Executive Jonathan Klein started his career at CNN by
complaining about scummy, pajama-clad bloggers; he ended it by
hiring “Client Number 9,” Eliot Spitzer, to host a primetime
show.
Klein was recently sacked after CNN’s owners grew tired of
watching him guide the network into last place. He had often talked
about the network’s “commitment” to serious news programming. Yet
this proponent of credentialed, reputable journalists — Klein
famously defended the forgery-using Dan Rather against some “guy
sitting in his living room” blogging — leaves behind as his final
project a show hosted by a prostitute-frequenting
non-journalist.
That Eliot Spitzer got the show is far more interesting
than the show itself, which is a pitiful, supposedly fun yet
serious “dinner party” (in the show’s gimmicky language) that no
one, except possibly the dimmer members of Jonathan Klein’s social
circle, would want to attend.
The lightweight, “Pulitzer Prize-winning” columnist
Kathleen Parker plays the show’s doltish hostess, making weak jokes
and asking inane questions as guests pass through the foyer, as it
were, before the serious talk at dinner commences with Eliot. In
its desperate promotional material, CNN insists that “chemistry”
exists between Parker and Spitzer, a particularly creepy analogy to
use when the show stars a pol bounced from office for after-hour
cavorting. Kathleen Parker is given to bragging about her genteel
Southern manners and roots. But what kind of “Southern belle”
co-hosts a show with Client Number 9?
Some have billed the show as an evening version of
“Morning Joe.” But this “lively” evening party is neither live nor
shot in the evening. The editing is obvious and heavy, making one
wonder just how bad the uncut segments appear. Klein had complained
about Crossfire as a food fight and pompously canceled it.
But Parker Spitzer’s dinner party offers up thin gruel
compared to it.
Crossfire, even at its stupidest,
showed a little life and passion. But Parker and Spitzer are just
two establishment bores and climbers without anything of substance
to say. Spitzer is using the show to rehabilitate himself (guests
so far have dutifully praised him) and Parker seems content to ask
cutesy, nothing questions that only a Pulitzer Prize Committee
could find incisive.
The show’s ratings so far have been anemic, trailing even
the axed show of Rick Sanchez, another suave selection by Klein.
Sanchez had been given a wide swath during the afternoon with
Klein’s blessing, but broke down under criticism from the
left.
It is curious that in his anti-Jewish lashing out at Jon
Stewart as a coward and phony Sanchez didn’t bring up Stewart’s
bogus name. His name is actually Jon “Leibowitz,” but the satirist
of all things phony dropped it because he thought retaining the
name would hurt his career. Stewart hates phoniness in others, but
uses a phony name for himself, which in itself is a kind of
rebuttal to Sanchez’s contention that people “like Stewart” control
the media.
Sanchez has a curious identity complex of his own,
referring to himself as a “little, Puerto Rican” guy that the
“Northeastern liberal elite” automatically marked down as
“second-tier.” What exactly is he talking about? Sanchez isn’t
“little” but heavyset and loud, and his ancestry isn’t “Puerto
Rican” but Cuban. In fact, had he gone the Jon Stewart route and
adopted a phony last name, most people wouldn’t even think of him
as Hispanic.
Playing up his Hispanic background didn’t hurt his career;
it made his career. That’s why he felt the need to out-Hispanic
Hispanics, incorporating into his show a “Fotos del Dia” segment
that Stewart gleefully mocked.
Perhaps CNN should have kept Sanchez on the air;
cross-channel dueling and curiosity alone would have given the
network a ratings boost. A Jewish comic with an adopted WASP name
sparring night after night with a white-looking lout who casts
himself as a “little, Puerto Rican” involves much more interesting
chemistry than Parker Spitzer.
