Olivia Munn and the Pundit Fans

Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing fame (and some movie about Facebook, like that’ll ever go anywhere) is developing a show about the cable news industry called More as the Story Develops, which is stirring up some fun conversations on the Twitters these days.

The show’s concept has been a fond dream of liberal pundit fans for years, especially since Sorkin likes to use a certain Mr Olbermann as inspiration for his characters. So we were all delighted when we learned the project was going ahead.

Then this happened:

Olivia Munn has found life after the cancellation of her series "Perfect Couples." The actress has joined the cast of Aaron Sorkin's cable news drama at U.S. cable network HBO. ... Munn will play Sloan, one of the "new breed" of sexy financial analysts with a show on [the] network.

Here’s the problem. In pundit fandom, liberal women tend to hate Olivia Munn. No, I mean they hate her. We’re talking the fire of a thousand suns here.

Olbermann's Back

He gets a fancy promo in TIME Magazine and everything:

"Same title, same tirades, new channel. Having parted ways with MSNBC, Olbermann takes his passion for politics to the far reaches of the cable dial, on the channel founded by Al Gore. Current, premieres 6/20."

I'm interested in seeing how the new show plays out. Obviously Current won't give him the ratings that MSNBC did at the end of his eight years there, at least not at first.

But I get my cable news almost entirely through podcasts and online material, and I suspect it's only a matter of time before the old ratings system goes out of style. By throwing his considerable star power behind an interactive, web-savvy channel like Current, Olbermann might be giving the whole system a shove in the right direction.

Now you might be asking yourself, "Gosh, it's been six months since Keith Olbermann left MSNBC. What's he been doing to pass the time?" Oh, you know, the usual - hanging out on the Internet, reading James Thurber short stories aloud to his fans while wearing a vintage baseball jersey over a dress shirt for no apparent reason.



You bet your ass I'm watching his show.

Inside the Beltway

Beltway.

The May 14-20 edition of the New Zealand Listener ran a profile piece on Gerry Brownlee, our rather tactless Minister for Economic Development and the man in charge of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA). When questioned about some of the rumours and criticism surrounding his performance so far, Brownlee replied that the media fuss is "Wellington beltway rubbish".

As someone who watches a fair amount of American cable news, my first reaction was "Ha ha, Wellington has a beltway." As someone who lives in Wellington, my second reaction was "Wait, no we don't."

Not so much.

Of course I had to fire up Google Maps and Wikipedia and get to the bottom of this pressing issue. Sure enough, it turns out that “inside the beltway” is often used by Kiwi commentators to describe out-of-touch political squabbling in Wellington, despite the fact that our capital city has nothing similar to Interstate 495 in Washington D.C.

We have the Wellington Inner City Bypass. We have the InterIsland Ferry Terminal. We have the Terrace Tunnel, and numerous other examples of transportation infrastructure. But no beltway.

It’s a bit silly to pretend that New Zealand politics are anywhere near the influence and self-importance of American politics, but it doesn’t bother me too much. I suspect that the phrase is used in that tongue-in-cheek way that Kiwis are so good at – our tiny capital taking the piss out of Big Bad Washington.

It’s certainly much better than pretending that Wellington is Los Angeles. “Wellywood”, you guys? Really?

Interview: Paul Gilding on "The Great Disruption"

Original post at The Lumière Reader as part of their coverage of the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.

After 35 years of activism and social entrepreneurship to address climate change and sustainability, including a stint as head of Greenpeace International, Paul Gilding has reached a stark conclusion: “We need to forget about ‘saving the planet.’”

In The Great Disruption: How the Climate Crisis Will Transform the Global Economy, Gilding argues that not only is it too late to avoid a global crisis, but that the crisis has already started. Since the financial meltdown of 2008 we’ve seen rising food and oil prices, new evidence of ecosystem collapse, extreme weather and wildfires, all in the face of an exponential increase in world population and energy consumption.

It’s now a simple matter of maths, physics and system dynamics: our global economic footprint is past the limit where our planet can support it. “We didn’t change,” Gilding says. “So now change will be forced upon us by actual physical consequences” – including energy and food shortages, refugee migrations, and widespread geopolitical conflict.

It’s a hard pill to swallow, but Gilding has clearly been through this debate countless times and from countless different angles, and he’s gathered plenty of evidence to back him up. I had quite a few “Yes, but...!” moments as I read the book, only to have them persuasively addressed several pages later.

The real sticking point of The Great Disruption is whether we can follow Gilding through to the confident “Let’s get to work!” attitude he eventually reaches. After all, he says, after a few million years the planet will recover from the worst we can do to it. Our job is to muster up the courage, compassion and innovation that is necessary to revolutionise the economy and save our civilisation, and he believes that humanity is up to the challenge.

A few weeks into his international book tour, I called Paul Gilding in New York City to find out what makes him so sure.

Uganda and the Anti-Gay Movement

There's a new development on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, which first made headlines in 2009.  It looks like the death penalty is being dropped from the bill, but there's a chance the rest of it will be voted into law after the new parliamentary session begins next week:

[A]ccording to AP news agency, MP David Bahati, who proposed the legislation, last month said that the death penalty "was something we have moved away from".

Pastor Ssempa also rejected this clause but nevertheless urged the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee to back the bill.

"The parliament should be given the opportunity to discuss and pass the bill, because homosexuality is killing our society," AP news agency quotes him as telling the MPs.

Two things grab my attention.  First, I wonder if the death penalty proposal was actually a trick designed to focus the backlash on an extreme position that they didn't really want - at least not for the time being. By backing away from it now, they can make a show of bending to international pressure and still end up with a bill that sentences gay people to life in prison.

Writers & Readers

I'll be writing reviews and covering the festival for The Lumière Reader again this year, so I've got a frantic but interesting weekend coming up. 

My main assignments are Paul Gilding, former head of Greenpeace International whom I interviewed last month; Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish from Palestine, whose book I really ought to start reading; and my biggest challenge, Fatima Bhutto from Pakistan, who has some opinions about America's foreign policy that she'd like to discuss. I'll probably try to sit in on a couple of the panel discussions as well. 

One day I'll do stuff like this for a living.

Katie Couric Interviews Rachel Maddow

Dammit, Couric and Maddow, why did you make me go to the Glamour Magazine website for this interview? I almost died of pink in there.

Still good stuff from Rachel, though. Some women have TV boyfriends; I have a TV media studies professor/girlfriend. Which is a bit of an issue for her apparently.

[W]hat’s weird about cable is that people get really engaged with news hosts as brands. ... No matter what you’re talking about, people wanted to know more about what you thought about it, because they are interested in you as a person. ... And I don’t want to insert myself into the story. I just want to give a useful analysis of it to help people come to their own conclusions. It’s why I have a conveyor belt of gray blazers — I try to look exactly the same every day. Don’t focus on what I’m wearing. Focus on what’s coming out of my face.

I try, I really do.

Journalism in the Age of Branding

In my efforts to figure out the media landscape and where I might end up, I keep coming back to a great (and long) article by Maureen Tkacik in the Columbia Journalism Review - "Look at Me! A writer's search for journalism in the age of branding." 

Tkacik's experiences as a woman journalist covering issues like the phone sex industry and the hiring practices of American Apparel are worth a read, and I love her perspective on the new culture of self-centred, entertaining/obnoxious political blogs like Gawker and Wonkette. (Speaking of, Ana Marie Cox, where are you?)

More broadly, there's her take on the debate over objectivity in journalism, which I enjoy digging into whenever I get the chance. 

Privilege in Politics: The NRA Convention

Yesterday TRMS devoted most of the show to the 2011 NRA Convention in Pittsburgh. It's good TV (look, it's Rachel Maddow surrounded by conservatives with guns!) and a stark example of what we mean when we talk about social privilege.

John McCain's daughter Meghan, a proud NRA member, invited Maddow on a "date" to this year's convention in an effort to give a fresh perspective on gun culture. Maddow is a vocal critic of the NRA who happens to enjoy hanging out at the shooting range, so they had plenty to talk about.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

At this point, just to be fair, I should say that there were probably many people at that convention who could have debated this more effectively than Meghan McCain. ("I don't think that's necessarily true, but... You're arguing very well, Rachel.")  That being said, compare her perspective to that of Rev Ricky Burgess, City Councilman for Pittsburgh's poorest and most crime-infested district.

Remember Where You Were

I was at the office on a slow Monday afternoon when the news broke of Osama bin Laden's death. More importantly, I was on Twitter.

My Twitter feed is full of reporters, pundits, newsroom staffers, bloggers and everyday political wonks, so when the White House announced that the President was making a statement with almost no warning we all dropped what we were doing and started speculating. I was one of the people who guessed it had something to do with Libya. Others thought it might be the tornadoes in Alabama – but why wait until late on a Sunday night in the US to speak about that? Just to interrupt Donald Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” on TV, someone joked. We all laughed and retweeted it.

Then we heard it had something to do about national security. “Gaddafi stepping down? Bin Laden dead?” a blogger guessed, and I replied “Wouldn’t that last one be something.”

Lara Logan Speaks Out

CBS journalist Lara Logan speaks out about the brutal sexual assault she endured in Tahrir Square, Egypt. This interview is one of the most courageous things I've ever seen anyone do.

Blog revamp

Since I'm going to be studying for my National Diploma in Journalism at Whitireia in a month, I thought it was time to change the focus of the blog a bit. "Travel & Books" are still interests of mine, but 1) I doubt I'll have much time or money for either while I'm at school, and 2) I spend most of my time online talking about the news anyway.  This ought to be a good way to keep track of what I'm learning, discuss politics and current events at greater length, and get some additional writing practice.

Or, you know, I might leave the blog untouched for months at a time. That's possible too.