DramatistDreamer

23 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

Kiki, do you love me?

— Dominic Thiem (@ThiemDomi) July 31, 2018

Hahahah Domi!!!! YEEEESSS❤️

— Kristina Mladenovic (@KikiMladenovic) July 31, 2018

And Business Insider is definitely NOT a left-wing publication.  Far from it.

May CBS' stock continue to drop.  When it comes down to it, it is money not ethics, that speaks to these corporations.

As for The Talk and Chen.  I've only seen about 2 or 3 episodes (and not even complete ones) since the talk show has been on the air. 

Though I no longer watch The View, and haven't for about a decade, at least The View had some cultural impact at one time.  The Talk is a superficial chat show pretending to be impactful.  I don't expect Chen to demonstrate any ethical sense, it's clear she has no ethics.

Footage of a man hitting a woman in the face in central Paris, after she told him to “shut up" for harassing her in the street, has shocked France and prompted an investigationhttps://t.co/8tCZDc0vRY pic.twitter.com/BsBDLyHHoE

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) July 30, 2018

Fabio is very sexy but those oncourt antics are a big turnoff.  

He's probably charming as can be offcourt but he seems to be a big flirt. Hopefully he's faithful to Flavia, who seems like a genuinely nice person, unlike Vinci and Errani, both of whom I never could stand.

1 hour ago, Soapsuds said:

Love what?...LOL....Does Thiem have competition? Hope he dumps her...LOLOL

LOL, it's a song by Drake that became a major hit and inspired a dance challenge that went viral (In My Feelings).  The chorus says "Hey KiKi...do you love me?"  It's quite a catchy song.

Is Fabio trying to get dumped with this look?

1 hour ago, Soapsuds said:

A question.....do VH1 and BET have the same availability ?? Meaning do less people get BET channel than VH1? I don't see the show being renewed after this season. 

They are both on basic cable, as far as I remember. The show had sort of messed itself up even before it left VH1 and seems to have deteriorated from there.

The first bad sign to me was when I noticed that Kimberly Elise (Sloane) wasn't having much to do with the show anymore.  She is the executive producer and if it weren't for her, the show would never have gotten greenlit in the first place. Her character is gone, and she was the best actor on that show.

From what I have heard, there's no Ahsha and people were upset with the excuse, er, explanation that was given for her absence. 

Pete was killed off, very early, in a very sad way.

There are a slew of new characters that have been plunked down, seemingly all at once, instead of one by one.

Too many fundamental changes in one episode.

From what I heard, the show got very dark all at once. 

In previous seasons, the show had been relatively fun, not too deep and not too heavy.  It was never Downton Abbey and that was fine...HTF was supposed to have bouncy dance routines, a bit of comedy, a bit of drama, a dash of suspense and attitude to cover whatever deficiencies the show had (it had more than a few, TBH).

I also heard complaints that even the choreography and dancing wasn't as good as it had been in the past.

Also, one of the biggest problems is that the show has simply lost a lot of momentum having been off the air for so long. 

My social media are full of messages from people asking me if I love them. Thank you @Drake !

— Kristina Mladenovic (@KikiMladenovic) July 30, 2018

A brief anecdote:  I had a brief freelance stint at a television show when I was fresh out of college in the late 90s and at the show where I worked (which fittingly, was located in the Fox building), I discovered that there was a known harasser (just a few desks away from me) who was in the midst of a sexual harassment trial and was blithely arriving and leaving each day, looking as if nothing was amiss in his world.

Thinking of the look of smugness and entitlement on his face... galls me to this day.

Looking at Lorimar's history--Moonves worked there from 1985-1993 and he was president at Lorimar from 1990-1993, which is why I mentioned Hunter because Lorimar produced that show.  I think the actress mentioned that in 1995 when he landed at CBS, he told her that she should've f*cked him when she had the chance years ago when he made all those sexual overtures to her.  Disgusting.

Fager's part in this predatory culture is every bit as reprehensible.  Leslie Stahl may not have felt this but many women and a few men who were in less prominent positions obviously felt this.

1 hour ago, DRW50 said:

 

I had wondered if it was Sharon Gless. Gless had shows on CBS through 1992. I don't remember her working a lot on CBS post-Moonves taking over, aside from one appearance on Judging Amy (I may be wrong as I haven't checked her IMDB). The last C&L TV-movie aired in 1996, not long after Moonves took over CBS.  I know she was on QAF, and Showtime has ties to CBS, but I'm not sure he has a role over Showtime.

 

The part about how the men at 60 Minutes/CBS News treat women is also tough to read. It's unfortunate that this aspect of the article is mostly being forgotten by people who want to act like it's all a big campaign against Moonves.

According to the article, Moonves has been at CBS for 24 years, so he would've gotten to the network in 1994.  Not sure what his duties were and how much power he had to "greenlight" projects in his first years, but I am thankful that shows like Kate & Allie, Cagney & Lacey and Murphy Brown all preceded him.

I just looked up C&L and interesting that Gless and the show's producer Rosenzweig have been married since 1991.  Rosenzweig's wife Barbara Corday was one of the show's two original writers.  Also Loretta Swit appeared as Cagney in the pilot.

Ever since this story had hints of breaking, I've been saying that the culture of misogyny at CBS is so evident that it bleeds into their programming.  As someone in the article said, CBS is an old company...and I agree that this includes their mores.  Many are trying to fight those facts and what this means.  CBS has so much work to do in order to clean house.

More than a third of the way through (I think) the New Yorker article about Moonves and for some reason, the account by the writer Janet Jones had me a bit choked up.  I think it was the threats that she'd never work as a writer that truly got to me, after all she'd done to try to build a career.

Also, I'm now reading the part about the unnamed actress "who played a police officer on a long-running CBS program" and trying to figure out who it is. 

For some reason, the actress who played the cop partner on the drama Hunter immediately sprang to mind.  Then I remember that I used to watch Hunter on NBC.  Hunter was produced by Lorimar though, where Moonves was working during the late 1980s. I remembered the actresses name although when I did a quick online search realized I had misspelled her first name, Stepfanie, not Stephanie as I had spelled it. Kramer, I always remembered.  As a child, I was always reading the opening credits and sometimes, the closing credits too.

It was Stepfanie Kramer who immediately sprang to mind. 

I'll try to make it through the rest of this article.

Wasn't Haberman the same person who claimed that she would be pulling back from using twitter?  Hm.

I guess it's different when one is pushing one's own output.

Still watching 2006 (with quite a bit of FF-ing) and Ph-eww! What a clusterf*ck!

The sorry Slasher story barely finished before the Ice Storm side-story emerged, equal parts gimmick and filler.  And every other commercial break during the Slasher story was a promo for the Ice Storm story.  You would think they'd advertise at other hours to try to convince viewers who weren't already watching.

2006 definitely rates as one of, if not the most depressing year the show ever had, with how many deaths? Jennifer, Hal, multiple random kids who the show never bothered to allow the viewer to truly get to know or care about.

Then there was the introduction of 'Creepy Craig' (Jeffrey Meeks is probably a nice guy in real life but gottdamn he creeped me out in these episodes!).

What type of wizardy foolishness gets Tom to work for Creepy Craig??  I could see 80s Craig and Tom working together but this makes no sense.  It just makes Tom look like a greedy shark.

I've already mentioned (I think) wannabe thug Dusty.  Dusty and Craig's rewritten characters during the last decade irked me to no end!

How can a show be this frenetic yet this dull?

Oh yay, the beginning of endless singing Gwen's recording career launch!

Just a jumbled mess.

Why couldn't they use the previous actor who played Adam Munson? 

Although, it should come as no surprise that she's defending her husband but just an interesting use of language by Julie Chen in mentioning her husband's morality.

Wasn't the ink barely dry on Moonves' divorce papers from his previous marriage when he married Chen?

10 hours ago, DRW50 said:

I've always thought Illeana Douglas was a talented, charismatic actress who never really got her due. It's unfortunate to think this may have helped kneecap her career. I guess I will have to wonder now if many of the actresses who never break through have been held back if they don't let men force them into a cattle call. 

I definitely believe this contributed to the derailment of her career, as it has to many women who have yet to get to where Douglas ever reached.

This atmosphere is widespread to CBS.  It is part and parcel of their corporate culture under Moonves, in particular.  One only needs to look at their programming choices to realize this.

The stock plunge was not only a reaction to the Moonves allegations, it is also an acknowledgement that the corporate culture that CBS has nurtured for decades no longer works. 

You know who might be doing a bit of a jig right now? Shari Redstone, who has been engaged in something in a bitter battle with Moonves over  the future of CBS.

LOL.  Nobody wants to play tennis these days!  

16 hours ago, Juliajms said:

Who can be surprised?  Please let there be some justice for these children.

 

It's what many of us feared would happen.  I can't bring myself to read the article about a six year old being sexually assaulted.

Americans really need to face up to the fact of what acts are being committed in the name of the USA.

I generally have no use for The Talk but boy, do I ever wish I was able to see the show today.  Is Julie Chen on?

4 minutes ago, Juliajms said:

I know he's kind of an ass, but I love this guy.

Oh, he's great as Trump's chief antagonist.

I had a feeling too @Vee.  Just based on what I've read secondhand though.  Is this part of the reason why CBS is so highly misogynistic in it's programming?

13 minutes ago, ChitHappens said:

 

Wow!  Thank goodness he's safe.  Djoker better be careful!

 

This is commonplace in Serbia?

Serbia emerged from the war and strife in the Balkans (from collection of countries formerly known as Yugoslavia) as a relatively poor country.  It is a lifetime away from Croatia, (another Balkan country that emerged from the war) which has been a well-known travel destination for at least a decade. 

Let's just put it this way-- I once saw a special on Frontline PBS where a man who had been held in a CIA "Black site" during the war in Afghanistan was released to Serbia and after months of being there he was crying to be sent to another country!

Recently, I read that there was some real estate development that has been going on (which is displacing some residents) but yeah, life there is still tough for many and there is still a fair amount of crime there.

Is anyone watching this show? I haven't watched any of the new episodes but I have noticed that when the show had its premiere it trended for a few hours on social media and most were complaints about missing characters and weird plots.  I haven't heard a peep since. 

I just saw this! 

All those times when people used to wonder why he shielded his son's face from public view, my immediate thoughts were always that perhaps he wanted to protect his son from the possibility of being kidnapped. 

The threat is very real if he's in Serbia, although I know he lives in Monte Carlo but clearly he and is wife have family who still live there.

3 hours ago, ReddFoxx said:

It's gotten to the point where they are only concerned about winning and will support whoever helps them to win even if it's a foreign power. It's only a matter of time before they attempt to mess with actual votes. Everyone should check their voter registrations periodically in advance of registration deadlines just to be safe.

I always do this.  The town where I currently live used to chuckle when I did this.  I wonder if they think I'm being silly when I do this again before midterms.

1 hour ago, DRW50 said:

 

I think I just saw the video.   Do most Americans truly stop and think of the cruelty that is being committed in their names?

'They told my daughter that I did not want her…that I did not want to see her.’ — Darlin Suazo recounts being separated from her child for months while detained at the U.S. border pic.twitter.com/zaozA7eNTk

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 26, 2018

It's so interesting that when Obama was president, deficits were practically all that mattered.  So much so that  when the Obama administration proposed a bigger stimulus that would include upgrading the electrical grid (making it a national priority), the Republicans squawked endlessly about exploding deficits, cowing even some Democrats to back down from supporting anything other than a modest stimulus.

Consequently, it's now being discovered that the Russians have recently been hacking into various electrical authorities, causing various power outages.