Jeffrey Zaslow has a great Wall Street Journal piece about the bottom-feeders of the political pundit world, constantly whoring themselves to talk show bookers with the goal of getting on the air to promote themselves as much as possible. The focus of the piece, not surprisingly, is the Grade-Z Coulter wannabe Debbie Schlussel, best known for arguing that "Superman Returns" was a bad movie because it depicted Lois Lane as a working mother.
Zaslow calls Schlussel a "B-lister," but that's several levels too high. Here's my favorite part of the story:
Last year, Jason Alexander was on Howard Stern's show pitching a children's book he'd written. Ms. Schlussel called in and berated the "Seinfeld" actor for supporting OneVoice, a group that advocates nonviolent conflict resolution in the Middle East. Ms. Schlussel charged that the organization has ties to Hamas. Mr. Stern got laughs saying he'd like to create a "Six Degrees of Separation" game based on her ability to connect any person to terrorists in six links or less.Sounds to me like the jerk store called, and they're running out of Debbie Schlussel.After much arguing, and repeated impersonations of a raving Ms. Schlussel by Mr. Stern's sidekicks, Mr. Alexander lamented on air that he "came in to talk about a children's book and ended up being branded a terrorist."
"Ms. Schlussel thought the segment made great theater."
That's exactly what is wrong with television punditry. It is not thoughtful or expert commentary. It's propped up to be entertainment for the sake of ratings. Then again, what do I care? I never watch it anyway.
Posted by: Emily at October 20, 2006 03:20 PMFYI: Jeff Zaslow and my Ruth went to Marple Newtown High School together and he grew up in Broomall. Small world.
Posted by: David Wasser at October 22, 2006 04:41 PM