The Pretend Life on the D-List

Don’t get me wrong, folks, I am a huge Kathy Griffin fan. I think she’s hilarious, I’ve seen her live a few times, and as much as I hate to admit it, I look a little like her when she’s not wearing make-up, her hairline is just a smidge lower than mine. Like I said, I love her. I’ve just had enough of her fake reality show.

The release of her book "Official Book Club Selection" and her recent talk show crush to promote it have a lot to do with this. She’s so damn interesting and has such an interesting life I have to wonder why she has to make stuff up for her reality show. Why must it be so staged and so avoiding of her real life?

Kathy has such depth and intelligence and experience, anyone would think she would be perfect for a reality show – and yet, look at what we’ve got. Why couldn’t we see her personal life on the show? Her embezzling husband? Her pedophile brother? Her plastic surgery disasters. This is the stuff reality TV is made of – not scripted make-believe.

Go see her live, enjoy and marvel at her talk show appearances, and yes, go read her book – but just forget about "My Life on the D-List." At least until her real life begins to seep into it.

Only News When They Wanna Be

While I have personally berated folks who only seem to get their news from “The Daily Show,” broadcast on Comedy Central, in recent years that program has proved to actually have some journalistic merit. In their election coverage and more recently when host Jon Stewart clashed with Jim Cramer regarding some misleading financial advice, it appeared that “The Daily Show” was much more serious than its comedy roots would suggest. But apparently they are only news when they wanna be.

Watching Jon Stewart softball interview Larry King last night I was struck by how Stewart seemed to at least have perused the new book King was pushing, he surely had not heard (or possibly was just ignoring) the big entertainment news regarding King and his book yesterday. When a man is your guest, how can you not know the biggest story of the day regarding that person? Unless your job is simply to push the book?

Yesterday, it was revealed that Larry in fact had a son, Larry King Jr., one he didn’t know about until years later. It’s in the book, it’s on Larry’s CNN show, it’s all over the morning news. How do you miss it, and worse yet, how does a ‘journalist’ not even mention it?

Well, maybe I was mistaken and “The Daily Show” is only a comedy show. Make the Bush and Obama jokes. Push the book. Don’t make waves. Unless of course maybe someone lost money through bad financial advice? Maybe... but then maybe Jim Kramer just didn’t have a book to push at that time...


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Give It Up, Old Man

It is sooo time for Larry King to just hang it up and retire. If he can't even try to keep up with pop culture or current events, he should just not cover them in his show. Can't his writers, researchers, handlers or whatever at least give him some hint or cue cards as to what is what?

Just for the record, Larry, Heath Ledger was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Brokeback Mountain. You couldn't seem to remember that. He's not a new face in Hollywood as you've said, the man's been around for a while. Also, The Dark Knight is not a remake of Batman, and Ledger was not playing the title role. Sheesh.