Remember when Dorothy Parker said that Tom Dewey looked like "the man on top of the wedding cake"? OK, probably you don't remember that "mal mot," since the legendary wit--the object of a so-so biopic, "Mrs. Parker and The Vicious Circle," starring Jennifer Jason-Leigh--said it back in the 40s. At the time, of course, Dewey was the Governor of New York when it really was the Empire State, and a very respected former crime-busting d.a. who was nominated for the presidency twice by the Republican Party. But when Parker slapped that label on Dewey, his reputation collapsed, because everybody knew immediately that Parker had really nailed something about Dewey's essence: for all his merits, he was also stiff, priggish, phony. And Dewey's rep never recovered; from the moment they heard Parker's line, they smirked a little when they saw him.
I think that Fox News has scored a similar direct hit on Anderson Cooper. For a couple of years now, CNN has been giving Cooper the big buildup, spending a fortune on advertising and promotion for their man. And it's worked, sort of, at least in the velvet-mafia confines of Manhattan and likeminded places.
But then Fox came along to burst his balloon. FNC called CNN on the promotion, dishing it with the "He's the Paris Hilton of cable news" line. It's a nasty zinger, but as with Parker-on-Dewey, it has the zing of truth to it. And so it's a meme that's destined to dog Cooper for a long long time.
NewsBuster's Noel Sheppard has a good wrap-up of the story, as it has played so far--although nobody thinks that this back-and-forth is over. The ratings stakes are too high--and the celebrity steaks are too juicy!
TCG is waiting, for example, for the "One Night in Anderson" video. We are sure that it's out there, somewhere, in this cell-phone-cam/webcam world.
