Thursday, January 06, 2005

Kaus Genius Alert

Of all of the Jon-Klein abuse (rightly) popping up today, Mickey Kaus has the hands-down best rant.

I have to wonder, though: Klein is choosing loyalty to Jon Stewart (someone who doesn't work for him) over Tucker Carlson (someone who has been working for him). Klein may be a jerk, but I don't think he's stupid. Could it be that he's trying to woo Stewart to CNN?

It would make perfect sense, from both Stewart and CNN's perspectives, no?

PS: In addition to being a ungracious runt, Klein also proves to be a terrible judge of talent. He tells Howie Kurtz that Tucker is "best suited to host a head-butting talkfest." Which is completely the opposite of truth. Sure, Tucker's good on Crossfire, but as anyone who has seen his PBS show, Unfiltered, knows, his real strength is off-speed people interviews. I've long maintained that, given the right format, Tucker is a funnier, more surprising Dick Cavett.

Now let's watch CNN and MSNBC in the coming months and see which direction the two networks are heading. My money's on Tucker and MSNBC.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Klein's comments to Howie Kurtz are completely asinine. Carlson was the only voice on that show who even attempted to keep the program from devolving into a "head-butting talkfest". If that's what he's concerned about, he might want to start by clearing out Carville and (especially) Begala, who may be excellent political strategists but who have zero journalistic ability and have no interest in developing any.

Anonymous said...

Klein already has Stewart. His show pops up on CNN International in the middle of the night further confusing an already confused world about the U.S.. In my part of the world there is an accompanying Japanese translation that is a comedy in and of itself. Stewart usually ends his show by looking the world in the eye and apologizing for the U.S. bombing us or some other similar motif. I actually know people who thought his show was "real." They also believed the same about CBS news. I left them to their opinions. My little joke.