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I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but, let’s face it, “Dennis Miller” has been getting fewer viewers than William Howard Taft in flagrante delicto with Caligula and Millard Fillmore outside the Westboro Baptist Church’s God-Hates-Fags-But-Loves-
Rice-Krispies-Treats annual fundraiser. By which I mean that I’ve got some bad news for fans of obscure-and-possibly-funny-
but-maybe-not-but-you’re-not-entirely-sure-so-you-laugh-anyway-
so-as-not-to-look-stupid comedy: CNBC has cancelled Miller’s eponymous show. Soon-to-be former Miller show staffer Kevin Bleyer got an email from CNBC President Mark Hoffman with the news, and he reprints it at the Huffington Post, along with his comments:
“I wanted to let you all know that we will be expanding our signature Business Day programming into Primetime on the East Coast and will be adding an additional airing of ‘Mad Money with Jim Cramer’ at 9 p.m. ET/PT.”
Wait a minute. That’s my time-slot.
[…]
“I have spoken with Dennis Miller about these plans …”
Uh-oh.
“… and he has let me know that his strong preference is to leave his program immediately.”
But that would mean …
“Therefore, the final episode of “Dennis Miller” will air this Friday, May 13.”
Yeah, that’s what that would mean …
Meanwhile, Steve Safran notes that Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, MSNBC and others fell for a bogus press release purportedly from the “Coalition for Traditional Values” decrying Laura Bush’s my-husband-“milked”-a-horse joke at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Suckas.
The release was actually the creation of the Swift Report Web site, prompting Safran to write that “The spirit of Jonathan Swift is alive and well on the Web.”
Elsewhere, Zoe Kentucky notes that the president was on a bike ride in Maryland when the White House and surrounding area were evacuated yesterday — because, she jokes, “working during the workday is for girlymen.” And Oliver at The Liquid List has a few words on CNN’s coverage of the event:
[CNN is] now famous for covering all manner of wrong stories, like missing white women, kidnapped caucasian females, abducted WASP ladies, molested non-minority girls, and the disappearance of many a paleface human of the feminine persuasion. But the length of time they spend on these wrong stories makes the whole affair truly painful. Today’s story of the wandering Cessna that caused a 15-minute panic among throngs of BlackBerry-toters should have lasted approximately as long as it took [liquid lister] Tarek to write his post about it. It ended quickly. It turned out to be nothing …
Dammit, CNN. Not only do you travel down the dumbest roads, but you spend so long staring at the potholes.
Maybe CNN should hire Dennis Miller. He’s going to be looking for a job, after all. And if the network is going to be spending all that time obsessed with non-stories, surely viewers could perhaps do with a few needlessly obscure pop culture references to fill the dead air.
–Brian Montopoli
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