I Am A TV Junkie, A Blog For The Clicker Jockey

"First Rule of Terror Watch List? Don't Talk About Terror Watch List"

Drew Griffin works at CNN, he's an investigative reporter. In May, he ended up on the terror watch list. Why? Well, you know you're not allowed to know that. Hell, Drew can't even find out, and he's an investigative reporter.

You know what else happen a little while before the day Drew joined the many many many many many people on that terror watch list? He did an investigative report on the terror watch list and how many ridiculous names are on it.

Like Ted Kennedy, for example. Yeah, Ted's a terrorist. You would think with the whole brain cancer thing the gov't would do him a solid and take him off the list. Hey, what if the constant scanning and wanding at the airport actually gave Ted Kennedy brain cancer, has anyone thought about that?

Also, if you're a guy named Dave Nelson, any Dave Nelson, even my friend Michelle's husband, you're on the list, too. So are the Roberts last name Johnson, like the founder of BET, Robert Johnson.

So, if you're standing on an airport line behind a guy who looks like this guy pictured above, and he gets pulled out of the line, just know that you were standing behind a TV reporter who performed the high crime of doing his job.

I have clips (2) after the jump, one being Griffin talking about being placed on the list, and Keith's Worst Persons segment, which discusses it (though Bill-O the Clown wins the horserace).

I completely expect that I'll be on the list, too. If you don't see me in NYC in August, check the watch list ... but don't talk about it or you'll be on it, too.

UPDATED: Pregnant Teens Making For Compelling TV on NBC, ABC Family -- Can We Thank Abstinence Education for This?

[UPDATE (Moments later): Email from James Hibberd with a more complete version of the story (there were production issues) with further comments from American Teen creator Brenda Hampton (7th Heaven) and the UNC professor Brown.

Hampton says:

"I don't have anything to say about the issue of teen pregnancy," Hampton said. "I'm just telling a story about a girl who happens to get pregnant."

ABC Family intends to air a public service announcement midway through the premiere urging parents to talk to their kids about sex. Hampton said that if her show continued for years it might be viewed as a "cautionary tale" about teen pregnancy, but she doesn't believe that TV significantly alters teens behavior, regardless of the content.

"I think that's kind of a hysterical response," Hampton said. "Did watching 'Friends' make everybody friends? Did 'The Sopranos' make people commit murder? Did '7th Heaven' make anybody a Christian? I don't think that young women are so impressionable if they see a show about pregnancy that will make them go out and get pregnant."

Brown shares (in alignment with my comments later):

Brown counters that because parents are so reluctant to talk about sex, and since government-approved programs lean so heavily on abstinence, the media has filled the teaching void to become sex educators. That said, she noted that not all teen pregnancy depictions are considered to have a negative effect.

"And we now know that from 50 years of research on the effects of media, if you see a negative consequence of a behavior you are less likely to commit it," she said. "If you see it rewarded or not punished, you are more likely not to imitate it."

Just thought I'd add that. And thanks, Jim, for getting back to me so quickly.]

Molly Ringwald (pictured) returns to the spotlight in the new ABC Family show, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which debuts tonight at 8.

James Hibberd in the Hollywood Reporter:

NBC's "The Baby Borrowers," which debuted last week, is giving teen couples a "Scared Straight"-style introduction to the realities of child rearing, while ABC Family's "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," which premieres tonight, deliberately avoids having a social-message agenda.

The shows arrive following a wave of pregnancy-related media headlines: The unplanned pregnancy story lines of theatrical hits "Juno" and "Knocked Up," the 17 Boston-area teens who supposedly made a pact to become pregnant and the pregnancy of 16-year-old Nickelodeon star Jamie Lynn Spears.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Jane Brown, who runs the Teen Media Project, said the media's portrayal of teen pregnancy is having an impact that some have dubbed "The 'Juno' Effect."

"It may have had a kind of agenda-setting effect, and that's what may have happened with 'Juno,' 'Knocked Up' and the celebrity baby-bump watch we're on -- all that is glamorized pregnancy," Brown said.

Though there is much in this article to absorb, I found one piece of info that I just had to challenge:

The media fascination with pregnancy comes after U.S. teen birthrates rose 3% between 2005 and 2006, marking the first increases after declining 34% between 1991 and 2005, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts say it's unclear if the rise in pregnancy rates is tied to any specific societal cause or is just an aberration.

And I challenge that assumption after the jump.

Is Robin Williams Playing AT&T's Mark Klein in New Law & Order?

For those who don't know, Mark Klein, he's the AT&T whistleblower who says he knows all about the unwarranted, unknown until he spoke about it, surveillance of everything we see and do over phone lines that the Bush Administration has been doing even prior to the 9/11 attacks.

Hollywood Reporter:

On an episode slated to air April 29, he will play a law-abiding engineer whose life takes a tragic turn, he becomes an ardent believer in the necessity of challenging authority.

"We are thrilled that one of the most talented and versatile actors around will be starring in this powerful and complex special 200th episode," executive producer Neal Baer said. "We can't imagine anyone else doing this role."

I know that doesn't say anything specific, but I'd love to see L&O pick up and run with the story. Betcha the Williams character gets killed in the end.

It will be the show's first May sweeps ep, btw.

About Klein (pictured right), from Wired.com:

AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.

Wired.com slideshow presentation on this issue at this link.

Klein's statement at this link.

Really!?! With Seth and Amy on Spitzer, This Should be a Weekly Series

We need Seth and Amy to have much more influence the the world. And as much as I would enjoy seeing them show up every Sunday with Pumpkinhead Russert on Meet the Press (they could roll in after the SNL afterparty all effed up with trash from the gutter stuck to them and still have more cred than the guy from the Christian Broadcasting Network) I think a half hour after MTP would be an interesting way to liven up the NBC Sunday morning sked.

Clip after the jump.

Our Idiot President "Envious" of Frontline Soldiers in Afghanistan

Reuters via this Murdoch Australian paper:

President Bush spoke of his dream to work on the frontline in Afghanistan during a video conference with US military and civilian personnel in the war-torn country.

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said.

"If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," President Bush said.

What a friggin' idiot. Just go, Bushie, just quit the presidency and go to Afghanistan, go ahead. You can go instead of some woman who had to leave her toddler to be there, because you, despite all the shit you say about being concerned about family would like nothing else than break up the family unit.

You did it during Katrina and you're doing it will this misguided War on Terror, misguided not because radical Islam isn't a danger to the progressive world, but misguided because you can't wage war on a tactic you stupid ass.

You can get the t-shirt at the Americablog shop at Cafe Press.

Worst.

President.

Ever.

Geraldine Ferraro, Just Another Bigoted Long Island Democrat?

Because as a former Long Island Democrat, I know that they exist. Especially in her generation.

And how you know what she said was wrong? Pat Buchanan agrees with her. And Rachel Maddow is right because there is not one Democrat I know who will be angry that the Clinton campaign for getting rid of Ferraro, who yes, was a VP candidate and is supposed to be some sort of feminist icon but what has she really done on the big stage (or small) since 1984.

You just might wanna watch the clip after the jump to see Pat Buchanan tell Keli Goff to shut up, and then be chastised by two women for it.

(Gee, first time Maddow says he has ever said "Shut Up" since she's been working on MSNBC with him and it's to a black woman? Nice doing what we can expect from you, Pat, you xenophobic twit!)

In fact, it's the first time I've seen Ms. Goff, political author and strategist, really hold her own. Good for her. No one has to take care of Maddow, she can handle herself, and she also stands up for Goff.

And Pat Buchanan certainly shows his stripes, doesn't he.

It's 17 plus minutes of clip, but it's worth watching if you haven't been keeping up with the issues of Ferraro, about Florida and Michigan delegates being reseated and some crap on poll results, which I couldn't care less about.

Your President Thinks the Outing of a Deep Cover CIA Operative Working on WMD Issues in the Middle East is Funny!

And, the government's response to Hurricane Katrina and the outrage over his nominating his very unqualified personal attorney for the Supreme Court must be a knee slapper to him.

So funny that he had to sing a country song about it, and I have the video after the jump.

And I think that's much more irresponsible than having sex with a prostitute, but where's the outrage? Happened at the Annual Gridiron Dinner.

Betcha Valerie wasn't laughing.

I was actually at the Today show site to see how many segments on Spitzer they did this morning. If you count only one of the Laura Schlessinger segments it's eight, and I think most of them happen in the first forty minutes, you know, the time where I think they should be pursuing news on the war, the election and the other hard news stuff.

This? After yesterday, not really worthy of the first hour, in my opinion, and certainly not eight segments that attack the issue from all different sides including bringing on that hag Schlessinger to weave her little stories about how we're all going to hell.

Didn't she let her mother rot in her home for days (or was it weeks?) before even noticing? Where does she get off being a moral authority on anything?

Promised clip, a March 2004 classic Bush laughing at really not funny stuff clip as well, after the jump.

TV Shows Blogging on Air? Stop It, That's My Job!

I think it might be making us dumber as a nation.

If I am your first stop toward gathering the information you need in order to navigate the world, you are stopping at the wrong place. I'm just for fun. This should not be  a serious newsgathering moment for you.

But during those times that used to be serious info gathering moments you're still having to listen to someone talk about someone who talked about something to someone else, and that's not the stuff you need. You need more.

For example:

"Trampy Ho-Bag spoke to We Love Access to Celebs And Fear Pat Kingsley Magazine reporter Mainstream Suckup for the cover story of their March issue, and we have the details."

And then they show you the reporter talking about how just being in the same room as said celebrity cured their rectal cancer. Okay, that's a stretch, but you know these articles usually are as puffy as the clouds in the sky.

(Even more ironic, yet fitting, is that most of you, after you see the writer interviewed for the article on the celeb probably know all the salient facts from the article, because, well, there aren't many salient facts. And you guys never even read the article, so you end up not even having the exercise of reading.)

And long? How long a story do you really wanna know about someone like Nicole Kidman anyway? And not just her, any of them. The more I know about them, the less intriguing their performances seem to be.

That's why I don't really care about what they do on their off hours, unless it's just a trainwreck situation. I mean, how can you look away from the Spears or Lohan families? It like resisting chocolate, or sex oh, let's just leave it at chocolate.

The Definitive DTV Switchover Resource From Retrevo.com

Are you confused? Probably not, at least not you people who click over here regularly for your TV news. You've probably already updated to a new TV, something slick and slim and shapely with all kinds of interesting inputs and outputs (you know, it's the inputs and outputs that are always, always interesting).

But you might still have an old TV somewhere in the house that is still serving a useful purpose and you just need a couple more years out of it before you move up, or whatever the situation might be.

I have advice from Retrevo, the website that matches people with electronics, and it's after the jump.

Wouldn't It Be Funny If ...

... they called each other and said, "Let's get the same 'do! It'll keep 'em guessing!"

Because for years I've been hearing about these private parties in Hollywood where the closeted meet each other and wonder aloud what being an authentic person on this planet is like.

I just assume they all meet there while, you know, I march for civil rights and that kind of thing, instead of speaking to the issue through my publicist.

And that picture above? Shows up just by coincidence on this page.

I swear.

A clip after the jump that puts it all in focus.