James Hirsen
Tuesday, July 6, 2004

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In 1996, ABC’s Ted Koppel huffed out of the Republican National Convention, which he compared to an “infomercial.”

This time around, according to the Hill, the networks themselves are likely to reduce the coverage from four years ago, even though coverage in 2000 was already scaled back from historic levels.

For each convention, the networks might provide as little as an hour of live coverage on the second to last night (Wednesday) and two hours for the finale (Thursday).

Both parties are looking at getting unconventional convention broadcast help from sources such as MTV, Comedy Central and others. And Dems are chasing Web bloggers.

As it stands now, Black Entertainment Television will broadcast nightly, the Spanish-language network Univision will send correspondents, and MTV, Comedy Central and ESPN will produce their own convention shows.

C-SPAN still plans to provide gavel-to-gavel coverage from the convention floor, as it has in the past.

If the networks skip the first half of the convention, they will miss big names: Teddy Kennedy, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and the Rev. Al Sharpton on the Dem side and Rudy Giuliani, Laura Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger on the GOP side.

The Left Coast Report wonders if the networks were worried because people in focus groups indicated that after watching Kennedy they needed a drink and after watching Gore they needed a nap.

Cartoonish Attack on Bill Cosby

In another fatherly-like address, Bill Cosby pleaded with the black community to stop blaming the “white man” for its problems.

While speaking at the annual Rainbow/PUSH Coalition conference, Cosby said: “It is almost analgesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us, and it keeps a person frozen in their seat. It keeps you frozen in your hole that you are sitting in to point up and say, ‘That's the reason why I am here.’ We need to stop this.”

Back in May, Cosby commented on the poor grammar used by some young blacks. “I can't even talk the way these people talk, ‘Why you ain't,’ ‘Where you is’ ... and I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.”

Now, in an attempt to undermine his message, Cosby’s enemies are calling him a hypocrite. And it all relates to a cartoon show that dates back to the 1970s.

Cosby happens to have created the cartoon series called “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.” The show included a couple of characters named Mushmouth and Dumb Donald. Critics are claiming that, as a result of his animation creativity, Cosby should not be disapproving of the bad grammar of today's black youths.

Fortunately, Cosby (a Democrat activist, by the way, who campaigned for Al Gore in 2000) is undeterred by his unfunny detractors. He told the Washington Post, “I am not going to even answer these fools.”

He did, however, offer this commentary: “Fat Albert is good. Fat Albert's attitude toward women was good. Fat Albert and the gang, if they were living in a lower economic neighborhood, they would be working. Nobody in their right mind could look at some of these people and say the same thing. There is not even a close comparison.”

And he declared, “I gave the message, and I may speak it again and again.”

The Left Coast Report is of the opinion that, when it comes to this issue, those who try to go up against Cosby will inevitably end up with pudding on their faces.

Hippy Hippy Sheik

A new product has hit the shelves of toy shops in Baghdad, and it is selling briskly.

It’s chubby, decked out with hand grenades, a walkie-talkie, binoculars and an AK-47, and swivels to the tune of “Hippy Hippy Shake.”

It’s a Saddam Hussein doll, and it wiggles its hips on command.

A Turkish traveling salesman brought the novelty to Iraq. He also markets dancing Osama bin Ladens.

The hip-shaking Osamas were already top sellers. Now with Iraqi citizens being less fearful of their former despot they’re buying the Saddam toys, too.

“At the beginning we'd hide them under the counter and only sell them to those who specially asked because people were upset to see the former president as a doll,” Asaad Majid, a Mansoor toy salesman, told Reuters.

“Now we're not scared anymore. We display them openly, and people buy them regularly,” he divulged.

The Left Coast Report hears that there’s a John Kerry doll with a guileful gimmick. No matter where you place it on the table it pretends to move to the center.

White House Clock on Michael Moore Time?

It looks as if Newsweek’s Howard Fineman thinks Michael Moore is a super important guy.

On MSNBC’s Hardball, Fineman claimed that the reason the White House conducted an early handover of sovereignty to Iraq was because it wanted to “stay ahead” of Moore’s film.

Fineman told Andrea Mitchell that the Bush administration “wanted to get ahead of the insurgents, they wanted to get ahead of the American network anchors, and they wanted to stay ahead of Michael Moore, the director of ‘9/11,’ ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ who’s stoking resentment about the war.”

The Left Coast Report says the fact that Moore’s movie was released days before the surprise conveyance of sovereignty had occurred makes Fineman’s theory perfect for a future Moore flick.

Director to Aid in MoveOn’s Bush Bash

MoveOn, the same leftist group that sponsored a campaign to get movie viewers into theater seats to see “Fahrenheit 9/11,” is working on another Hollywood scheme.

Errol Morris, whose movie “The Fog of War” snagged an Oscar, will reportedly assist the group in its anti-Bush efforts by creating TV ads aimed at ousting the president.

The plan is to have the ads air around the time of the Democratic National Convention and feature testimonials against the Bush administration’s policies.

MoveOn Executive Director Eli Pariser said the filmmaker came to the group with the idea of creating the spots. Morris’ advertising credits include Apple Computer’s “switch” ads.

In his Oscar acceptance speech, Morris made a reference to the war in Iraq: “I fear we’re going down a rabbit hole once again.”

The Left Coast Report thinks lefty fringe groups and liberal Hollywood directors go together like liver and onions.

The Left Coast Report is put together by James L. Hirsen and the staff of NewsMax.

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