Who Sucks? Bill Press: Natural Born Loser

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Written By Nathan Porter

Now I remember why I hate CNN so much. For the longest time I thought it was Ted Turner, but even after he sold his interest in it I still hated the network. Then I assumed it must have been Bernie Shaw. But he is gone and the hate lingers. It’s an odd hate, really. I don’t even watch CNN. Okay, Okay, Okay…I accidentally catch myself watching it a little, but only when surfing through the channels, I swear. And it was on such an occasion that I discovered the real reason I hate CNN, Bill Press.

Bill Press reminds me of my worst college professors: a knavish, childish, idiotic, liberal-dumb-ass-loser overwhelmed by a mistaken sense of self-intelligence. The type of professor who is pledged never to award a grade higher than a C to anyone who might contradict the socialist dogma he spews from the podium every Monday, Wednesday and third Friday. The type of professor who is more concerned with selling his pathetic book than educating his pupils.

How many classes like that did I suffer through? More than I can remember. But anyone who watches CNN is subjected to such tripe every weeknight at 7:30 and 10:30, not to mention every time they air one of those nauseating promos for the Spin Room – a show that proves the only thing worse than Bill Press is Bill Press conjoined with Tucker (pronounced “Phucker”) Carlson.

Before hosting Crossfire and the Spin Room, Press was chairman of the California Democratic Party from 1993-1996. In 1990, Press lost a Democratic Primary election for the California state insurance commissioner. Geez, this guy couldn’t even win a Democratic Primary…in CALFORNIA! Press is a loser in every possible sense of the word: (1. one that loses; esp., [Colloq.] one that seems doomed to lose 2. one who is incompetent or unable to succeed; also: someone doomed to fail or disappoint. 3. a person who reacts to loss or defeat in a specified way [a poor loser] 4. [Slang] a person who looks like a loser, e.g. Bill Press)

On a network swarming with losers, Press gets my vote as the biggest loser of them all. And that’s no small feat for a man competing against the likes of Larry King, Greta Van Cistern, The Carlson Twins (Margaret and Phucker), Mark Shields, and many more. But the one thing Bill Press does well in life is reigning as the king of the CNN losers. The media is chock-full of folks who make me wonder just how the hell they got people to take them seriously, and CNN employs a majority of them.

We all know people who are losers. The primary indicator of a loser is one who is so unaware of his lameness that he tries to act cool but fails, only adding to his lameness in the process. And so it is with Bill Press. When Crossfire began holding on air auditions to replace Mary Matalin, Press said publicly that his choice would be Laura Ingraham because she is attractive and he could best her in ANY debate on ANY subject. Hmmmm…Press must have been the kind of kid who if he had a crush on a girl, would spit in her hair as a sign of affection. You know the kind of kid to which I refer. A loser.

The latest CNN vehicle for Press to display his awesome loser-ness is the Spin Room. I have watched a horrifying 30 minutes of this show, but it only takes one minute to see that it is the most pathetic tripe ever to hit the airwaves…EVER. This show makes the Howard Stern Show look like Meet The Press.

Press, and his terminally pubescent sidekick Tucker, waste 30 minutes of time (time that could be given to Vince Cellini and Fred Hickman for an extended Sports Tonight) giggling their way through reader emails* like a couple of overly-titillated sorority sisters. The dullnamic duo’s pseudo-hip banter is so awkward that they make Amy Carter look graceful. On the night I watched, Press read an email from a viewer named Barbie (I’m not making this up), who said she loved the show and watched it every night while riding her exercise bike. A good bet: anyone who watches the Spin Room every night is a loser. That means you, Barbie.

Part of the definition of loser is someone who reacts to loss in a specified way, a sore loser. Bill Press is certainly that. Like many losers, Bill Press’ answer for Al Gore’s loss in last year’s election was to abolish the Electoral College. “No two ways about it, it [the electoral college] is an insult to democracy,” he wrote after the election. “Of course, there are those who argue that we can’t question the wisdom of the Founding Fathers. Nonsense. We tend to forget the Founding Fathers weren’t wise at all when it came to voting rights.” Can you sense the underlying contempt Press has for the Founding Fathers? His words leap from the page into my ears so that I can hear his whiny-ass voice spouting off about those boorish, dimwitted Founding Fathers who robbed Al Gore of victory with their democracy-insulting Constitution. “They didn’t trust us to elect our own president,” Press complains.

Bill, you beslubbering, boil-brained pignut, there is a good reason they didn’t trust us to elect our president solely on the basis of the popular vote. It’s called Al Gore! You see, Bill, perhaps the Founding Fathers understood the underlying danger in allowing the selection of our president to rest in the hands of a highly concentrated group of coast-hugging loggerheads solely on the sheer force of their numbers. Perhaps the Founding Fathers feared a nation where an overwhelming majority of the states were governed by a president selected by a few of the states. Perhaps the Founding Fathers, in a bit of astounding foresight, saw an America that was divided between the “blue” states and the “red” states, and tried, as best they could, to structure a system that dealt with that fundamental inequity.

For someone like Bill Press to latch on to the latest idiotic cause du jour is not surprising, especially if it involves changing the rules to allow Liberalism to triumph. But I must admit to being a bit taken aback by his newfound concern for standards of decency in television programming. You see, Bill is upset with Attorney General John Ashcroft and his decision to allow Timothy McVeigh’s execution to be viewed on closed-circuit television by the bombing victims families. And that’s a sick, new low — for television and for our system of justice,” according to Bill Press. “…Not even McVeigh deserves the indignity of having his last breath broadcast on live TV, closed-circuit or not. And we don’t deserve the indignity of watching it.”

The truth of the matter is, Mcveigh won’t be the first guy to die on live television, Bill Press and Tucker Carlson do it every night in the Spin Room. And that show is a sick, new low for television, and justice in general. Not even Bill Press and Tucker Carlson deserve the indignity of having their dimwitted banter broadcast on live TV, and we certainly do not deserve the indignity of watching it.

It seems Bill is concerned with the slippery slope. Concerned that somehow televising the final act in a long judicial process will sully the otherwise pure medium of television. “Broadcasting an execution makes television even less than wires and lights in a box,” Bill opines. “It makes it an instrument of sadistic pleasure.”

Am I missing something? It seems to me that television already is an instrument of sadistic pleasure, and I fail to see how televising the execution of Timothy McVeigh to 200 of his closest enemies is going to alter the direction of television in the slightest. And why would anyone heed anything Bill Press has to say? On September 7, 2000, Press wrote an article entitled “How George Bush Lost the Election.” So, how did Bush lose the election? According to Bill Press, “By the time Bush got around to issues people care about – prescription drugs, education, environment, Social Security, Medicare, keeping the economy strong – Al Gore owned the field. Bush was constantly playing catch-up. He could never hold his own against the better prepared and more experienced Gore.” Of course, we only had to wait until the debates a few weeks later to see this Bill Press spin exposed for the fraudulent poppycock it was. At the end of his column Press wrote, “Dear Reader: Save this column. If I’m wrong I’ll eat it on Crossfire.”

If there’s one thing I will tune to CNN and watch, it’s Bill Press “eating it” on Crossfire. Sadistic pleasure at its best.

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