CNN’s “Crossfire” talk shows CNN still doesn’t get what’s wrong with CNN

Just in case you were hoping the new show would be smarter, CNN is talking to Newt Gingrich and Stephanie Cutter

BY ALEX PAREENE

CNN would like you to know that under Jeff Zucker’s leadership, they will continue being as CNN-y as possible. That’s the message I’m getting from the report that the struggling cable news channel is planning to relaunch political shouting program “Crossfire” and is “in talks” with Newt Gingrich and Stephanie Cutter. Gingrich! Finally, Lincoln-Douglas-style Crossfire.

This is at this point pretty thin. “Talks” doesn’t mean much. Gingrich and Cutter might be part of a whole bench of hosts. But it does suggest that CNN is going about a Crossfire launch in just about the worst way possible. Those hoping for a smarter version of the old show will definitely be disappointed.

Stephanie Cutter has spent her entire career as a campaign flack. Her job has been, for years, to spin reporters. (This job leads to becoming a political newsmedia professional strangely often.) Regardless of her intelligence and her ability to speak extemporaneously on camera, she has never demonstrated an ability to be an interesting, independent thinker, and it is fair to predict that as a TV pundit she’d be representing “The Democratic Party” and not “liberalism.”

Gingrich was a Republican politician as of a few months ago (and he still might be again someday). In Congress he was a would-be revolutionary right-winger who left office loathed by everyone on both sides of the aisle. In private life he’s been allowed to pretend to be a lightweight conservative public intellectual. His specialty since leaving office has been making money, with a mess of consulting companies and nonprofits and “educational” businesses. (He lost much of that empire in 2012, when he somehow convinced himself he was a serious presidential candidate.) He fancies himself as an ideas man, because he wildly flits from TED-ish Big Idea to Big Idea, picking up and abandoning technocratic proposals for major problems more or less at random. But he is essentially a buffoon, and one respected as a public thinker or even public figure by approximately no one.

full article:
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/cnns_crossfire_talks_show_cnn_still_doesnt_get_whats_wrong_with_cnn/