Covering the news that really matters.
Today I booked my colleague at The Nation, Betsy Reed, on midday MSNBC. Betsy has a fantastic and very important article out this week, “Race to the Bottom: How Hillary Clinton’s campaign played the race card—and drove a wedge into the feminist movement.” They promised us 15 minutes, which really means 7, which is still pretty good.
Sadly, MSNBC was on the prowl for a bigger story: When I turned on the TV at 2:45 for our 15 minutes, Betsy was being pre-empted for a mountain lion. A fucking cougar for christs sake. The mountain lion “had been seen in the backyard of a Northern California family.” MSNBC noted that the cougar was in it’s natural habitat, as did the fucking Director of the Mountain Lion Foundation, who spoke for 6 minutes by phone while a fucking helicopter panned over all the houses in the area looking for a mountain lion with half of a bloodied housewife in its mouth.
By 2:58 EST, the anchor noted with actual sincerity that “its almost noon on the west coast. lunchtime. will families be coming home for lunch to find a mountain lion in their backyard?” Does anyone go home for lunch anymore? And are you telling me that MSNBC wouldn’t just love to have a whole family gored, mauled and eviscerated by a fierce wild cougar, particularly on camera?
At one minute to three, Betsy came on along with some nazi type from Townhall.com, and was asked two questions, neither about her article, both about political strategy, the second of which: who won the debate over raising the gas tax, as if that debate has been settled in the two days since Hillary Clinton pandered proposed suspending a gay percentage of federal gas taxes for the Indiana primary summer.
There was no mention of the article Betsy was there to discuss, and they couldn’t keep her longer because of the tornadoes. Well done!
While we’re on the subject, cheerfully linked here is “a complete list of all attacks that involve physical contact by mountain lions on people in California through 26 January 2007.” The only clear lesson I glean from the page is that throwing rocks ain’t gonna help you keep your thumb up in there, that’s for damn sure.
About The Author - Ben Wyskida is a writer, activist, conscientious hedonist and political communications strategist living in Brooklyn. - Visit Ben's site.
I once got a call from MSNBC’s “Hardball,” because they were interested in having me talk about Hillary Clinton. Trouble is, their format (and what they wanted to discuss) was so restrictive that they ended up not having me on.
Maybe I should become an expert on mountain lions.
Paul, if a mountain lion ever attacks San Fransico, I expect you to be on Situation Room telling Wolf Blitzer all about it.