It’s a recession - and that means layoffs. Even huge powerful conglomerates like NewsCorp have had to lay off workers. And it’s even hit famous people. Now, rumors are swirling that my favorite daytime show, The View, might be forced to let their most recent cohost hire, Sherri Shepherd, go because of budgetary reasons. Although Sherri has had her bad moments (not knowing the earth wasn’t flat, asking noted atheist Bill Maher if he had ever tried talking to God), I find her pleasant most of the time. If she says something kind of dumb, she doesn’t get all Elisabeth Hasselbeck about it and go on the defensive and start squawking about how she’s being oppressed or something.
I’m kind of torn on the whole “Should they lay off Sherri?” thing. On one hand, the show has been doing some painfully off-key segments about “saving money” lately, and it would be kind of nice to see the economy have an actual effect on the show. And while I like Sherri, she’s probably the most expendable of the bunch, and maybe she could get written into more scenes on 30 Rock. And if she gets fired, maybe she could write a tell-all book about what really goes on backstage…
Are you afraid of losing your job? In this unstable job market, I don’t think it’s out of line for anybody to have that particular worry. And if you suck at your job and only got it because you are a conservative former reality show contestant who is willing to parrot Republican talking points, then you should be even more concerned about the threat of firing. Elisabeth Hasselbeck of “The View,” who just so happens to be a conservative former reality show contestant who parrots Republican talking points, has come up with a brilliant strategy for staving off her inevitable firing/descent into irrelevance. She keeps getting knocked up! This morning, she announced she’s expecting her third kid.
Continue reading ‘tip of the week: the hasselbeck technique’
Bill Geddie, along with Baba Wawa herself, produces the zaniness that is The View. This week, he spoke to Mediabistro.com about his job. There were some really choice - by which I mean ‘weird’ or ‘made me kind of annoyed’ - quotes in there. Of course, since he’s a dude producing a show where a bunch of women talk, there are an embarrassing amount of questions about what it’s like working with all that estrogen around.
A sampling of Geddie ‘wisdom’:
We [he and Walters] have a mommy and daddy relationship with the staff — the only difference is I’m the mommy and she’s the daddy. I have to do it hands-on day in and day out much like, I think, traditionally women have to do with their children. She’s the dad that comes in now and then and says, ‘I don’t like this.’ I’ve always thought of it that way.
I figured what happened for me in a previous life is that I abused women. I have these two Barbaras in my life, my two daughters and these five women. I think it’s some sort of penance… No, I don’t feel that way. Also, I don’t feel like I understand women any better [than] when we started 12 years ago. I am not some miracle worker or Alan Alda or Phil Donahue-type that just has a real sense of what women want.
Continue reading ‘‘the view’ producer talks workplace politics’
Even if you’ve never watched the show, you’ve probably heard of The View, the AM ladies-only chatfest led by veteran journalist Barbara Walters. And if you have heard of it, you’ve probably heard about it in the context of one of the catfights or political disagreements on the show. Here’s the thing that bugs me: I don’t care if the hosts like each other or not, I’m tuning in for some interesting (and occasionally thought-provoking) television, I’m not tuning in to hear about how much these five combative coworkers supposedly care about each other (although not about their show’s production assistants).
You are not legally required to love, or be best friends, with your coworkers. All you have to do is work together in a civil and polite fashion. If you happen to really like each other and want to hang out outside of work, that’s cool, but certainly not a must. What bothers me is that Barbara Walters can’t just say that the women of The View come in and do their jobs every day and then go back to their lives, she has to insist as loudly as she can to anyone who will listen that the View cohosts are all BFFs who engage in constant spontaneous group hugs and get each other presents on Valentine’s Day.
Continue reading ‘why ‘the view’ drives me crazy’
This year, the Collins English Dictionary polled people about what words they thought should be in the dictionary but weren’t. The winner? “Meh,” which any disgruntled cube slave knows is an essential way to express work-related boredom. But one other word on the nominated list that didn’t make it into the dictionary this year? Frenemy.
Think how excited your boss (or bitchy coworker) would have been to see herself in the dictionary and not just The Bossary! Oh well, evil bosses. There’s still next year. Until then, we have to hope that the brains behind the Collins Dictionary watch more of The View.
Olympic swimmer and gold-medal-record-setter Michael Phelps is a pretty hot commodity right now. Besides hosting Saturday Night Live and taping a cameo on Entourage, he got a huge advance for an upcoming memoir that he doesn’t even have to write. So what’s missing? Oh, right. A girlfriend. Several gossip sites are reporting Phelps is dating a woman named Marina (insert water-related puns here) who he met when they were both undergrads at the University of Michigan. Marina’s job…Barbara Walters’ assistant. Once again, somebody else realizes the great romantic potential of dating an assistant.
[Side note: do you think it was Marina who an STA spy witnessed handing books back and forth to people at Barbara Walters' book signing? Also, does this mean Michael Phelps has to go on The View?]
Being a PA on a TV show means you might get called on to run any number of random errands. However, one assistant on The View really had to go above and beyond the call of duty last week. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the worst interviewer on television, was going to do a “hot topic” segment about how she disapproves of some stores carrying low-cut panties for little girls. [Elisabeth has a two-year-old daughter, Grace.] That meant a poor PA–who happened to be male–had to run around Manhattan kids’ stores trying to find a pair of this low-cut underwear that Hasselbeck could hold up during her segment. He managed to find a pair, but I’m curious how many stores thought he was a creepy pedophile and followed him around the store?
The worst part of this whole ordeal? The only reason this story is known is because the cohosts talked and laughed about it on air during a special “backstage on The View” episode. It figures that a woman who was basically handed a major network broadcasting job despite her only TV experience having been a contestant on a reality show wouldn’t understand the value of the hard work other people do in order to make her stupid self look good.
Rosie O’Donnell used to be the Queen of Nice, and then she was the woman who fought on air with airhead cohost Elisabeth Hasselbeck on The View. But is Rosie making up with Elisabeth? According to The National Ledger, Rosie had her assistant call chichi baby boutique Petit Tresor to order a baby gift for Elisabeth, whose second child is due any day now.
To slightly reword a quote from Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Assistants are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
When Michael Jordan was an undergrad basketball star at the University of North Carolina, he majored in Geography. What about Tim Hasselbeck, better known for being the husband of View harpy Elisabeth “Rosie Hater” Hasselbeck than for being a third-string quarterback for the New York Giants? When he was an athlete at Boston College (where he met the missus), Tim majored in Administrative Studies.
Welcome to STA, Tim! If your team finally gets tired of paying you to sit on the bench, you can always fall back on your administrative career. We’d be happy to let you join our assistant ranks, although we’re sure the pay is a little less than you’re accustomed to.
Now that Rosie is off of The View, we here at STA feared that the show’s drama factor would be drastically reduced. Fortunately, our old pal Martha Stewart (who seemed to handle prison just fine, unlike some people) can always be counted to stir up some controversy. While Martha was taping a View appearance that aired last Friday, her driver was arrested. Page Six reports that Martha was not happy and was overheard on the phone screaming at her assistant. The highlight? Martha allegedly yelled, “How could you do this to me? Don’t you do background checks on people? He was Egyptian! What do I pay you people for?” It’s not quite Ricki Lake’s afterbirth, but…damn.