BlatherWatch

Friday oddems: Donutty jihad; let them eat cake donuts; big-butted, well-to-do elites like Dori; dhimmi dupes strike oregon; fisher plaza is 97% occupied!

~~ Scarves of terror. It was Michelle Malkin vs. sanity in the dust-up with our old pal Michelle over food-babe Rachel Raye's wearing a designer scarf in a Dunkin Donuts commercial that's similar to the Middle Eastern keffiyeh. It's the stuff that's made conservatism so popular, so credible, so the politics of tomorrow. Calling it "jihadi chic," the wingers called for a boycott, DD caved, and America laughed. Didn't surprise us after hearing Kirby Wilbur and his Christianist sidekick Carleen (KVI m-f, 5-9a) Thurs. making A-rab jokes about Obama to whom they sneeringly and regularly refer as "Hussein." We Democrats have a generational shift going on in our party that's giving us a little pain, but the Republicans should be so lucky -- with such idiocy as the "donut jihad,"and smearing Obama as a Moslem and an A-rab, there is no next generation for the GOP, and they seem determined to keep it that way.   

Fisher Plaza is on the block

It's always been a big, white elephant; a less-than-exciting performer with a voracious appetite for money that's hard to feed, and never sated.

We speak, of course, of Fisher Plaza, the 7-year-old downtown high-tech development near the Space Needle and EMP.

Fisher Communication has put their flagship headquarters up for sale.

The 6-story, 294,000-square-foot building building at Fourth and Denny with its a four-story graphic of Ichiro on its side is home to KOMOTV, KOMO Radio, KVI, as well as the home offices. A rooftop helicopter pad supports KOMO 4 television's studios; there's an overpriced restaurant called Sport, which is too expensive for the radio help.

CEO Colleen B. Brown put out a who-needs-it-anyhow press release redolent with studied corpo-nonchalance:

"While Fisher Plaza has been a desirable facility to develop and own, it represents a very valuable non-core asset that we do not believe is fully reflected in the value of the Company."

David Goldstein to replace robert mak?

Well, maybe...

David Goldstein, who finished a fine career in radio just months ago at KIRO, has written a must-read letter  to KING5 News Director Mark Ginther offering to leap into the breach left by the departing Robert Mak.

No doubt Goldy, even with his hairline made for radio, could improve the prospects of Channel 5 who may be soon suffering layoffs and a downturn.

We're fairly sure that his idea for title, Up Yours with David Goldstein may not make it with the Texas media company, but we agree with David that hiring him would signal "KING5’s ongoing commitment to thoughtful political coverage and analysis while adopting the snarky and somewhat irreverent attitude of the Daily Show, the blogosphere and the other new media outlets that have been steadily stealing audience (and advertisers) away from traditional news organ izations such as your own."

(photo: the usual crowd: from left; KVI PD Dennis Kelly, Dino Rossi, John Carlson, Kirby Wilbur; forefront: Glenn Beck)

GOP guber-candidate Dino Rossi appeared on KUOW's The Conversation (m-f, 1-2p) Wednesday as announced below. Here's how it went:

Listening to Dino Rossi trying to stuff his memorized talking points and old jokes from his speeches into the shortest time and space possible, was like hearing a half hour of one of those fast-readers doing the disclaimers on a hemorrhoid commercial.

Guy Nelson, filling in for Reynolds, could have interrupted these rushed Bar Mitzvah-like litanies, but he rarely did.

Invoking his Klinkit grandma who always told him to clean up his campsite, we were amazed to hear that  Rossi has been born-again as an environmentalist since he last ran -- an "entrepreneurial environmentalist," whatever that is.

Although you can't pin him down on whether humans have caused or exacerbated it, he now admits we're "beyond the debate" as to whether the earth is warming. (Wonder what global warming denier and Rossi loyalist Stefan Sharkansky has to say about that? Or Rossi supporters like the pro-global warming Building Industry Association of WA (BIAW) who call the environmentally concerned -- gee, that's everybody! -- "Nazis.").

Although there were few discouraging words from callers or host, a listener asked Rossi to renounce the BIAW, and return all their money after the Nazi remark and their reference to the Governor a "she-wolf." He demurred, of course -- after all, he needs the money!

(We don't think wolfish qualities in an elected official fighting for us is a bad thing, although we're sure the BIAW and Rossi used the term to incite any incipient sexism that might exist 'neath the rocks of the GOP. If we were to assign animal qualities to Dino (which we would never do), we'd certainly lean towards the unfuzzy, the reptilian).

The attempt to bring in the Fox News demon, MoveOn.org was funny if it weren't so deceptive. MoveOn, a grassroots fundraising organization has given money to the state Democratic Party, but not to Gregoire.

Rossi needs to get his demons straight -- and we're sure he will. 

After hearing him today, we doubt seriously the governor will have much trouble sending this very flawed and poor performing opponent back to his real estate office and his proper place as an "entrepreneurial loser."

Pittsburgh radio sports talker Mark Madden has been permanently taken off the air by ESPN.

"I'm very disappointed," he said last Wednesday, "to hear Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is near death because of a brain tumor. I always hoped Senator Kennedy would live long enough to be assassinated."

(photo: Madden)

We don't ordinarily care what mouth-breathing sports talkers say or opine about anything. (Even though their flavor of talk radio is far less endangered than news talk).

But after the stoopid Hillary-trashing over her out-of-context RFK assassination musings so helpful to her detractors last week, we thought we'd give you an example of a remark that's really offensive because it was intended to be offensive.

In the radio community, as well as in the human race in general, Madden is what's known as a "dick-head."

Madden's been in trouble with listeners and station management in the past. He was fired from a sports talk show on WTAE-TV for his language and over-the-top remarks about the Steelers.

He was also fired as a commentator for World Championship Wrestling. 

"The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”

Politico got an exclusive on former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan's damning new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

Robert Mak of KING5's Upfront will go to Seattle mayor Greg Nickels' office as communications director of the City's communications directors.

This is effective immediately as continuing his political reporting when he's leaving for a job in politics wouldn't be kosher.

It's another hit taken by local media programming.

We're hearing that the "overall mood at the station is very low. Newish news director, Mark Ginther is widely regarded as being clueless, and a number of long-time KING people are looking for other options.

We didn't think much about it Sunday when KING5's Upfront with Robert Mak ran a retrospective of his award-winning local, policy and politics show.

Strangely, it wasn't for any particular or auspicious anniversary -- the show's been on for over 6 years -- Sunday's look-back celebrated the 344th show.

Today we're hearing all over the place that Mak will be leaving KING5 to join the staff of a yet unnamed politico as policy director.

As if he didn't have enough problems, former comedian and radio talk host Al Franken, U.S. Senate candidate in Minnesota is playing defense again for a satirical piece he wrote in Playboy magazine in 2000.
The one-time Saturday Night Live writer and performer wrote "Porn-O-Rama!" about visiting a made-up sex institute with a voluptuous futurist where he has sex with humans and machines. Franken wrote in the tongue-in- er, cheek narrative explaining: "[s]ince I've been married 23 years, I naturally chose" the virtual blowjob. He then describes the experience in explicit detail.
 

The Human Cost of Occupation

American Deaths: 4082

Iraqi Deaths Due to US invasion: 1,213,716

American Wounded:
Official: 30,329 
Estimated: 23,000-1,00000
 

UPDATE: Is Dino Rossi ready for prime time?

(photo: the usual crowd: from left; KVI PD Dennis Kelly, Dino Rossi, John Carlson, Kirby Wilbur; forefront: Glenn Beck)

GOP guber-candidate Dino Rossi appeared on KUOW's The Conversation (m-f, 1-2p) Wednesday as announced below. Here's how it went:

Listening to Dino Rossi trying to stuff his memorized talking points and old jokes from his speeches into the shortest time and space possible, was like hearing a half hour of one of those fast-readers doing the disclaimers on a hemorrhoid commercial.

Guy Nelson, filling in for Reynolds, could have interrupted these rushed Bar Mitzvah-like litanies, but he rarely did.

Invoking his Klinkit grandma who always told him to clean up his campsite, we were amazed to hear that  Rossi has been born-again as an environmentalist since he last ran -- an "entrepreneurial environmentalist," whatever that is.

Although you can't pin him down on whether humans have caused or exacerbated it, he now admits we're "beyond the debate" as to whether the earth is warming. (Wonder what global warming denier and Rossi loyalist Stefan Sharkansky has to say about that? Or Rossi supporters like the pro-global warming Building Industry Association of WA (BIAW) who call the environmentally concerned -- gee, that's everybody! -- "Nazis.").

Although there were few discouraging words from callers or host, a listener asked Rossi to renounce the BIAW, and return all their money after the Nazi remark and their reference to the Governor a "she-wolf." He demurred, of course -- after all, he needs the money!

(We don't think wolfish qualities in an elected official fighting for us is a bad thing, although we're sure the BIAW and Rossi used the term to incite any incipient sexism that might exist 'neath the rocks of the GOP. If we were to assign animal qualities to Dino (which we would never do), we'd certainly lean towards the unfuzzy, the reptilian).

The attempt to bring in the Fox News demon, MoveOn.org was funny if it weren't so deceptive. MoveOn, a grassroots fundraising organization has given money to the state Democratic Party, but not to Gregoire.

Rossi needs to get his demons straight -- and we're sure he will. 

After hearing him today, we doubt seriously the governor will have much trouble sending this very flawed and poor performing opponent back to his real estate office and his proper place as an "entrepreneurial loser."

Hear the love: here's what an offensive assassination remark really sounds like...

Pittsburgh radio sports talker Mark Madden has been permanently taken off the air by ESPN.

"I'm very disappointed," he said last Wednesday, "to hear Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is near death because of a brain tumor. I always hoped Senator Kennedy would live long enough to be assassinated."

(photo: Madden)

We don't ordinarily care what mouth-breathing sports talkers say or opine about anything. (Even though their flavor of talk radio is far less endangered than news talk).

But after the stoopid Hillary-trashing over her out-of-context RFK assassination musings so helpful to her detractors last week, we thought we'd give you an example of a remark that's really offensive because it was intended to be offensive.

In the radio community, as well as in the human race in general, Madden is what's known as a "dick-head."

Madden's been in trouble with listeners and station management in the past. He was fired from a sports talk show on WTAE-TV for his language and over-the-top remarks about the Steelers.

He was also fired as a commentator for World Championship Wrestling. 

McClellan: If we'd only the liberal media had been a liberal media!

"The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”

Politico got an exclusive on former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan's damning new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

BREAKING: robert mak to greg nickels' office

Robert Mak of KING5's Upfront will go to Seattle mayor Greg Nickels' office as communications director of the City's communications directors.

This is effective immediately as continuing his political reporting when he's leaving for a job in politics wouldn't be kosher.

It's another hit taken by local media programming.

We're hearing that the "overall mood at the station is very low. Newish news director, Mark Ginther is widely regarded as being clueless, and a number of long-time KING people are looking for other options.

Is robert mak leaving TV?

We didn't think much about it Sunday when KING5's Upfront with Robert Mak ran a retrospective of his award-winning local, policy and politics show.

Strangely, it wasn't for any particular or auspicious anniversary -- the show's been on for over 6 years -- Sunday's look-back celebrated the 344th show.

Today we're hearing all over the place that Mak will be leaving KING5 to join the staff of a yet unnamed politico as policy director.

Al franken takes hit from playboy porn-o-rama

As if he didn't have enough problems, former comedian and radio talk host Al Franken, U.S. Senate candidate in Minnesota is playing defense again for a satirical piece he wrote in Playboy magazine in 2000.
The one-time Saturday Night Live writer and performer wrote "Porn-O-Rama!" about visiting a made-up sex institute with a voluptuous futurist where he has sex with humans and machines. Franken wrote in the tongue-in- er, cheek narrative explaining: "[s]ince I've been married 23 years, I naturally chose" the virtual blowjob. He then describes the experience in explicit detail.
 

MEMORIAL DAY, 2008: lest we forget... lives wasted in a needless war waged deceitfully by an illegitimate president

The Human Cost of Occupation

American Deaths: 4082

Iraqi Deaths Due to US invasion: 1,213,716

American Wounded:
Official: 30,329 
Estimated: 23,000-1,00000