Not so Funnies, wearing hoodies

"A hooded sweatshirt can make an innocent teen look like a criminal. Just like a suit and glasses can make Geraldo Rivera look like a journalist." -- Stephen Colbert
 

Keith Olbermann and Sarah Tressler come and go

Heavy sigh.

Keith Olbermann has been fired by Current TV, the network announced Friday. He will be replaced by former New York governor and CNN host Eliot Spitzer.

Olbermann had hosted "Countdown," which he brought from MSNBC after his exit there, since June. His short tenure began with fanfare, but ended, as many of Olbermann's previous jobs have, with deep acrimony on both sides.

Spitzer, who had his own short-lived stint as the host of "Parker Spitzer" (later called "In The Arena") on CNN, began hosting his show, "Viewpoints," immediately on Friday night. He made no mention of Olbermann or his somewhat unusual arrival to the post at the top of the show.

The news of Olbermann's termination was first reported by the New York Times' Brian Stelter. A source told Politico that Olbermann was fired for breach of contract, saying that he had "sabotaged" the network. Howard Kurtz reported that Olbermann had begun refusing to toss to other peoples' shows or appear in advertisements with them.

The feud went public in January and never calmed down. He'll be on the Late Show on Tuesday to tell his version. So where does he go now? My guess is his own webcast-by-subscription. More from the New York Mag and Mediaite, and this from The Daily Beast:

But in the short term, Olbermann and Gore will do battle in court. If the first shots fired are any indication, it’s likely to be messy and brutal. In the absence of any other ratings drivers, perhaps Current might consider broadcasting the proceedings in prime time.

Tressler, the Houston Chronicle society-writer-by-day/stripper-by-night whose story went national after her 2nd gig was discovered by the Chronicle heads, has a few things to say in advance (no doubt) of her tell-all.

Good Morning America flew her to New York and she spoke about her experience. Two things we did not know that we learned in the intro: 1) Houston is "a city famous for big oil, big spenders and genteel Southern living" (say whaaat?) and 2) the Chron is "one of the country's most prestigious newspapers." We also learned an actual important thing, one we'd been highly curious about: Had Tressler told anyone at the Chron about her semi-publicly blogging about her stripping, including putting pictures of herself out there? When asked, Tressler giggled a bit and said no, she hadn't told anyone.

The Jane Dough takes up her cause.

Though it would have demonstrated good form on Tressler’s part to notify the Chron of her other work, if anything to give higher-ups a sense of her availability and schedule, the other staffers have no business expressing outrage over another employee’s side gig. She’s clearly trying to earn more money, and, as Connelly suggested, perhaps score a book deal of some sort. But Jezebel nicely points out that this is a major goal of most scribes, particularly those in nonfiction writing.

As you may have noted, I feel a little bit for both parties and their somewhat-voluntarily-unemployed statuses. And I expect both Olbermann and Tressler to land on their feet. I leave it to you to make any observations you choose in the comments.

Sunday Funnies, Supremely Disgusting edition

"The Supreme Court isn't handing down its Obamacare verdict until late June, as it takes that long for Clarence Thomas' wife to write his opinion for him." -- John Fugelsang

Voter registrations In Harris County to be mediated today

A little meeting today over the Harris County tax assessor/collector's continuing efforts to thwart voter registrations.

Harris County officials have rejected far fewer would-be voters since 2008, but Democrats are demanding more proof that voter rolls are not being illegally suppressed -- particularly among Hispanics -- as another U.S. presidential election approaches. The two sides will meet in secret mediation Friday as Democratic officials seek assurances the county is following the terms of a 2009 settlement reached after the party challenged Harris County voter reviews in a federal lawsuit. The county's voter registrations have remained fairly flat at about 1.9 million since 2008 (emphasis mine), failing to keep pace with a boom in the eligible voting population. "Harris County continues to fall behind other large cities. Harris County rejects far too many applications and removes far too many eligible voters from the rolls," Chad Dunn, an attorney for the Democrats, told the Houston Chronicle.

Sumners has severely curtailed efforts to recruit and train deputy voter registrars as well. Sumners is in fact a tool of the King Street Vote Suppressing Thugs, about which much has been written here.

Sumners said he believes more applicants were rejected in 2008 primarily because a group of deputy voter registrars working for nonprofit groups turned in thousands of duplicate, illegible or incomplete applications. He said he hopes that the quality of applications in 2012 will improve under a new law requiring deputy registrars to complete mandatory training. But Dunn told the court that party leaders need more information to confirm applications are being reviewed as the settlement requires. U.S. District Court Judge Gray H. Miller, who oversees the settlement, ordered both sides to meet with a mediator Friday. If the dispute is not resolved, a hearing has been set next week.

Sumners, in the first sentence of the above graf, refers to Houston Votes, which as an offshoot of Texans Together conducted voter registration drives in minority neighborhoods prior to the 2010 election. Those efforts were effectively demonized by Sumners' predecessor Leo Vasquez, the KSP/True the Vote pasty gangsters, and pretty much every conservative media outlet they could find.

On and on it goes. Progressives encourage people to vote, conservatives restrict it. They only want their voters to vote. They cannot win if more people vote. That "center-right" urban legend is thus advanced. It is fallacy that conservatives represent the view of Texans and Americans when 50% of the population doesn't vote and hundreds of thousands more -- perhaps millions just in Texas -- are prevented from voting. Update: Big Fat Republican Bloggers have their own take.

But conservatives would go further if they could, restricting voting to taxpayers and/or landowners exclusively. That's where we're eventually headed, and Texas will lead the way.