course, is a barrier too high for plenty of people. Which is the point.

Hillbilly Report: George Bush comes to Louisville and regular folks speak up. Now that's Kentucky. In Tennessee they cut 323,000 people from the state healthcare rolls and the President said that was "innovative."

Intrepid Liberal Journal: Does anyone care about America's Prison Industrial Complex?

Club Lefty: Great Expectations with Dick Cheney

Think there just isn't enough cursing in the blogosphere? The Captain finds even more sources.

And the "understatement post-title of the week" goes to Tufts Gadflies for "Bill O'Reilly, Not Exactly a Feminist." And the line to form a "women's cabal" to "terrorize" Mr. O'Reilly forms right behind me.

Guest round up by Blue Gal.

Happy Halloween!

Skimpy Halloween Costumes Scary for Parents

Are Halloween costumes becoming more strip club than storybook?
Some say the holiday is becoming scarier thanks to costumes with less material.

Parents are having a harder time finding kid-friendly costumes at party supply and costume stores.

Monday said they are looking for attractive outfits for their children that do not show too much skin.

I don't even want to imagine what the Washington Page Halloween party was like, do you?

I've received many emails asking C&L to start a book club so here goes. I'll pick the novel this time and then in two weeks (is that enough time?) I'll post a new thread and we can have a discussion about it.

My choice is the Robert Crais novel called "The Two Minute Rule." I've always enjoyed hard boiled detective fiction, and Crais isn't bad. This is just a start and I'm sure the "C&L Book Club" will develop as we go along.

You can buy it here as well as many other places.

"How Would a Patriot Act," hit # 1 on Amazon. Way to go!

Click here If you haven't pre-ordered your copy yet. It will be one of our C&L book club entries when it's released.

The Galloping Beaver: The New Spy vs Spy

Recovering Liberal: Meet Kinky Friedman, Texas's next Governor

This American Life: Is Gitmo a camp full of terrorists, or a camp full of our mistakes? Reporter Jack Hitt unveils everything we know about who these prisoners are. I listened to this show last Saturday and highly recommend that you either purchase a CD of it now or wait until next week when the archive version goes up at their site.

War and Piece: Duke Cunningham's Iranians. Something funky goin' on here...

Everything Between: Obama does some 'Big Time' trash talkin' at Gridiron Club Roast

the Hue and Cry: Survival of the richest...Everything Between: Obama does some 'Big Time' trash talkin' at Gridiron Club Roast

the Hue and Cry: Survival of the richest...

Cheney

(hat tip roland)

TMV has a round up and looks at the time line.

FDL remembers what Cheney said about Kerry.

"There's an article in which "Cheney reportedly shot more than 70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks at an exclusive private club places a spotlight on an increasingly popular and deplorable form of hunting, in which birds are pen-reared and released to be shot in large numbers by patrons. The ethics of these hunts are called into question by rank-and-file sportsmen, who hunt animals in their native habitat and do not shoot confined or pen-raised animals that cannot escape."

Talk Left takes a look at Texas law...

I hope Harry Whittington is really doing ok, after all he is 78 years old.