Print this post.
EYE ON THE MEDIA
By Tom Endicott
CBS This morning is not only a place where real news are mauled every day as the resident trio of disinformers go about their business. (Elementary fairness requires me to add that in that regard they are hardly unique.) But appalling news quality aside, a more recent and rather distasteful angle has been emerging of late, a tedious, ongoing lovefest (feigned or real) between the women and the resident male patriarch, media courtier Charlie Rose, whom the two females on the team—Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell—never tire of flattering. The mutual admiration banter is now so out of control that it is beginning to attract the attention of comics.
Rose, a man who has carefully cultivated a reputation for serious journalism and even intellectualism without being either, while actually doing his best to serve the broader goals of US imperial policy and culture, made his career on two fundamental pillars of success in any society, especially one acutely founded on personal accidents of fortune: extremely good looks and superior social connections.
The former genetic accident got him a ticket to the social salons of NYC (via the good graces of Amanda Burden). This lucky break put the former humble boy from the Carolinas on a dizzying ascent into the stratospheric world of global privilege and media celebrityhood, first with his own eponymous show on PBS, and later with a second, far more visible (and profitable) track on mainstream TV. I doubt that Rose fully realized the brightness of his lucky star when he first intersected with Burden in the early 1990s, but the young socialite and recent divorcee was exquisitely positioned to render assistance, and apparently she did. As the Wiki notes:
Born Amanda Jay Mortimer, she is the daughter of socialite Babe Paley (1915–1978) and her first husband, Stanley Grafton Mortimer, Jr. (1913–1999), an heir to the Standard Oil fortune.[3] She is a descendant of the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Jay, and a granddaughter of Dr. Harvey Cushing, the “Father of American Neurosurgery” and Pulitzer Prize winning author. She has a brother, Stanley Grafton Mortimer III; five half-siblings, William Cushing Paley, Kate Cushing Paley, Averell Mortimer, Jay Mortimer, and David Mortimer; and two stepsiblings, Hilary Paley Califano and Jeffrey Paley. In 1947, her mother married William S. Paley, the son of a successful immigrant entrepreneur who built a family acquisition into CBS. Her stepmother, Kathleen Mortimer (born 1917), was a daughter of railroad heir and United States ambassador W. Averell Harriman.
Rose and Burden in 2010.
Well. He’s not the first to blaze this trail nor will he be the last, although we give him credit for his romantic stability (his liaison with Burden lasted over a decade) but he’s still today one of the more notorious climbers.
In his autumn years, thanks to the acquired gravitas endowed by his PBS platform, an impolite heart condition brought on by the advancing years, coupled with the atrocious paucity of any real quality in US journalism, the profession in its upper echelons having become little more than a corral for presstitutes, Rose can now get away with standing out as a giant, a thoughtful elder statesman in the profession, but that is scarcely something to crow about.
Such facts do not bother his adoring colleagues, of course, both certifiable lightweights and also products of the usual lucky intersections. The end result is that Charlie is looking more and more like Sinatra doing a daily Pal Joey routine and less and less than a serious anchorman. The situation has become so obvious that even John Oliver picked up on the wave for one of his weekly roasts.
One can only wonder what Stendhal would have said about Charlie Rose’s meteoric rise to fame, a career largely devoid of the pathos characteristic of a true dramatic plot, but one thing seems certain: Rose is a terrifically successful Julien Sorel. About that, no one should entertain any doubts whatsoever.
Tom Endicott is a former therapist living in Vermont.
Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com
We apologize for this inconvenience.
=SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.=
free • safe • invaluable
Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?
Send a donation to
The Greanville Post–or
But be sure to support YOUR media.
If you don’t, who will?
