Candy Crowley is on CNN arguing against investigating the Bush administration for torture. Isn’t she supposed to be a political analyst? Why the hell is she expressing legal opinions?
Moreover, why is she on tv at all? I’d understand if she were Tim Russert’s or Andrea Mitchell’s or Hale Boggs’ daughter, but she’s not, she’s just a blathering right-wing idiot who’s not especially telegenic. How can she possibly be good for ratings?
Ty Lookwell
Because she’s a total hottie
flukebucket
And that sir, is putting it mildly.
DonkeyKong
Matt Taibbi had a great profile of her when he wrote sabout the 2004 press coverage. She was on the Bush campaign bus eating a chocalate cookie provided by the campaign, bashing Kerry as crumbs fell across her suit.
That about seez it all.
DonkeyKong
“Will hump rightwing power structure for cookies.”
Man On Fire
I’ve never found her to be especially right-wing, though certainly this latest bit is disappointing. I remember her doing a great job following Kerry during the ’04 primaries.
Plus, her lack of telegenicity (Scrabble word!) makes her seem more authentic than the vapid sorority girls the networks give the anchor spots to, like… oh, just pick one.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
If KLo is your type, then Crowley’s a hot babe.
I believe that’s the first time KLo’s or Crowley’s name have ever appeared in the same sentence as “hot babe”.
At least, I hope to God that it is.
.
funluvn
I simply cannot understand why there is even a discussion as to whether torture is OK, and when and….for f**ks sake! It’s Torture! It’s illegal!! What debate?
Jeebus….
Face
Pretty sure CNN stocks their employee breakroom with Ding-Dongs and Ho-Hos.
TenguPhule
The law is only for little people who lack perfect tits.
TenguPhule
That wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t come out and do tv shows too.
JenJen
“I Love Candy” Crowley was on CNN earlier this morning, trying to argue that “Americans simply trust the GOP more when it comes to National Security, so investigating the Bush Administration would only serve to hurt Democrats.” WTF WTF WTF?
Seriously. I wanted to hurt her, but then realized punching her in the mouth would have about the same effect as lightly smacking a horse on the ass with a twig. ;-)
TenguPhule
Rule 34.
Enjoy your nightmares.
TenguPhule
That depends on how sharp the twig is and where you apply the point.
scott
I best remember Candy Crowley for busting on John Kerry for drinking green tea (not manly enough, or whatever).
It’s great to live in a country where a morbidly obese woman can criticize a Vietnam Vet for consuming something healthy.
The Moar You Know
Didn’t Ozzy do a song about her?
Michael
Call her by her real name.
Jabette. Sister to Jabba.
Comrade Kevin
Mrs. Crowley,
Won’t you ride my white horse?
Mrs. Crowley,
It’s symbolic, of course
Approaching a time that is classic
I hear that maiden’s call
Approaching a time that is drastic
Standing with their backs to the wall
Was it polemically sent
l want to know what you meant
I want to know,
I want to know what you meant.
TenguPhule
Le sigh.
PK
She is blackmailing someone at the highest level in CNN.
Karl
Good grief. She’s a political reporter. CNN buys the republican view that torture is a political issue. So she is asked to comment. Attacking her appearance is a little unseemly. The list of ugly republicans is really too long to go down that road every time Bill Bennett, Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, Mike McConnell, … and all the rest are on TV.
The Moar You Know
@Comrade Kevin: Thank you, that was brilliant.
I just want to clarify that I don’t want Ms. Crowley anywhere NEAR my “white horse”.
Ash Can
I have yet to hear any argument from anyone against prosecution of torturers that’s the least bit persuasive. And I love the Prez, but that includes him too. I’d really love to know how exactly, as Zelikow was quoted as saying, “the factual and legal story is ‘more complicated than is generally recognized.'”
John Cole
I like Candy Crowley’s voice, and it bothers me all the attacks on her physical appearance. Sure, she is being an asshole, but seriously.
But back to her voice. I think she has a good one. My favorite male voice of recent vintage is Garrick Utley:
I miss the old radio and tv voices. All the chirpy newscasters these days have crappy voices with fake inflections. Candy Crowley and Garrick Utley do not.
Michael D.
And on another note, Obama is now saying he won’t release the detainee abuse photos.
TR
She always reminds me of John Candy in drag.
Michael D.
@John Cole:
Agreed. No place for it. “She’s not smokin’ hot, so we shouldn’t take her seriously,” is what it boils down to, and it’s unbecoming.
peach flavored shampoo
@The Moar You Know: Yes. Crazy Train, I believe.
flukebucket
Candy Crowley is definitely made for right wing radio
Face
I’m guessing she’s mastered the art of talking with her mouth full.
The Tim Channel
Pardon my entirely on topic blog whoring. I think you guys will enjoy this.
Offering up this bit of my recent political blasphemy:
Junk Science:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/timtimes/2009/05/junk-science.php
Enjoy.
The Other Steve
I didn’t realize Candy Crowley was supposed to be right-wing. They always pass her off as an independent journalist.
TenguPhule
Ah, she graduated from the FOX NEWS school of journalism.
gex
The answer is moot. The issue is not whether she is speaking in her area of expertise, is actually informing, or is improving the ratings. The issue is can this cable news network boost their count of Republicans/conservatives opining on whatever as they fill their 24 hours? Yes, yes they can. And Crowley can help in that role just fine.
The Grand Panjandrum
@The Moar You Know: This one, eh?
neff
Does Crowley still stand sideways in front of the camera? I haven’t watched CNN in a long time but I remember she used to do that when she was covering the 2000 election recount.
JGabriel
OT, but Emptywheel has won a journalism award (h/t TPM):
I can’t think of anyone more deserving. Always nice to see someone whose work you’ve been following start to get the recognition it deserved all along.
.
KCinDC
Enough with the comments on her appearance.
I’m listening to “Tell Me More” on NPR, which is enlightening me by providing Alberto Gonzales with a platform to express his opinions on Obama’s possible Supreme Court nominations. Can someone explain why that guy should be on the air as an expert on anything, except possibly how to exist with no sense of shame at all?
JenJen
@John Cole: OK. From now on I’ll just refer to her as an asshole. Fair enough. She infuriates me often, and sometimes the cheapest shot is the easiest, you’re right.
TR
We’re only judging Crowley by her own standards — Taibbi told a story of her guffawing about how ugly Dennis Kucinich was.
MikeJ
Michael Moore is fat.
Laura W
@Michael D.:
And small-minded, lacking in compassion, and school yard tauntish.
I think DougJ must be smokin’ hot, though.
cmorenc
@John Cole
Yeah, we shouldn’t be criticizing Candy’s fat ass. We should instead be criticizing Candy for being a fatuous asshole.
flukebucket
I sure hope Obama blocks those photos
OniHanzo
Sweet watersliding Christ…. just read this at WaPo and I understand now why DougJ is constantly putting the hot coals to these fuckwits.
Reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in Deadwood:
/headdesk
Eric U.
the first time I became aware of CC was when she was openly gloating the night of the 2000 election. They should never have such a person covering anything that could be described as news.
Egilsson
Crowley is a sad poseur who ravaged Clinton over stupid nonsense night after night after night.
The fact that she is also unattractive does not make her smart or sensible or a good journalist. She’s none of those things.
Rob
I remember the 2000 election and W. was appointed to the role of President, Candy Crowley had tears in her eyes because she was so happy the her guy had won. Haven’t liked her since. So yes, she is an unattractive wingnut and a fat ass.
The Moar You Know
Good for you, John. She’s pimping a party that’s willing to torture and murder people for the unforgiveable crime of having brown skin.
I’m proud to say she looks like ten pounds of diarrhea in a five pound cloth bag, with cookie crumbs all over one side.
She has no mercy, she should expect none. And that will include observations on her eye-scarring hideousness.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@funluvn:
This is why I’m concerned that we’re losing this debate. With help from the media, torture/not torture is being made to seem, instead of a moral debate, like just another set of political positions.
Joshua Norton
I know, I know. It’s pretty High School to be attacking the her for the giant walls of flesh she’s systematically constructed around herself to protect her from the slings and arrows of consensual reality.
We would be attacking her for her ideas, but she really don’t have any – except for regularly regurgitating the entire discredited Righty Catechism that has driven this country headfirst into a brick wall.
TenguPhule
This shouldn’t even be a debate.
Pro-torture speakers should be shot, and media dipshits who spout “he said, she said” on this need to be publically flogged.
Woody
I’m pretty sure that when you’re Candy’s size (5’4″, 350#), you can comment on just about anything you can get the microphone close enough to your face to say…
oh, ooops.
I guess commenting on her mammoth, gargantuan obesity is not good form?
so solly…
Joshua Norton
K-Lo was so upset by Wanda Sykes at the WHCD that she dropped a whole handful of mashed potatoes.
Joshua Norton
Hmmm. I never knew there was a size called “Jumbo Petite”.
Carnacki
Moreover, why is she on tv at all? …she’s just a blathering right-wing idiot
You answered your own question.
I like how she always looks like she’s about to cry whenever there’s bad news for Republicans or good news for Democrats.
Tony J
Sort of OT, but over at AmCom Vlahos is pointing out that the new guy Obama is putting in charge of Afghanistan is the same guy who was in charge of the Special Ops team that barred the Red Cross from its base – illegally – and was so enthusiastic in embracing the ‘new rules on torture’ that the frikking CIA refused to let its agents have anything to do with them.
It’s worth reading the whole thing.
Really? This guy gets a promotion? Now? I’m not surprised that the likes of Crowley are paid to be on TV, she appears to be more clued in on what the White House thinks about torture than anyone here, including myself.
bvac
I firmly believe that they don’t want prosecutions because it would make their job harder. That giant fucking interactive map wouldn’t help them out much if they had to deal with real legal issues in a serious manner. But hey, lets go to john king to see how the optics of torture investigations play out in middle america!!
Jon H
@Face: “Pretty sure CNN stocks their employee breakroom with Ding-Dongs and Ho-Hos”
Only if you get there before High Fructose Crowley.
greynoldsct00
Now that my lunch has been spewed all over my keyboard and monitor… LOL!!
georgia pig
Criticizing on appearance is generally unfair, but my dad used to have this somewhat whacked out theory that there was a signicant correlation between right wing politics and lack of physical attractiveness. His explanation was that they sensed their mothers’ revulsion at birth and have had a chip on their shoulders ever since. The theory was along the lines that physically unattractive people tend to get negative reinforcement throughout childhood, leading to relatively high levels of resentment and paranoia. I recall that Taibbi also had a piece a few years back about “spite voting,” that many voters tended to associate liberal politics with Hollywood “beautiful people” and voted Republican out of resentment of them.
OniHanzo
@Tony J:
And of course the new cleansing light of transparency.
kay
@The Other Steve:
I didn’t know Candy Crowley was right wing either. I’m getting extremely paranoid about this. I’m just going to start with the assumption they’re all right wing, because more and more I’m finding they are.
Tony J
@OniHanzo:
I was going to work that tangent into the post, but at the last moment I crouched in fear of the Tin-Foil Fairy and thought better of it.
Still an ‘unfortunate’ convergence of events, though. A commander who Dick ‘Torture makes my heart beat’ Cheney approves of gets promoted to top-dog in Afghanistan, while back in the US photographic evidence of the kind of abuse sponsored the Cheney White House gets held back from release for fear that it might “stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger U.S. troops”.
Like in Afghanistan, y’think?
/headslap.
Laertes
That’s probably not an entirely fair reading of the original remark. Closer to the mark might be:
“You wouldn’t expect to see someone on TV unless they’re either nice to listen to or nice to look at. Ms. Crowley appears to be neither, so it’s a bit of a mystery that she gets lots of airtime.”
someguy
Because nothing is more fun than sitting at home mocking out fat, stupid right wingers. It’s kind of the minor premise of this website, is it not?
Atlliberal
Snark sells? Candy has always struck me as smarmy.
I think Obama has a point about not releasing those photos right now. It’s more important to make sure those things never happen agian, so I’m more inclined than he is to think we should have a full investigation (truth commission?) of the last 8 years, but while the troops are still over there, releasing the photos would only serve to inflame. He should put them on a schedule to be released after the troops are all out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
flukebucket
In other words, never-ever.
Jon H
@georgia pig:
That’s probably more true of Rovian behind-the-scenes manipulators, Schlozman-style DOJ wreckers, and slimy media propagandists.
Actual elected GOP politicians seem to all be similar dumb ex-jocks or similar BMOC types who were probably popular and attractive in their youth.
To be blunt, I doubt someone with Waxman’s looks could get elected as a Republican.
DougJ
I don’t think “not especially telegenic” is much of a taunt. And it has nothing to do with weight, anyway. I would describe Rosie O’Donnell and Roseanne Barr and John Goodman as telegenic.
asiangrrlMN
Come on, knock it off with the jokes about her looks. I haven’t heard you guys be half as nasty to all the unattractive fat male commenters out there about them being fat. It’s as if a physically unattractive and heavy female is twice the affront to you as is the physically unattractive and heavy male is.
It’s fair to slam her on her idiocy and her stupid remarks, but to continually slam her looks is not fair.
DougJ, the aforementioned admonishment is not directed at you.
I second what Michael D. said.
As for the photos, if the reason to not release them is legitimately tied into protecting the troops, I will put my indignation on hold.
passerby
To me, the answer to this question is one of the great mysteries of life.
I marvel at the existence of an audience who listens to/watches and agrees with likes of Crowley, Scarborough, Rush, and Hannity.
I can barely stand a video or audio clip of these liars much less hours of daily blustering.
shortstop
Couldn’t agree more. So I’m limiting my cheap personal shots to observations on her nails-on-a-fucking-chalkboard voice.
DanSmoot'sGhost
This seems to describe her pretty well.
Ordinary, unassuming. Not with much to say.
Not that there is anything wrong with that.
She’s sort of a placeholder.
Tony J
I don’t see it.
Doesn’t refusing to release the photos on the grounds that what they show would make people angry just do the same thing? They exist, everyone knows it. All that keeping them off the front pages does is give free rein to the imagination. Because the only inference anyone can draw from the last minute banning based on that argument is that they must be so bad that they’re worse than anyone can imagine, and that they show US troops comitting war-crimes that the US Government doesn’t want people to see.
Which protects the troops how, exactly?
passerby
@Atlliberal:
Describes her perfectly.
flukebucket
It ain’t the troops that are being protected.
Anton Sirius
Crwoley is one of the people who inspires me to become insanely rich, just so I can buy CNN and personally shitcan her.
Anne Laurie
So, Candy Crowley’s defending torture as just another political tool, and y’all are complaining about… the (comparative) ugliness of the face those words come out of. Yay, liberals!
Man on Fire’s partially right here. Crowley’s the Vagina-American version of Michael Steele or Clarence Thomas — as long as she’s willing to be the “mean face” for the Media Village Idiots’ nastiest talking points, the pretty idiots will let her hang around the clubhouse. Just as Michelle Malkin gets hauled in front of the cameras to say shite that’s a little too ‘edgy’ for Ann Coulter, Crowley gets the “John Kerry: light in his elitist French loafers, or just a giant honkin pansy?” stories where the pretty faces (and that would include, ghod save the mark, men like David Gregory & Jake Tapper) don’t want to be standing point. Of course once the “Ugly Chick” starts the ‘discussion’, all the Pretty Idiots get to make their Earnestly Concerned faces while repeating the same lies. And if the blowback’s greater than anticipated (see: Frost, Graeme), then it’s not the Pretty Idiots’ fault some mean ugly girl-person said those nasty things, is it?
kay
I’m ridiculously grateful to the FBI interrogator for coming forward.
The blathering idiots have to pay attention to him.
passerby
Oops. All this time I thought we were talking about Monica Crowley. Now the “not so telegenic” comment makes more sense.
Monica C = Smarmy
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@asiangrrlMN:
Bill Bennet looks like he ate Jabba the Hutt and had Rush Limbaugh for dessert. Newt Gingrich has a face that was made for scouring frying pans. Brit Hume looks like a basset hound that had an ass surgically grafted to its face.
This has been another edition of “Equal Time for Male Right-Wing Assholes.”
Seriously though, attacking someone’s looks is lowest-common-denominator bullshit, even if it’s fun. There are plenty of ugly things about Crowley without dragging her appearance into it.
someguy
@ Asian[multiple’G’]rl:
You’re right. We shouldn’t try to hurt the feelings of the morbidly obese, arguably female, eye-hurting segment of the pro torture community.
Perry Como
Hey, leave the giant fucking interactive map out of this. Those are a ton of fun to use. I could write a nice app to help CNN cover torture trials: Multitouch Hangman.
someguy
@ tripletee
Please. Can you think of a single Republican or conservative position you agree with? I think not. So your mission really needs to involve repudiating them in their entirety, not picking one or two fights and retreating elsewhere. Sure, you are bright and get it, but the public at large is far too stupid to act in self interest and reject the right entirely (though 2008 was a good start). So the point of our communications should be simpler messaging focused on rightists as a common laughing stock (the public gets that), instead of trying to make subtle points about how they are politically / philosophically / morally wrong. Nobody wants to hear that shit except the political junkies. So instead of getting in wonkfights against the right’s moving goalposts, knock ’em down with ridicule. That the ridicule is painfully true in cases like Crowley’s or Rush’s or Manhands Coulter’s, is that much the better. You need to associate their ugly, evil-ass ideas with their ugly, evil-ass selves. Make it undesirable to be conservative or Republican or to even admit to harboring any of their unacceptable ideas and you will win. Save the wonkfighting for the internecine battles.
canuckistani
I think an examination of the archives would reveal a number of fat jokes made about Rush Limbaugh. But I’m willing to concede that women are more likely to be judged by appearances and this is one of those cases where humour does not work the same way for all genders.
Mary
CNN tried to get rid of Candy Crowley and she sued them and that is why she is still on the air, for now. Sometimes obesity has its benefits, eh?
Phoebe
Thank you OniHanzo @44, I guess I have to start watching Deadwood now. That was nice. I only have two more discs of Breaking Bad on dvd before I run out of Fake People to Care About. Big Love just didn’t suck me in.
About CC, you know, I think because I’ve always been kinda underweight that I’ve never hated on the fat people. Even the ones I hate. Rush, for instance, his most recent and alarming gain just makes me kind of think he’s going to keel over any second, and actually feel sorry for him. His voice sounds fat now, when it didn’t used to.
When you start attacking people for their looks, rather than their deeds or words, it starts making me feel sympathetic to them, Coulter included. People I already hate.
So: like torture, yes we shouldn’t do it because it’s wrong, but also, it doesn’t work. And “but it feels good” – well, fine, but know that you’re not helping.