BlatherWatch

New ron & don producer is old KIRO hand

(photo: Libby Denkman, Puget Sound Business Journal)

Former Dave Ross producer, Libby Denkman has apparently been hired as the new producer for the Ron & Don Show. (There's been a vacancy since August when Don reportedly forced out Jason Stein, who produced the asinine pairing to the top of the KIRO heap).

Libby has been Communications Director for Rep. Adam Smith since Feb. 2011. But before that she produced The Dave Ross Show, then Ross & Burbank.

This from BlatherWatch Sept. 5, 2007:

~ Welcome to Libby Denkmann who replaced Tina Nole as the Producer/Chief of Staff of the Dave Ross Show. (KIRO m-f, 9a-12p). Dave, we hear, likes to form and shape producers in his own image, which is not a bad thing. She's 22, just graduated from the UW with a degree in political science and international studies. She interned at the news desk then hired-on  as Tina's associate producer then full time as her replacement. Factoid about Ms Denkmann: she interned for Patty Murray.

We best love this story about Libby and her wayward bra strap.

Google says nix to santorum plea over spuz-bomb

 

(Rick Santorum was someone you worried about until Dan Savage made him into something you wipe).

Rick Santorum, the Christian fundamentalist also-running for president has famously been the victim of a hilarious prank created by Seattle's own Dan Savage in a pioneering a technigue now known as a Google-bomb.

(Ed "Choch" Mañana, BlatherWatch plumbing and religion consultant said: "Me and the missus were planning on voting for Rick Santorum until we read on the Internet that he was but a bit of residual anal spuz! What a turn-off!")

Politico is reporting that the sanctimonious Santorum, who claims to be a serious presidential candidate went crying to Google:

“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it. If you're a responsible business, you don't let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”

To no avail. Google said in a statement that users who want "content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly."

"Google’s search results are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the web. Users who want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly," the spokesperson said. "Once the webmaster takes the page down from the web, it will be removed from Google’s search results through our usual crawling process."

Elizabeth warren: bright progressive light

I hear all this, you know, "Well, this is class warfare, this is..." whatever. No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

Glenn boy beckcott's levi's

We haven't given a shit about brand name of our blue jeans since approximately 1981, but we might start insisting on Levi's once again. (We wear Costco jeans or any pair under $20 that makes our diminishing Irish ass look better).

Why? Because Glenn Beck (KTTH m-f, 6-9a) is boycotting Levi's. Is it because their name "sounds Jewish?" He says not- it's because of the above commercial which he finds "shocking" and as "glorifying revolution." The scene, he said, of the young man apparently standing off riot cops, urges confrontations with the police. He compared the scenes to "European socialists marching" and "a Palestinian kind of march."

Beck comes from a generation (the X-ers) who didn't have a campus revolution (actually, he didn't last long enough in college, anyway). He never experienced the glory (as short-lived and futile as it may be) of standing in front of the power and majesty of The Man with a two-fisted "fuck you!"

Glenn Beck's salad days were a drug-sodden parade of radio studios where he talked about tits and ass and pulled nasty tricks on people to the glee of his adolescent male listeners.

Then he got religion, rich and started living inside high walls.

What a pitiful human being! So Go Forth and buy yourself some Levi's.

 But don't tell anybody why you bought them... this boycott wasn't so much to hurt Levi's as it was to buy a little of this sort of attention for an entertainer whose career has fallen to a place that this sort of attention means something.

Open thread: day one after the repeal of DADT...

Marriage equality may be in sight.

Celebrity genitals are always newsworthy

The few nice people at Fox News (and there are some) are may be learning themselves a lesson: you live by tabloid, you die by tabloid.

(photo: Mike Tyson, gynecological/political commentator)

Greta Van Susteren (one of the nice ones at FNC) is having a full-on shit-fit over the Daily Caller owner Tucker Carlson's prominently posting of a story with the headline: “Mike Tyson: Sarah Palin met the ‘womb shifter.’”

She's calling her old friend a “pig” and “purveyor of smut.”

BlatherWatch reforms comment threads

In a major policy change that has longtime commenters scattering, BlatherWatch CEO Michael Hood announced early Sunday morning that comment threads on the blog will be policed.

"We have 3 or 4 thousand readers and 3 or 4 commenters," he said in a statement. "We need to equalize that a little."

 According to Hood, namecalling, baiting other commenters by name, and "making blatantly off-topic posts" will be deleted, and if the commenter persists, they will be banned. He's calling on readers to apprise him of comments that offend. Hood, who suffers from presbyopia says he needs the assistance because, "The threads have become a cesspool that many have begged us to drain."

The popular blog has banned very few readers and deleted few remarks over the years, but, Hood says, "Maybe that was a mistake."

BlatherWatch will adopt the Horsesass rules:

• Deliberately off-topic comments (except in “open threads”), as well as pointless comments on these comments.
• Deliberately repetitive comments, particularly those intended to repeat and a reinforce slander that has already been sufficiently debunked.
• Blatant sock puppetry.

Dr. Edgar "Choch" Manana, communications professor at Seattle University, and national authority on "blog-shed," said timid people such as bird enthusiasts and vegans have avoided the BlatherWatch forums "like the plague." The majority of the submissions, he says,  seem to come from "red meat eaters," and large animal hunters. "Not a healthy consensus," Manana told a gathering of ornithologists at the National Press Club, Friday. "It's limited in a way that's not good for a blog ... or any kind of publication. Like all environments, it needs diversity. "

Sunday morning sermon: little ricky

Ricky Goes to Church from Airwave Ranger on Vimeo.

Old Seattle Radio Saturday: bobby simon

Full name: Robert Theodore Simon, which he would use occasionally on the air.

Though Bill Taylor says, "B.S. for the Great Northwest" was a line he liked, as was "Ma and Pa Simon's little boy Bobby." He was also known as "The Simonizer."

His first of two (!) stints at KJR, according to Taylor came in April 1964. "The later-to-be legendary Larry Lujack came on board at 'JR at the same time."

He also worked at KEED Springfield, Ore., KAYE Puyallup, WA; KORD Pasco, WA; KOL, KJR, KZOK-FM, KYYX Seattle; KNEW Spokane; KTAC Tacoma; KISN Portland, ORE; WIFE Indianapolis

Simon died in a car accident near Packwood WA in 2002 at the age of 65.

Bill Taylor provides a tick-tock of Bobby's career:

May 1970 – Bobby Simon leaves KOL, where he has been the last 2 1/2 years, returning to KJR. He worked at KJR in 1965, fired in the middle of his shift over a Girl Scout joke. —
May 1971, Bobby Simon is out — Lan Roberts returns to KJR to take over the mid-day slot. Roberts moves over from KOL. Roberts had parted ways with KJR two years earlier — over $$.
June 1971 – Bobby Simon, moves to KTAC/Tacoma [This is the first stay at KTAC] — he returns to KOL in 1972, *back at KTAC in 1973, KZOK in 1976, fired a year later — over $$ – Simon moves to KYYX in 1978 — and comes back to KTAC in the 1980s. *Everybody is let go when KOL turns to automation in 1973.

"I was his newsman," says Taylor, "when he was doing middays at KOL. I still miss him."

(Bobby Simon air check, 1967)

Fox news has eliminated michele bachmann

(photo: Bachmann in better days).

They've made their decision, apparently. Michele Bachmann is done, she's been goned on from the so-called "Fox Primary."

At the New Republic, Walter Shapiro has watched 50 hours of Fox News content and generously shares that brain-atrophying adventure with subscribers.

He discovered much interesting stuff, but most fascinating to us is Bachmann's new absence on the conservative network.

For a GOP candiate: better watch out for that ol' "fair & balanced." It can hit you in the ass... it can disappear you like a former Tony Soprano business partner. Or a promising Democrat. Shapiro: