Inside Move: Pop go the newsies
Cable stars making their own headlines
In a bizarre twist of pop culture, Hollywood has taken a back seat on the gossip pages in recent weeks, as an inordinate amount of ink has been spent covering the TV news wars.
Sure, Winona Ryder's brush with the law is interesting, but entertainment newsies would rather focus on Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, who graces the cover of this week's People magazine discussing her radical eye tuck/facelift.
And now that the hubbub over CNN's "sexy" Paula Zahn promo has finally died down, the press has fixated on another big gaffe: MSNBC's accidental misidentification of Republican strategist Niger Innis.
The press has always been obsessed with itself, but this sort of navel-gazing -- the media gossiping about, well, the media -- has only increased in recent months as the cable news nets' battles turn vicious.
"This is bigger than the late night wars," says Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse's Center for the Study of Popular Television. "And with all this goofy stuff going on, these stories are pretty amusing."
For those covering the beat, the cable news competition has proved too irresistible. After all, this stuff practically writes itself: Just last week, outspoken Fox News prexy Roger Ailes told Newsday he may promote Van Susteren's new look with a "sexy" promo of his own.
"It's still under consideration, if nothing else just to tweak those pathetic bastards (at CNN) who got their shorts all tied up in a knot," he told the paper.
Somebody please get Julia a new boyfriend or find Halle's designer -- fast.
