Radar Online “polled a number of current and former producers—the people with the best view of the tantrums and shouting matches—as well as some professional TV reporters and had them dish the dirt” (anonymously, of course) on who’s nasty and who’s nice in cable punditry.
Oh, how the “former P.A. at CNN who has since moved on” (from working with CNN’s Nancy Grace) has been waiting for a chance to tell the world this about her former boss:
Once she gets in makeup chair, she thinks she’s a total goddess. We used to joke that the only reason she’d come into the studio was to get her hair done. She wears so much lip gloss that it’s amazing she can even open her mouth.
And, a “former MSNBC staffer” no doubt relished the chance to remember aloud that:
[Keith] Olbermann refused to communicate with underlings face to face when he worked out of the network’s Secaucus operation, instead insisting that anyone who wished to get in touch with him leave him a note in a special mailbox.
Some hints as to which other MSNBC personalities made the lists (nasty and nice): A “frequent female guest” jokes that this MSNBC anchor and nasty-lister has a “one slot for a chick” which the “frequent female guest” dubbed “the vagina stool” and “it’s like he just tries to make whoever is on the vagina stool squirm.” Of another MSNBC-er (and nice-list-er), an “impressed” “female producer at CNN” says: “Maybe if something has come of Hillary Clinton’s run, it’s that a woman in a male-dominated industry can be taken a little bit more fucking seriously.”
UPDATE: The New York Times has its own version of this today, but it’s not a bunch of former underlings dishing on a bunch of former bosses — rather just one former boss, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D, NY). About Weiner the Times interviewed “more than two dozen former employees, Congressional colleagues and lobbyists,” and unearthed such tidbits as: Weiner “routinely instant messages his employees on weekends, often just one-word missives: ‘Teeth’ (as in, your answer reminds me of pulling teeth) or ‘weeds’ (as in, you are too much in the weeds),” “enjoys challenging staff members on issues, even at parties” and, per the Times‘ analysis, has “presided over more turnover than any other member of the New York House delegation in the last six years.”
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.