Franklin files

Here is television critic Nancy Franklin offering advice to Brian Williams and his ilk:

News anchors and reporters should stop appearing on talk shows, stop trying to be "beloved" personalities, stop kissing Jon Stewart'’s pompadour. Fellas, don't go on Letterman and talk about your fishing trips, your devotion to NASCAR, your anything; don’t pose for magazine covers; don’t accept lecture fees (if you know something that’s worth telling to the Wingnut Dealers Association for fifty thousand dollars, shouldn't you be telling it to all of us on TV?); and don’t go to parties that are attended by the people you cover.

Jon Stewart's pompadour? Don't go on Letterman? Don't accept speaking fees? If Nancy were asked, wouldn't she be salivating at the thought of doing any of these things? And what's with the second-person address of "Fellas"? Are these guys Nancy's peeps?

She opens a parenthesis:

(In other words, be more like the CNN anchor Aaron Brown. He is one of the few newspeople on TV who don'’t try to hide how much of themselves they bring to the job, and yet I don'’t know anything about him. He has resisted becoming a brand name, an ostentatiously humble Grand Old Newsman, or a hot shot around town. He'’s odd, judgmental, thoughtful, and always interesting-—qualities that don't prevent him from delivering the news well.)

I feel like I know way too much about Aaron Brown without ever having seen him kiss anything except Jeff Greenfield's ass. He worked in Seattle, he's from Minnesota and he loves his Twins, he has a teenage daughter about whom he worries a lot, his hair is fake, he likes to get all inside baseball but doesn't like to do it too much, he's Jewish of course. I'm pretty sure he lives on Long Island thought I have no way of knowing. I feel like I know him completely, like there is no mystery whatsoever. I don't much care for his moralizing shtick, his rich-guy attitude, his phoney efforts to connect with his audience by appealing to "common sense." I'm totally perturbed by his continuing use of the phrase "the new normal." And my sense is that CNN isn't hot on him either. Aaron skews old; the future is Anderson.

Too bad I Hate The New Yorker saves its slagging for other targets.