By Steve Rhodes

Rod Blagojevich is about to be convicted in the state senate and thrown out of office, but his PR gambit is paying off in the arena of public opinion because he’s found a cohort stupider than state legislators: the national media. Excerpts, with commentary. First Greta Van Susteren, then Rachel Maddow.
On The Record with Greta Van Susteren
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, you and I actually agree on that. I mean, I’m a lawyer, you’re a lawyer, and I think that everyone should be able to present his or her defense, calling witnesses, not partial tapes, but complete tapes. And so you and I are on the same page on that. But as a practical matter, you’re in a heap of trouble. You know, any time you’ve got the possibility of an indictment breathing down your neck, you got trouble.
COMMENT: C’mon, Greta! If you made an impeachment a criminal trial it would be a criminal trial. Not only that, but it would undoubtedly harm the criminal case; you can’t have potential witnesses in the criminal trial brought down to Springfield to testify in an impeachment proceeding, nor preview the full tapes for the defense – especially when the criminal trial is ongoing and witnesses are still coming in to the feds. Besides that, the impeachment is based on a lot more than the most recent criminal allegations.

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Posted on January 28, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

Now we know how easy it must have been for the Bush administration to sell its war to the national media. Watching them try to get their heads around the Rod Blagojevich story – following their dismal failure in doing simple research on Roland Burris’s peculiar and controversial background – has been nothing short of mind-boggling. For starters, will someone please send out a memo informing our illustrious pundits that an investigation of the governor has been going on for years and allegedly trying to sell Barack Obama’s senate seat is really just the least of it? This is about so much more. People are in jail. You’d think that after a two-year presidential campaign in which Tony Rezko’s name at least came up briefly, before being swatted away by a media cohort that chose to think more pleasant thoughts than the facts forced upon them, would at least have learned that the now-imprisoned Rezko threatened to taint Obama because of the same investigation into state government that has now snared the governor. The wiretaps and children’s hospital and Tribune editorial writer – this is the frosting on the cake. The cake itself will be huge; multi-layered. And the impeachment proceedings, likewise, are not just about the governor’s behavior these last few months. It’s about an accumulation of behavior – abuses of power large and small – that finally reached a state of intolerability. This means you, Geraldo. Do your homework. You too, Whoopi.

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Posted on January 27, 2009

By Scott Buckner

I missed presidential history as it unfolded live during my workday Tuesday, so I had to catch up with it 12 hours later courtesy of ABC-TV affiliate WLS-TV/Channel 7 while attending the inaugural Jagermeister Ball at my neighborhood dive bar. Near as I could decipher from my notes this morning, here are a few things I noticed:
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While everyone else spent their entire Tuesday basking in the historic moment thinking incredibly profound thoughts, I couldn’t help but think of the highly amusing scene in the film Little Big Man where that fine American Indian actor Chief Dan George goes to the mountaintop to scream at Death and wait to die, only to discover that The Grim Reaper is either too busy to fight an old Indian, or is just plain deaf.

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Posted on January 21, 2009

By Kathryn Ware

Our look back on the debut season of Ironside continues.
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Special Note: This installment of our Ironside Episode Guide is dedicated to the memory of Don Galloway (Detective Ed Brown), who died January 8th at the age of 71.
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Episode: A Very Cool Hot Car
Airdate: 30 November 1967
Plot: Years ago, when I saw Spinal Tap for the first time and laughed my head off at the song (Listen (shhhhh) to the) Flower People, I had no idea there was a hippie faction that actually called themselves the Flower People. And according to this episode of Ironside, they also named themselves after flowers and dressed like rejects from Willy Wonka’s candy factory. But how many of them were trafficking in stolen cars?
Guest stars: Bernie Hamilton (Capt. Dobey on Starsky and Hutch), Arch Johnson, and J. C. Flippen.

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Posted on January 13, 2009

By The Beachwood Ad Affairs Desk

What a 30-second spot cost on 10 randomly chosen TV shows in 2008, according to data from Ad Age.
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Show: America’s Funniest Home Videos
Cost: $90,044
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Show: 30 Rock
Cost: $104,178
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Show: CSI: Miami
Cost: $182,101

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Posted on January 5, 2009