Back in 2008, after New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley trashed ABC’s Charles Gibson for daring to subject Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to strict journalistic scrutiny, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann pointed out that Stanley wasn’t exactly Ms. Credibility:
[Stanley] has attacked Charles Gibson of ABC for his measured, fair and, above all else, simple and direct interview of Governor Palin. She describes him as impatiently wriggling his foot, having the skeptical annoyed tone of a university president who agrees to interview the daughter of a trustee, but doesn‘t believe she merits admission. Ms. Stanley misses the obvious: that it‘s Governor Palin, the applicant who had, up until now, refused to be interviewed and simply was demanding admission anyway.
But what, there‘s more. Gibson‘s, quote, ‘attitude was, at times, supercilious. He asked if a nuclear Iran posed an existential threat to Israel, as if it were the land of Sartre, not Sabras.’
Well, that‘s a cute pun there, but the problem is the first definition of existential is not a philosophical line of thought popularized by John Paul Sartre, but rather, quote, ‘pertaining to existence.’ It’s a little known piece of trivia, but this segment was introduced one day when Alessandra Stanley, previously critical of MSNBC for never giving shows any kind of chance, demanded this network cancel a new show that had only been on the air for about a week. By airtime that night, we, of course, had already found somebody who did something worse. So what a feeling tonight to finally be able to say, Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times, today‘s worst person in the world!
If Countdown were still on the air in 2014, Stanley would merit another “Worst Person in the World” designation for her recent bizarre piece about television producer Shonda Rhimes:
The Rhimes vs. Stanley matter is one of this year’s most memorable Fourth Estate controversies, not only because it’s a high-profile example of elite-media cluelessness (see also the mainstream media’s failure to cover the People’s Climate March), but also because it should kill, once and for all, that whole nonsense about the New York Times being a “liberal” paper. Go ask Shonda Rhimes how “liberal” she thinks the Times is.
