Newsweek Even Bungles Celebrity Chats
by Christian TotoIt’s hard to argue Newsweek hasn’t fully embraced the ideological left. Just how many times did the magazine put fawning images of Sen. Barack Obama on the cover last year? And its recent unflattering cover photo of Rush Limbaugh, not to mention the accompanying article, spoke volumes of its editorial choices.
Why a news weekly would decide, in a very difficult market, to parrot nearly every other magazine’s liberal bent is a head scratcher. But Newsweek can’t even get its celebrity interviews right.
The latest assault on basic journalism comes courtesy of Ramin Setoodeh who chatted up actress Emily Blunt for the issue on newsstands now. If you’re squeamish, please read no further. Here’s how it starts:
Hi, Emily.
Hi. And I now have my mouth full of a bar I’m eating.
A bar of what?
It’s like a protein bar. Omigod. I sound so wanky, so healthy.
Should I give you a few minutes to chew?
It’s gone. It’s an unattractive thing to listen to someone chewing and swallowing, amplified over the phone.
How long are you going to be in L.A.?
Until the end of April. I’m going to take up learning the cello again …
Bet you can’t wait to read more.
It gets worse. We learn nothing about the delightful Ms. Blunt, while the reporter strains so very hard to be casual and clever.
If a serious news magazine can’t be trusted to deliver smart, informative celebrity news, it certainly should give readers pause when they flip to more serious reportage.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?
80 Comments
Maybe it's modern art?
Maybe it's modern art?
How, I do enjoy a substantive interview. Actors can have such depth, as Ms. Blunt appears to have – with an IQ of a sponge.
Lame interviews? Although I do get a kick out of how they always try to be buddy buddy to whomever they are talking to.
I'm sorry folks, but I've had better conversations with my 73 year old, secluded next door neighbor “cat lady” (127 and counting so far), than what a so-called Newsweek professional “journalist” can discover.
Geez.
Not Over.
I'm sorry folks, but I've had better conversations with my 73 year old, secluded next door neighbor “cat lady” (127 and counting so far), than what a so-called Newsweek professional “journalist” can discover.
Geez.
Not Over.
Sorry for the double post folks…I guess the April 1st "worm" has stuck my 'puter, (even though it's a Mac). Weird!
Not Over.
…a serious news magazine.
I usually appreciate your insights, Mr. Toto, but I believe your premise was flawed from the start. Don't feel bad. It wasn't until 139 consecutive Conventional Wisdom down arrows for President Bush that it began to dawn on me that Newsweek was just another hack liberal publication.
One of our most unpleasant experiences of recent vintage was the cancellation of Newsweek after having subscribed to, and enjoyed mostly, the magazine for many years. The BDS drove us over the top; it was so obvious they absolutely hated the poor man that it affected every part of their editorial viewpoints. OK, Bush is gone now. They have decided, as has NBC and others that the Left will be their salvation and they have swung hard that way… and guess what? Bothe readership and circulation are down….
Yes, yes, yes! I throw Time Magazine into this catagory too. This is why I will not be renewing my subscriptions to either.
only 139?
one of our favorite relatives made exactly the same observation about the CW watch… it hacked him off no end…
Last year I got a free subscription to Newsweek after making a contribution to some charity. Since I wasn't really paying for it, I put up with Obama on the cover week after week. Finally I had enough and called the subscription department and told them I didn't want to receive the Obama campaign material anymore. The operator who took my call didn't even ask me what I was talking about, which told me that I wasn't the first to cancel my subscription over Newsweek's obvious partisanship. Newsweek is an embarassment.
Hmmm. Ramin Setoodeh, eh? A bit off topic but isn't he /she a member of the long established old family of Setoodehs from Independence, Missouri? Can't News-freakin-week find a kid from Anytown, USA?
i know what you mean. enough already. and i always have to flip those mags over because i think his eyes are following me….
Yes Andrew it is modern art. It is a classically brilliant use of negative jounalism. You see Andrew this is where we use the lack of journalism to effectively frame the story. Sort of like how Letterman uses a lack of comedy to frame a joke or Geitner uses a lack of planning to come up with an economic strategy.
It is the Zen No-Mind motiff that is now all the rage at the beatnik coffee shops where th Prez's cabinet has their morning No-Strategy sessions.
How did you guess?
Yeah, it's like performance art. During the "interview", she was holding an otter in one hand, while he balanced a single blue carnation on his nose — to symbolize man's inhumanity to things. . . and stuff.
This isn't exactly something new with Newsweek. Back in 1959 they did one of their silly articles on The Tonight Show's second host Jack Paar. It prompted him to refer to them as Weaknews.
That is worse than the short interviews in Maxim. Are they trying to be hip by doing their interviews over Twitter now?
Geez!
Are you people all insane?
It's a "celebrity " interview!
Did she go all Algore?
All Ted Danson?
All Sean Penn?
WTF is your problem?
She's "hot" and all you losers would give your left nut just to be in the same room with her!
No wonder Obama won.
"Just how many times did the magazine put fawning images of Sen. Barack Obama on the cover last year?" I didn't really pay attention to Newsweek, but it seemed like he was on the cover of Time every other week.
And 139 straight weeks of down arrows for Bush on CW? That's almost three full years, more than half his second term. I knew there was a reason I preferred reading World magazine when I had the chance.
How inept! My jaw kept dropping lwer and lower th further I read this interview. There was no attermpt to develop an coherent line of questioning. It was just lame and random. I do give credit to Ms. Blunt for not hanging up on the dweeb.
Snake – didn't Ann Coulter's latest book have something about these kind of journalists? Something to the effect that conservative journalists wanted to be right, whereas liberal journalists wanted to be liked. Says it all.
Morons. No wonder they can't figure out why their newspaper is tanking.
It's disgusting seeing this kind of stupidity. On the other hand, it's kind of fun sitting on the shore watching every one of those morons drown in their own red ink.
So you think this interview was worth putting in Newsweak? That explains why you voted for Obama.
Feel better. This isn't about her anyways. It's about the magazine. Also, why did you put quotations around hot? Is she or isn't she? No need to second guess yourself.
Aw, Christian Toto! I always love it when I find something that you and I agree on unequivocally!
It's true: Ms. Blunt's interlocuter for this piece, one Ramin Setoodeh , is a fool and a tool and a jackass, and I fear that if I ever meet him in person I might not be able to resist the urge to head-butt, him, hard. He and Ben Lyons will share the same circle of hell one day.
It's this kind of righteous disdain that, I think, can build a bridge between liberal and conservative…
I was like, moooved by, like, the whole experience, like, ya know?
I only see it at the dentist's office.
Isn't it amazing how they could spin anything into a negative? The Surge is working? More troops to Iraq, less golfing for Bush.
I'm sure there's a story here somewhere.
What do you think a good alternative would be? National Review is cool, but not enough glossy celeb pics.
My version of a Newsweek interview:
Hi, Emily.
I'm eating.
Me, too.
What's new?
How are you today, Emily?
Thank you.
THE END
It's almost as bad as that gag where a "reporter" would interview a celebrity, ask one question, and after the response he'd just sit there waiting for the celeb to say something else without asking a followup question…all to see how long the celeb would sit there before leaving.
Modern, maybe. But it ain't art.
And while we're on the subject of bad reporters, why is it that reporters are obsessed with asking "How does it feel?" to everything? It's like, a guy falls off a cliff and gets run over by a truck and breaks thirty-seven bones, and the brilliant, insightful question the reporter thinks to ask is: "How does it feel to fall off a cliff?" Someday, I think the guy should say, "About like this" and push the reporter off a cliff. But that's just me.
And which is more painful, the drill or the magazine?
I suggest subscribing to Us magazine and National Review or The Weekly Standard. Cut the celebrity pics out of Us, and paste them onto the ad pages of the other two. Voila! Intelligent conservative magazines with glossy celeb photos.
I haven't read her latest yet. Something I should get around to do since I'm so far behind in books anyways. In regards to liberal journalists being liked I think it's easy to spot. Just look at shows line Extra, Entertainment Tonight, and others. Those shows annoy me.
Perhaps Newsweek should change it's name to Newstwit.
I have a good friend, older gentleman, who says he's quite liberal (which is odd considering he doesn't live a liberal lifestyle). He bought me a subscription to Newsweek as a Christmas gift one year several years ago and renewed it a few times until I asked him to stop. I told him he should save his money as I had stopped reading the editorials and what they loosely referred to as "the news". I was only interested in their gadgets/tech/non-political articles… all of which I could read about in Popular Mechanics. (Although even they went off the deep end on global warming).
No. No I wouldn't.
i boycott newsweek and time both. as a single mother, i shop at the grocery store without a man to hold my hand and i have read a lot of magazines while watting in line. the only magazine i read thsee days in line is tv guide its better jounralism than these other rags. tv guide usually is netural and there is no hidden liberal agenda. i have even subscribe dto it, nad i recommend it to everybody sick of the liberla headspace of the msm magazine network.
In hopes of bringing me back to the liberal fold, an old friend of mine got me a subscription to The New Republic a couple of years back. I could get through the first five or ten pages before the artsy-fartsy political tracts, film and book reviews started. I have never read so many words that say so little. At least Newsweek bores you to death in small doses. In fact, now that you mention it, Popular Mechanics has better movie and book reviews than Newsweek. I still read the lead articles at TNR online, just to stay up with what the mainstream liberal mouthpiece has to say.
"She's "hot" and all you losers would give your left nut just to be in the same room with her!"
Says a lot about your priorities as a man knuckle head.
Going Non-PC here. Brace. For. It.
For over 25 years as a professional, high payed commercial photographer, I worked with some of the most talented and beautiful women in the world. All over the world.
No, really.
And, they liked me fellas. Had em' where I wanted them and such.
Man, they were “hot.” As Mikhal points out. But, just try and have a TALK, intellectually with them on any level…on any subject, they suddenly turn into, “Well, do you think I’m the newest hottest thing around or don’t you. DON’T YOU?”
Sorry lady’s, if I put some of you off by this, but beautiful women are less than a dime a dozen. Damn they're everywhere…so what.
High maintenance, and low priorities, (for their men), is there forte.
Reserved, refined and classy American women, has become the new spoiled, jaded and narcissist, “What have you done for me lately”, brat.
Not to mention “lefty” nimrods.
OK, let’r rip.
Not Over.
The other, more obscene version of that is "Now that you've found out that your entire family of five has been murdered in cold blood, how do you feel?"
I canceled Time during the election because I chose to no longer support their partisan magazine. I recently received an email saying 'we want you back'. Sorry, not going to happen.
I also canceled my subscription to the Chicago Tribune. The final straw came when, during the election, they started censoring NOBama in the comments section but not McSame. C'mon, they're both a mildly negative play on each name, but one gets censored? Can it get anymore blatant?
Ha!!
Man, I know some performance artists.
You're painfully close….and junk
A few years ago a friend of mine gave me a subscription to Rolling Stone for my birthday.
After a year I tried to cancel it.
After the second year I tried to cancel it.
After the third year….
Finally, a couple of months ago, after 2 or 3 phone calls they cancelled my subscription.
I finally got someone on the phone who was obviously a conservative. He GOT why I wanted to cancel that rag.
I used to recommend to the younger folk that they should read their daily newspaper daily, and then Time and Newsweek weekly. The idea being that they would get a good balance that way.
Now I don't know what to recommend. They're all the same bunch of puke-spewing, low-life whor…
I'm sorry. Did I just type that outloud?
Yup, Solid – I get the 'hork the hairball on the carpet' reaction myself.
Who is Emily Blunt and why should I care?
It's the journalistic equivalent of rap. ~rimshot~
Now I don't know what to recommend.
Save a tree. Burn an electron.
The Drudge Report. The Good News.
Also acts as an intelligence filter. If they complain that the site looks old, doesn't have flash etc, just point them to Daily Kos. If that doesn't make their logical brain functions scream out in fear and run to Drudge, then they probably don't have any and are a lost Kos.
It's "Beavis and Butthead Do the News." Heh, heh…. Heh, heh.
Idol Worship 101: Distribute the graven images…
Do not worry, the Beneficent One is not watching you, the B.O. is looking out for you…
Speaking of Left nuts…
I took Mikhal's comments to be totally facetious. I read it as: the celeb didn't go nuts, she looks decent, and for most people that is as good as "news" gets. "No wonder Obama won" to me meant that most people look for nothing deep in our celebrities or our elected leaders.
Genius! Please have your people call my people. I think you're on to something.
I've heard it said that, for every beautiful woman out there, there's a guy who's heartily sick of her. With some of these popular "hot chicks", it's a lot more than one.
twins celebrities off hollywood
http://canfindonline.com/photos/funny-people-and-...
Even after reading all of these posts, I still couldn't figure out who Emily Blunt was. Finally, I Imdb-ed her and saw that she was in movies that I have actually seen like Charlie Wilson's War, and The Devil Wears Prada. "
This leads me to conclude several things things; she needs a better publicist, she's probably about as exciting as a box of hair, she needs to learn the basics of social ettiquite…or perhaps she was was just pretending to chew until her teleprompter turned back on….
LOL!! I think I'll try that!
Being a liberal is hard work. You have to have an extensive rule book in place of your innate ability to understand right and wrong. Exhausting having to sound hip and so up to the minute.
Newsweek sucks, and should be allowed to fail (by that I mean END like every other magazine/newspaper seems to be doing these days- most of them deservedly; it's already long-ago failed as a journalistic endeavor)!
Well, was the bar chocolate coated or not? Newsweek never digs deep enough into issues
.
Wow; I haven't read Newsweek in a while; but out of curiosity, it's fun to see how much more entertaining this blog and replies are than a 'professional' 'journalist' in a 'news periodical' trying to inform us of our world.
Or how about: Now that you've found that the man who murdered your entire family in cold blood has been found not guilty, how do you feel?
Thanks!
Charlie Wilson's War was actually pretty good. But I only remember two women in it (that weren't crack snorting strippers), and she wasn't either of them, which leads me to believe that she probably had a bit role as one of the gratuitous nekkid chicks.
Charlie Wilson's War was actually pretty good. But I only remember two women in it (that weren't crack snorting strippers), and she wasn't either of them.
It's all pretty bad, and I don't expect it to get better any time soon. It's really only as horrible as it is because TV is so immediate. The tabloids of the early twentieth century were as bad, or worse, but it wasn't in your face, all the time, over and over and over.
You freely confess to watching The Devil Wears Prada…? Where you being detained in a foreign country and suffering no-mark interrogation?
The most informative part of the piece was her having her mouth full of something like a protein bar. I'm giving up denying I'm in the "dirty old man" phase of life.
She was afraid to reveal it wasn't "free trade" chocolate.
Thus the demise of print media, finalmente!
Ha. You got me. In my defense, they seem to always put that garbage on the long haul transatlantic flights–so not only did I watch it, i watched an edited version of it. It was indeed torture.
good question… we love the National Review, and The Economist is still the best briefing out there although they have slid into the dark side editorially lately. Townhall's magazine is nice but kind of lightweight… face it, the net is the real deal for now… our eclectic subscription list (you asked for it!) is: National Review, The Economist, Soldier of Fortune, Boating Life (!) Human Events and to saty current with pop culture, Entertainment. Decent cross section of society without really contributing to smug lefties like Jonathan Alter…
Go with People instead of Us. Last summer, when Sarah Palin was selected as the VP nominee, both Us and People did cover stories on her, but Us's article was negative from the cover all the way through, while People's article was written in a basically neutral and unbiased way.
[...] Toto reads (so you don’t have to) an interview with Emily Blunt (that sly little bunny) that includes a [...]
I would like to express my appreciation for this post. I liked the first part so much as the information are detailed and clear. Nice blog.. I will keep visiting you. you may also like to build a social network and visit my wedding dresses. Contact m…
Very interesting post. I liked the first part so much as the information are detailed and clear. This blog always puts such good contents. Thank you for the information. You may also like to visit mine for wedding dresses. You’re welcome. contact me f…
Websites we think you should visit…
[...]although websites we backlink to below are considerably not related to ours, we feel they are actually worth a go through, so have a look[...]……
You must be logged in to post a comment.