Oprah quits and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is displeased (only he'd put it a little differently)

According to Chicago Mayor Richard "Have a Nice Day" Daley, you can just blame (credit) that dad-gummed media again for chasing that Windy City institution Oprah off of television after compiling a personal federal reserve of only about $2.3 billion.

Oprah has announced she'll close down her daily syndicated chatfest in 2011 (see her tearful announcement video below). But she likely won't be gone long. O, gee, whatever will she call her own channel?

The diva of daytime TV, who's seen the ratings slip some since her prominent presidential campaign involvement, says she's retiring because it's time to leave and it's cold in Chicago and it's warm at her palace in Montecito, California. Also, she's got her man in the White House now.

Chicago's Democrat mayor hasn't been in a real good mood since his president failed to acquire the 2016 Summer Olympics for his adopted hometown.

According to Da Mayor, the real issue over the global star's departure is the stink the media churned up over the city closing down North Michigan Avenue for two days in September to accommodate Oprah's season-opening show taping.

The Chicago Sun-Times quotes the longtime mayor son of a longtime mayor as putting it this way:

She loves this city, and I will be talking to her, but again, that became a big rhubarb of the Chicago press: Beat up Oprah. And so, you keep kicking people, and people will leave. Simple as that.

Speaking in his usual straight face, and strangely in the past tense, Daley....

... also said: "I think she was the most successful woman that we will ever know in the history of this country." That should warm up the temperature for her -- and the rest of the planet.

According to sympathetic city officials always eager for the municipal publicity, the 48-hour closure of that main drag cost only $54,832, which Oprah's company repaid. So what's the big deal? asks the head of the Democrat machine that allowed Barack Obama to emerge on the South Side as long as he didn't make too many waves.

That price to the city, however, doesn't count the cost of increased blood pressures in thousands of notoriously genial Chicago drivers forced to divert to crowded State or Wabash Streets. No reimbursements there.

The mayor's theory may be right, although that would not account for why he and his late father stuck around town for so very many years despite their share of media bashings, scandals, trials and the like. If you have an opinion to share with the mayor, his door is always rarely open. But Daley's office phone is: 312-744-4045.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: George Burns / Harpo via Associated Press; Chicago Tribune (Mayor Daley on a good day).

Fox News rolls wrong video of Palin 'crowds.' Will heads roll too?

A few weeks ago, Fox News had the White House on the defensive. Network anchors were scoring political points by ridiculing President Obama for ignoring the largest news cable audience in television. Glenn Beck pounded green-jobs czar Van Jones, who eventually resigned.

Today, it's Fox News that's on the defensive, after anchor Gregg Jarrett waxed on about the crowds former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had been getting on her book tour. Except it turned out the footage Fox was using at the time was from the 2008 campaign.

Fox executives, embarrassed by the flap, are considering "serious disciplinary action" against someone in the control room, according to our friends at the Swamp.

Small wonder.

Last week, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart called out Fox's Sean Hannity for running video of a huge tea party protest in Washington last September -- as he was discussing a rally by the same causes outside the Capitol this month -- where far fewer protesters showed up.

Hannity apologized on air for what he called an inadvertent error. 

-- Johanna Neuman

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Sarah Palin's 'Going Rogue': A powerful testament to a good woman's endurance in a mean world of politics

"Reviewing" Sarah Palin's new book is quite an assignment. There are a lot of pages. And not many pictures. But here goes:

Despite the involvement of a professional ghostwriter, Republican ex-Gov. Palin has penned one of the most powerful pieces of personal or political literature in a generation of American books. It's "Going Rogue: An American Life" (HarperCollins, $28.99).

Her behind-the-scenes memoir -- you may have noticed a photo of the cover above -- is flying off store shelves across the country even as you read this. (Now, see video below.)

It's a 413-page masterwork of personal and political insight that makes Dick Cheney's upcoming memoir look like a Golden Book. Based on the first 48 hours of....

... sales reports, HarperCollins has already ordered additional printings. And Palin is destined to become a millionaire. Again.

With her trademark down-to-earth tone and gee-gollys, Palin takes her readers inside a compelling personal quest from her loving family's upbringing through the....

Sarah Palin was not on Oprah's Tuesday show after all

So there we were in our slippers, sweatshirt and jeans, wide awake all perky-like, notebook at the ready, prepared to take down most every revealing word that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was going to tell Oprah on her TV show Tuesday.

There had been so very much hype about the Republican pitbull from Alaska finally confronting the most famous backer of Democrat Barack Obama on national television for a thoughtful, woman-to-woman discussion of her new book, what it meant for the future of American politics and what it was really like as a female wearing lipstick inside the doomed McCain presidential campaign run by a bunch of chain-smoking white guys.

First of all, we noticed Oprah's guest had ditched those famous modish eyeglasses. Her hair was blonde this year. But these things can change often with women and professional wrestlers.

Oprah's guest clearly rejected the idea of wearing a confining pantsuit in public. Her short skirt went right up there around Nebraska. The hair hung down to the Dakotas. And Oprah's questioning seemed a little off-target too for a political interview.

The two women got along well, though. Then, they hit on some puzzlingly explicit topics that you don't normally hear much of in interviews of unindicted politicians.

The guest had written a book a while back called "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star," which wasn't exactly the title we had expected based on the advance publicity for the former Republican VP candidate.

The guest said women are actually her biggest fans and come up to her all the time, saying things like, "Thank you so much. You taught me how to give my husband _______.  And he really loves it."

Well, as you may have guessed by now, it turns out that Oprah's guest Tuesday wasn't Sarah Palin after all. Sarah Palin was on Monday, as the week's warmup guest for some actress named Jenna Jameson, whom, quite frankly, Hon, we had never heard of, being as totally focused on politics as we are all day every day.

Apparently Jameson has made more than 100 movies of one kind or another, mostly another. And most of them with her ex-husband which, she said, was somehow safer and allowed the love to show through.

So it sounds like she made those romantic chick flicks.

But, between us, Jameson can't have been too successful financially because the actress could only afford to buy a dress with one shoulder for the show.

The two women had a long conversation and went on about the sex industry for some reason. Oprah posted more details on the show on her website here.

Of course, we had to watch the whole thing just in case Palin popped out from behind the curtain or something. You never know, you know. And politics bloggers can't ever miss any interesting human detail. Alas, Palin never appeared on Tuesday.

So we had to just sit there, wasting an entire hour, watching this tall, blonde Jameson person cross and recross her long legs and flip that mass of hair. (If it's so annoying, why not put a rubber band or something on it?)

Anyway, the whole thing got kinda old and boring, as any wife must imagine, and we forgot to take notes.

Maybe Oprah will have Palin back on some other day. We'll keep you posted.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Related items:

Sarah Palin reveals a secret about husband Todd

What to watch for as Sarah Palin returns to the trail

The Sarah Palin election day speech(es) we never heard

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Photo: Harpo Productions

Sarah Palin lets slip a little secret about hubby Todd

Well, thanks a lot, Rush Limbaugh.

A whole half-hour on national radio with Sarah Palin on the air, millions of people listening in their cars and kitchens, and not one word about Lucky Johnston or whatever-his-name is. Nothing about the great RNC Clothes Caper. Nothing about whether the mother of five gave birth control instructions to her daughter.

So what was the point? And he calls himself a journalist.

Well, no he doesn't. But anyway, as The Ticket reported here Tuesday morning, El Rushbo did pursue numerous substantive policy areas with the former Republican governor who hits the road today on her book bus in Michigan and beyond, selling "Going Rogue." The book began flying off the shelves officially yesterday but has been unofficially available at some rogue places since late last week. (See video)

Nothing better than the gloomy, grey skies of Michigan in November. But Palin just had to....

...go there. Remember, the McCain brain trust, knowing it was losing well before election day last fall, was trying to target its more limited resources where they might actually work. And the numbers told them that Michigan was not one of those places. (Hmm, what if they'd picked Michigan native son Mitt Romney as VP?)

And Palin, being who she is and so naive and so inexperienced in the business of losing....

Going berserk over 'Going Rogue;' Democrats' reaction to Sarah Palin book and publicity

Wow, for somebody who's supposed to be such a political joke, an Arctic ditz and eminently dismissable as a serious anything except maybe a stay-at-home hockey mom, Sarah Palin is sure drawing an awful lot of attention from Democrats and eager critics.

The launch of her "Going Rogue" interviews Monday on "Oprah," of her book today, of her on-air chat today with Rush Limbaugh at 10 a.m. Pacific and of her mid-America bus book tour Wednesday ignited a surprisingly large blizzard of derogatory Democrat dis-missives.

Every few minutes another note from Democratic National Committee operatives and others dropped into electronic mailboxes across the media-verse, helpfully passing on even the tiniest tidbit of negative news about Palin.

You know how sometimes a friend tells you how much he/she doesn't really care about....

Oprah's Sarah Palin interview incites 'perky' reactions

Sarah Palin's rogue book tour made a pre-taped stop in Chicago today for the former Alaska governor's much-hyped appearance on "Oprah."

Palin dropped some doggone fascinating tidbits during the interview. She said she has no plans to run for president in 2012. Well, actually she said it's "not on my radar," which is Politician for "It might be over the horizon."

That might ease the worries of conspiracy theorists convinced that the adorable political celebrity could ring in the 2012 apocalypse. On second thought, no, it won't convince the "anti-" crowd of anything.

Oprah Winfrey, who supported her hometown senator, Barack Obama, in the election, questioned Palin about her unintentionally hilarious interviews with Katie Couric. Palin refused to refer to Couric by name, instead calling her "the perky one." Gosh!

Don't worry, plenty more to come after the book's official release tomorrow. There's a five-part Barbara Walters chat on ABC and a long radio conversation with Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern.

As entertaining as the Oprah chat was, we also like to watch the comments from fans and haters. Did Oprah go too easy on Palin? Some said, You betcha. But others admitted that Palin is starting to grow on them.

We grabbed some of the best we found on Twitter. Here they are (unedited):

Good news: Obama creates 30 new jobs in one congressional district. Bad news: No such district

Chicago politics, where voting is such a revered civic duty that people do it even after they're dead, cold, stiff, stuffed, boxed and buried beneath the permafrost for years, has now come to D.C. with the Obama administration.

This afternoon comes the most encouraging economic news, courtesy of our keen-eyed buddy Rick Klein over at ABC, that the Obama administration's $787-billion economic stimulus has, for example, thankfully created 30 new jobs in a little-known rural corner of Arizona at a cost to American taxpayers of only $761,420.

That works out to only $25,380.67 spent to create each individual job.

Seems like a lot per slot, but those 30 folks must be happy to be employed again and paying taxes.

This will be a real feather in the cap of Vice President Joe Biden, who's been left behind and assigned by the ever-campaigning president to monitor the stimulus plan, its spending and effectiveness moving into the crucial midterm elections of 2010. Might the Democrats snatch that House seat?

So the people of that 15th Congressional District in staunchly Republican Arizona should be pretty happy about this.

Trouble is, there is no 15th Congressional District in Arizona. None. Nada. Zip. Zero. Doesn't exist. Not in Arizona. Not even on paper at the Democratic National Committee. There are only eight. Period.

But the administration's much-vaunted recovery.gov website reported these jobs as being created there.

Could well be a computer glitch. Lord knows humans would never make such a dumb, misleading mistake, even in politics.

But then the trouble is that just months after grandly unveiling the recovery.gov website to showcase its economic prowess and tech-savvy, the Obama administration just spent 18 million additional taxpayer dollars to redesign the still new website.

And that site proudly also reported nonexistent new stimulus spending not just in Arizona but other states across the country.

So that looks to have worked pretty well, at least if you're counting computer designer jobs created.

Anyway, how do you think the 15th will vote next year?

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Josua Roberts / Bloomberg News

Sarah Palin back on the trail: What to watch for

 

Well, it looks like these ladies got the memo about Blue Monday.

This is Barbara Walters of ABC, shown here on the right, posing with the latest celebrity she's interviewed in her very long, diligent career of interviewing famous people about things we didn't know we wanted to know about them. Like their favorite tree, for example.

Walters is very good at it. Such conversations powered by public curiosity have proved addictive to Americans in a long tradition of popular American journalism since Dolley Madison captured the public's fascination as first lady for not one, but two, presidents -- her actual husband, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson, a widower who in those days couldn't really bring his black mistress in as White House hostess.

Anyway, about the latest, biggest political celebrity ever, Walters might happen to mention some of her favorite moments with Palin every few minutes on "The View" this week, which also happens to be on ABC.

It's a match made in PR heaven: A politician whose supporters can't wait to see....

How low will he go? Obama gives Japan's Emperor Akihito a wow bow (Updates with videos, pic)

(New UPDATE: Monday 5:02 p.m. OK, it's not funny if you work at the White House. But for everybody else a new video at the bottom of this post will provide some chuckles about how the rest of the world chooses to greet the Japanese Emperor. Hint: It's different than President Obama.)

(UPDATES: 12:22 p.m. Saturday. A brief news video has been added below, showing the greeting in this photograph. Contrary to some claims, the video shows no reciprocal bow by the emperor, who traditionally bows to no one. And we've added a file photo from 2007 of Vice President Dick Cheney greeting the Japanese Emperor at the same residence in a different fashion.)

How low will the new American president go for the world's royalty?

This photo will get Democrat President Obama a lot of approving nods in Japan this weekend, especially among the older generation of Japanese who still pay attention to the royal family living in its downtown castle. Very low bows like this are a sign of great respect and deference to a superior.

To some in the United States, however, an upright handshake might have looked better. (See Cheney-Akihito photo, right).

Remember Michelle Obama casually patting Britain's Queen Elizabeth on the back during their Buckingham Palace visit? America's royalty tends to make movies and get bad reviews and lots of money as a sign of respect.

Obama could receive some frowns back home as he did for his not-quite-this-low-or-maybe-about-the-same-bow to the Saudi king not so long ago. (See photo here)

How times change under Democratic presidents.

Back in 1994 when President Bill Clinton appeared to maybe perhaps almost start to bow to Akihito at a White House encounter, U.S. officials rushed to deny it was any such a thing. And the N.Y. Times chronicled the comedic drama here.

Akihito, who turns 76 next month, is the eldest son and fifth child of Emperor Showa, the name given to an emperor and his reign after his death.

Emperor Showa is better known abroad by the life name of Hirohito. He became emperor in 1925 and died in 1989, the longest historically-known rule of the nation's 125 emperors.

Hirohito presided over his nation's growth from an undeveloped agrarian economy into the expansionist military power and ally of Nazi Germany of the 1930's.

And, later, Japan became a global economic giant. Hirohito, along with Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who authorized the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, were much reviled abroad during World War II.

Historically, debate has simmered over how much of a political puppet Hirohito was to the country's military before and during the war.

Even after Democratic President Harry Truman ordered the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the summer of 1945, there were strong forces within Japan that wanted to continue to fight the Americans in the spirit of kamikaze suicide pilots.

But Akihito's father went on national radio, the first time his subjects had ever heard Hirohito's voice, and without using the inflammatory word "surrender," pronounced that the country must "accept the unacceptable." It did.

As the conquering Allied general and then presiding officer of the U.S. occupation, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, decided to allow Japan to keep its emperor as a ceremonial unifying institution within a nascent democracy.

Tojo, on the other hand, was hanged.

MacArthur treated Emperor Hirohito respectfully but, as his body language in this black and white postwar photo demonstrates, was not particularly deferential. 

(But then MacArthur was not known as a particularly deferential person, as Truman discovered just before firing him later. But that's another war.)

Akihito was born during Japan's conquering of China and was evacuated during the devastating American fire-bombing of Tokyo, which was built largely of wood in those days.

The future emperor learned English during the U.S. occupation, but, inexplicably, his father ordered that his oldest boy not receive an Army commission as previous imperial heirs always had.

Akihito assumed the throne on Jan. 7, 1989. Within weeks he began a series of formal expressions of remorse to Asian countries for Japan's actions during his....

...father's reign. In 2003, he underwent surgery for prostate cancer.

In 1959, Akihito married Michiko Shoda, the first commoner allowed to enter the Japanese royal family. That was two years before the birth of Akihito's future presidential guest, Barack Obama.

Joe Biden was already 17 by then. But he wasn't a senator.

(UPDATE: Here's a new video assembled by some clever College Republicans at the University of Connecticut. It's even got music and requires no explanation.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty; David Bohrer / White House (Vice President Dick Cheney is received by Emperor Akihito somewhat differently in 2007); Reuters (Obama bows to the king of Saudi Arabia earlier this year); U.S. Army Archives (Gen. Douglas MacArthur not bowing to Emperor Hirohito after World War II).