Ten Hottest Women of Cable News

Remember the Playboy magazine pictorial spreads... ten page photo stories like "Girls of the Big Ten" featuring nubile co-eds in various states of undress? These photo cavalcades may still go on within the glossy pages of Hugh Hefner's magazine but my obsession leans towards the covered up beauties of cable news.

Here they are-- "The Women Newscasters of Cable News." Ted Turner may have instigated the movement towards the serious sexiness of today's news anchors and I'll pay homage to Ted by starting with the women of CNN:

CNN
1) Fredericka Whitfield-- a healthy woman with a beautiful face though mature in her career, CNN babes only have a limited  on-camera window. Fredericka comes by her gracious demeanor honestly-- Her father, Marvelous Mal Whitfield, was a great Olympian and one of the Tuskegee Airmen.

2) Brooke Baldwin-- a babe, reminds me of the high school girls who always dated older guys. Kind of makes you feel inferior to admire Brooke, always knowing you just don't qualify for that kind of woman.

3) Carol Costello-- a bit older, has a gossipy edge to her presentation reminiscent of another high school type-- the rumor starter, it's like she's seducing you with one scandal after another. Has a tricky Mrs. Robinson quality, and you're a young and confused Dustin Hoffman.

4) Christina Amanpour-- you meet her in a Parisian cafe. She's decked out in black leather pants, drinking Pernod and puffs clove cigarettes to beat the band. And she has war stories, no I mean literal war stories. You cannot help but consider the crazy lovemaking techniques she has mastered.

MSNBC
5) Tamron Hall-- very clean cut girl, seems youthful and idealistic like she really cares about some of the daily litany of tragedies coming across her desk. Tamron has a modest quality, unusual in the newscasting business, and we used to call woman like her "the marrying kind."

6) Andrea Mitchell-- a matron of the news with unusually wide set eyes and a very broad mouth. She's always referred to as a "veteran reporter" and features a Lauren Bacall sultriness, the type Humphrey Bogart always meets at a corner table in a dimly lit bar in New York. You, not so much.

CNBC
7) Savannah Guthrie-- with an Australian background, adds a nice bit of raciness with her good looks and carefully considered outfits. Business men like nothing better than walking in a woman with a babe like Savannah poised on the arm.

8) Melissa Lee-- even saucier than Savannah, she plays well with boys. However, she might be the type that lets you down due to the failures of your portfolio unless you can make her laugh. She's got a great laugh.

9) Maria Bartiromo-- the original money-honey, she has great lips and a musical Italian last name, almost an aphrodisiac in itself.  Has been a respected reporter for so long not likely to give you the time of day at a cocktail party if your net worth is less than Portugal.

CNN, MSNBC and CNBC
10) Erin Burnett-- has starred in every format and network, despite a tomboy demeanor and physiognomy. She downplays her sexuality, except for the electric blue color in her eyes, and seems not to have a mean bone in her Peter Pan body.

Go Out and Play-- No Don't

Talking to a friend last night about how children do not "go out and play" anymore. He had an interesting insight into the issue of children's safety. His insight-- children are less likely to go out these days because their mothers are working-- makes much sense. What has changed since the 50s and 60s when I was growing up? Many more women are in the workforce. This has changed the physics of the household. So kids stay in school longer and are transported to various places like soccer practice or dance lessons. And, he added with a bit of irony, mom actually puts her kids in greater danger by looking at her cellphone while she drives the car than they would ever face in the playgrounds.

I'm not picking on moms but more interested in my friend's notion of our lack of context for studying an issue. I get distracted by media stories of kids being plucked away by predators and miss the real issues. But the bigger picture, the shift in the dynamics of the household, remained invisible to me. Why so invisible? Because of its very prevalence. The fish never sees the water. How has society changed most profoundly since my youth? Women have moved into the workforce in a big way. The dynamic changed over decades. Our society has hardly noticed the profound influence of the movement of women to the workplace. Hence the famous "soccer mom" demographic. And now they say there are more single mothers than ever before! So that's even less people in the household!

Marissa Meyer, the CEO of Yahoo, got much attention for reaching the upper echelons of the company. Interestingly her first big move was to stop allowing people to do their work from home. I actually liked this decision. I always suspected the people "working from home" were usually the most assertive people in the office, the ones most capable of creating a cushy situation for themselves at the expense of their more passive colleagues. And Marissa Meyer had a baby-- and people complained that she would have a great team on nannies to help her with child care. But that is seeing the forest for the trees, because Marissa Meyer's child, like all the modern kids, will not have much time to just "go out and play."

And there's a new TV show on A&E, shot in my very own hometown of Austin, Texas called Modern Dads.



The dads are very telegenic, clever guys, seem like unemployed television comedy writers actually. Wait, now they're employed! But the dads-- veteran dad, step-dad, single dad, new dad, stud dad, fat dad... whatever, are all very funny and are house-husbands. So, society takes a look at the household shift in dynamics with these men taking the role of nurturer of the children while mom is out making a fabulous paycheck. But how prevalent is the house-husband phenomenon? Maybe it's a trend...  with women fitting more easily into the non-industrial American workplace better than the male of the species. We shall see...

Central Texas-- Golf and BBQ (chap 2)

Resumed a pursuit of small town golf courses in Central Texas with Mario, my buddy in this endeavor. He suggested we add a barbecue element to our Central Texas golf tour. Yesterday, we went to Luling, Texas-- a town about 50 miles south/southeast of Austin. Luling is actually much most famous for its City Market barbecue restaurant and the summertime Watermelon Thump celebration than for golf. I like the look of the oil jacks dotting its grassy fields. The smell of oil, something like the odor of natural gas from your kitchen stove, hits as soon as you approach the city limits.

The Luling Golf Club runs adjacent to the San Marcos river, a feature of the first golf course on our tour-- the San Marcos golf course. I had my breakthrough experience on the San Marcos course, that maybe I could actually enjoy this game. Zen meets brightly colored polo shirts . The key would be going to obscure golf courses, inexpensive and remote, and always going with Mario, my non-judgemental friend. And it worked again-- and the weather even cooperated, providing an overcast September day instead of Texas heat.

The first four holes run in almost a straight line. There are almost no sand traps to worry about and the fairways are wide and fairly well trimmed, or is that just the effects of the prolonged drought? So you can have fun driving the ball and working on your irons. The greens on these small time golf courses seem tiny so getting to the green is really most of the battle. The seventh hole of the course uses the San Marcos river and a grove of trees as a feature, an obstacle to be driven over or around. We should have gone around the trees rather than trying to hit over the river. Mario and I wasted at least five balls apiece trying to go over the river but that didn't dampen our spirits. You get the double entendre on "dampen"...  kerplunk! Nine holes of golf are perfect for our level of play. Playing a full 18 holes would only rub our faces in it... The golf gods must always be respected.

Luling's City Market barbecue restaurant is known far and wide. The RoadFood.com review offers a good summary and photo of the trifecta-- brisket, ribs and sausage. 

I went wild for the ribs and brisket and passed on the sausage. Mario went for the sausage. We found the meat to be succulent. I like going through the smoke room-- a Dante-esque domicile with walls darkened deeply, truly an homage to smoke. You have to walk through the smoke room to order your food. They immediately cut the order on brown butcher paper, and the paper quickly becomes grease-stained butcher paper. This ain't the Whole Food Market! The dining room is great for people watching. We saw some military guys in camo at one table and mostly locals there on a Tuesday afternoon.

The second stop on our tour kicked the small town golfing experience up another notch-- and I'm really enjoying the trip across the countryside. And we got to take the 130 TX Tag toll road-- the one with the unbelievable 85 miles per hour speed limit. Mario kept things mellow at around 70 miles per hour.

That's it for Chapter 2 on the tour. Thanks for reading!

To Flip or Not to Flip: a TV lament

To flip or not to flip- the channel-- that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous commercials,
Or, to take up the Remote against  a sea of ads
and by muting, end them, to die, to sleep-
No more Flo, no more Geckos, to say we end
The schlock of a thousand unnatural messages
That TV errs to-- 'tis a consummation
Devotees, addicts to be sure. To watch, to flip--
To sleep, perchance to nod off. Ay, there's the rub
For in the sleep, the images of sex and violence may come,
When we have shuffled off this coaxial coil,
The messages never pause. No respect, no respect I tell ya'
That  makes calamity of a TV-viewing life.