One of the benefits of not having to go to an office is being able to watch great television moments – like yesterday’s takedown of Star Jones by Barbara Walters – live in the comfort of my apartment. I was on the phone with Fedex trying to track a lost package and watching ABC at the same time. Just for fun, I told the operator “it’s too bad you’re not watching The View right now.”
She freaked out: “What’s happening? What’s she saying?” I felt like I was updating her on troop movements.
I told her that Walters was standing over Star’s TV corpse, slicing into it, disemboweling what was left of her after all that dieting.
The operator was on Star’s side. Me, too.
By “betraying” The View and disappearing after a quick statement, Star spared us all another epic TV anchor sendoff/slog. The Today Show gave Katie Couric a solid three-hour tribute with more montages than this year’s Oscars. Yesterday two hours went to Good Morning America’s Charlie Gibson – vulnerable Charlie Gibson who opened up about how “lonely” he’s going to feel in the World News Tonight anchor chair.
God help us when Anderson Cooper leaves CNN. The survivors of Katrina will be conscripted into a maudlin mass tribute to their silver-haired savior. Since it’s New Orleans the producer will insist that there be lots of handclapping, a Dixieland jazz band. Oh, lawdy. Harry Connick will have to show up. Mary Landrieu will be there to thank him for dressing her down. They’ll play that clip over and over. Angelina Jolie won’t be able to make it. They’ll reminisce about their experience with war and famine via satellite. She’ll rename one of her kids Anderson. (I have to remember to Tivo this.)
If TV anchors get this much fanfare, everyone else should. If a guy works for Dairy Queen for 15 years, he deserves a daylong tribute. Older customers stopping by to pay homage to his Oreo Cookie Blizzard. Younger ones chirping about his Strawberry Cheesequake ™ Blizzard. Tony Bennett singing about his Mocha Chip with Nescafe ® Blizzard…
Btw in case anyone was wondering Jaleel White did not kill himself. This was confirmed on this morning’s Today. (Poor Urkel. They waited till the 9:00 o’clock hour to announce it.)





39 comments
Steve
June 29, 2006 at 9:50 am
1Mary Landrieu will be there to thank him for dressing him down.?
Did Mary get an operation that we don’t know about?
Benjamin
June 29, 2006 at 10:33 am
2Mo-
So many of the names you use are unfamiliar to me. Are they on the thing you mentioned call “TV”? Is that an NPR station somewhere in the midwest? I’m confused.
Ann
June 29, 2006 at 10:46 am
3Jaleel White didn’t kill himself? Is he dead anyway? I’m confused.
John Murphy
June 29, 2006 at 10:48 am
4Look Look
I am the Third comment
WHO WHO !!!!!
YIPPPEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
John Murphy
June 29, 2006 at 10:50 am
5Sorry about that
I was number four
:(
Mo Rocca
June 29, 2006 at 2:19 pm
6Yikes, my first blog entry and I already made an error. Thanks, Steve, I’ve corrected Senator Landrieu’s gender.
cooper
June 29, 2006 at 2:29 pm
7Mo, tough crowd, huh?
dee
June 29, 2006 at 3:19 pm
8Murray? Are you around? Should we send an ark or Watersorb granules?
CJ
June 29, 2006 at 4:05 pm
9Ah yes, Star Jones, convincing evidence in and of herself that there are too many law schools in this country and the entrance standards much too low.
amanda
June 29, 2006 at 4:07 pm
10lawdy-dat sounds likes a party-let me grap my cajun reeboks (aka-white shrimper boots) and umbrella and I be there!
cooper
June 29, 2006 at 6:18 pm
11cj, perhaps the law school exit standards are a mite low, as well.
Mo, I’m not much of a slave to TV these days, but back around 35 years ago, when I was, seems like there was a woman named Barbara Walters on the Today show with Hugh Downs and Frank McGee. She had some sort of an annoying speach impediment which we always thought would doom her as a media personality. Surely, it’s not the same woman; nah, she had no future in TV.
Maximum Bob
June 29, 2006 at 7:09 pm
12I’m not all that interested in Star’s swan song or Barbara’s rebuttal. What I really want to see on video is what happens the first time Star walks into a restaurant and isn’t comped for the meal. Now that’ll be entertainment, kids.
cooper
June 29, 2006 at 8:10 pm
13Off target, but needs to be asked? Now that the Bush Administration has lost its Gitmo case in the Supreme Court, now can we impeach the sum’bitch?
siobhan
June 29, 2006 at 8:26 pm
14Thank you, Coop. That’s the topic of interest to me today.
Nothing personal to Star whoever, but I really couldn’t give a rat’s ass* about entertainment news.
*even if the rat appears to be a Deadhead at a Mardi Gras show, circa 1991.
siobhan
June 29, 2006 at 8:27 pm
15or is it Star whomever? Editor?
Breeze
June 29, 2006 at 8:53 pm
16The “Star” / “Walter” issue is an opaque answer for the “nine year” end to even the most popular shows. Exceptions are few…
SeattleDan
June 29, 2006 at 9:48 pm
17Ok, I watched “The View” a few years ago. I felt dirty afterwards.
But I still sell Star’s book. I live in an African-American commuinty.
On a different note completely, I will also be selling Adam’s book.
Mo, should I carry your book,too?
sherwin
June 30, 2006 at 6:04 am
18and this morning, on the today show, jones reynolds wrapped the nation around her little finger again. al roker must have kissed some serious zucker-butt to garner a full sixteen minutes of one-on-one interview time at the top of the 8 o’clock hour, normally always reserved for the international headlines! star’s still bigger than a humvee accident by current american standards. nbc: proud as a peacock?
hope all is well, mo!
Julia
June 30, 2006 at 8:51 am
19Thanks for my “warm fuzzy” of the week. I have no idea who Star Jones is, and from what I can see in this conversation, that’s a very good sign.
Between this, and not recognizing the faces OR the names on the grocery-checkout-stand mags, I think I’ve finally succeeded in taking my exposer to pop culture down to a tolerable level. Mo, you made my day.
Ann
June 30, 2006 at 9:37 am
20It is indeed “Star whoever.” And I know there’s at least one law-school grad amongst our regular commenters, CJ and Cooper, so watch it!
Arik
June 30, 2006 at 3:28 pm
21I think my biggest problem with Eva “Barbs” VonWalter’s character assassination of Star is that she claimed The View audience were “upset at Star’s unexplained weight loss” (what??) - which tells me that if you’re at home at 10am and eating mini-corndogs, you don’t want to see any of your heroines do anything crazy like losing unexplained weight.
But then, I have never seen The View or eaten mini-corndogs at 10am. For me, they’re more of a late night snack.
Boomer
June 30, 2006 at 4:44 pm
22This seems about the right place to plop this little gem of American pop culture - http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/06/30/people.hasselhoff.ap/index.ht ml
Women swoon and men chuckle.
ast
June 30, 2006 at 5:22 pm
23Hey Boomer–Don’t Hassle the Hoff
tess
June 30, 2006 at 5:29 pm
24What a shame that the only thing I know about Star Jones are jokes from Robert Smeigel’s “Saturday TV Funhouse” on SNL and from Payless commercials. I still don’t get who she is and what The View is supposed to be.
Jill
June 30, 2006 at 8:38 pm
25for a woman who has lost a lot of weight - she is big on waffling her story… star that is!
SeattleDan
June 30, 2006 at 9:24 pm
26tess, thank your lucky stars that you don’t know any of this stuff. I’m figuring that Mo has to watch shows like the View as research for his next appearance on WWDTM.
SeattleDan
June 30, 2006 at 9:33 pm
27And totally off topic, Dee, I received your email, but my reply went through your spam filter, and when I tried to get through it, I was told the page was not available to tell you that I was ok. But everything is copacetic.
Anyone seen Dave lately?
dee
July 1, 2006 at 5:12 am
28Dan–clever system, no?
I always check my spam filtered stuff and I moved you to my inbox.
(Was it good for you, too?)
dee
July 1, 2006 at 5:14 am
29And still no Murray. I hope this means he’s incredibly busy on a holiday weekend and not that he’s trying to salvage bikes and computers.
cooper
July 1, 2006 at 7:59 am
30dee, Murray and Tony are busy stacking sandbags and saving kittens in front of a bank of TV cameras, if they’ve learned anything about politics.
cooper
July 1, 2006 at 1:10 pm
31dee, speaking of kittens, I still have 2 cute furry balls of love and joy to give away from the litter that our local stray/feral momma cat dumped in our garage. I’ll be coming to your fair city soon, I’m sure. It would be just the perfect way of saying thank you for leaving me behind on your trip to La Provence, Sud de la France. Those two little scamps hardly draw any blood when they play with you these days. I could even throw in a couple of cat toys, no charge. Let me know…
your pal, cooper
dizzy
July 1, 2006 at 1:10 pm
32Mo Rocca has a blog? Star Jones fired from the View?
This is going to be fun!!!!
vachon
July 1, 2006 at 2:33 pm
33Don’t dis da Star. Dat’s all.
cooper
July 1, 2006 at 3:01 pm
34Ann, sorry about slamming innocent bloodsucking barracudas, like I did in #11 above. That was certainly indelicate of me. I apologize. Please don’t litigate.
Hey, Pete IVDL, where have you been all month? Surely, you’re not lurking. Come out and play, buddy. We miss you! The harsh winter weather in Melbourne, Oz hasn’t brought down power lines or affected internet access, I hope. Speak, boy.
RF
July 1, 2006 at 4:07 pm
35-The Covenant-
http://tinyurl.com/qtvzy
hedera
July 1, 2006 at 10:18 pm
36OK, I’ve been in my job 18 years - does this mean if I decide to retire, I get a huge daylong tribute? What an awful thought.
Not having turned on a television in the daytime since Sept. 11, 2001, I have no idea who Star Jones is and I don’t care. Ditto Jaleel White, whoever he is.
Murray
July 3, 2006 at 2:12 pm
37Dee, Cooper
Actually we had a very nice weekend, no flooding, no rain. I had a deluxe bike tour which goes late into the evening on Fri. and Sat. and a strategy meeting with Tony’s staff till late Sunday. So this is the first I’ve had a chance to catch up.
We only got about 5″ of rain here and the ground was a bit dry to start with so it wasn’t a big deal. Jane in Columbia (between Balmer and Washington) had 11 inches and we had a stream running down the hill and under our deck. I’ll be heading there soon for the 4th and can asses the damage for myself.
On the campaign front, our opponent Shuster was on a local radio station this morning and Tony called in to ask when Shuster would debate him. Shuster got mad, called it a cheap political stunt and hung up.
God, what a gift. If only he had cursed at Tony.
So we spent the day getting out; Shuster says debating the issues and discussing his record are a “cheap political stunt” press releases and letters to the editors of the papers in the district.
Shuster may be a political hack but he screwed the pooch on this one. His handlers must have been out to lunch to not have anticipated and prepared him for Tony’s call.
hedera
July 3, 2006 at 9:11 pm
38I wonder if Mr. Shuster (and how close that is to “shyster”) has ever read Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us”…
Erin
July 4, 2006 at 2:01 am
39This Star Jones piece really killed me with laughter. The thing about the FedEx woman desperately wanting updates is so classic. Thank you. A great laugh.