Clayton: “Sad…Alisyn Camerota Leaving” F&FW

Aly: “If this is my last day, I’m gonna make it good!” April Fools? Yesterday, Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Clayton Morris repeatedly apprised viewers that his co-anchor Alisyn Camerota’s was leaving the show Sunday (in three different segments). Furthermore, he Tweeted, “Yes it’s true. I’m being replaced by Olberman and Aly is being replaced by Oprah. It’s the new @ffweekend.” Apparently, not all of Clayton’s fans thought it was an April Fool’s joke: Carpe Diem had significant spikes in Aly-related searches (primarily pertaining to Aly’s leaving F&FW).

In the first two cited Clayton segments, supra, co-host Dave Briggs reminded viewers that it was “April 1st or “April Fool’s Day”: However, some of his Twitter followers may have missed his message because he also Tweeted, “Breaking from @rbfdds Maher, Olberman & Oprah replacing your @ffweekend team…it’s been fun!” Furthermore, in those segments, Aly asserted, respectively, that Clayton was “trying to do a viral April Fool’s Day joke” and scoffed that he had “tried to begin a viral rumor on Twitter.”

Subsequently, in the final cited segment, Aly further tried to assuage any fears of her F&FW fans when FNC correspondent Greg Burke got in on the act.  After Burke’s sober report on Palm Sunday from the Vatican, he remarked, “Finally, guys, we got that news here about Alisyn switching jobs with Oprah. We’re a little sad about that….We like Oprah…but we like Alisyn a whole lot more.” Grateful for his shill’s assistance, a stone-faced Clayton replied, “Well, say your good-byes now, Greg. This is Alisyn’s last day: Oprah is replacing her.” To Burke (and, actually, to her audience), Aly explained, “Greg, it’s just an April Fool’s joke that Clayton has been perpetrating: I’m amazed it’s reached Rome.”

Still sowing seeds of devilish doubt, Clayton interjected, “No, our boss just texted me and said, ‘No, it’s certified,’ Greg….[S]ay your good-byes.” Chuckling, Aly intoned, “Arrivederci, Greg, thank you so much.” Then, she teased, “Let’s get to our headlines: If this is my last day, I’m gonna make it good!”

F&FW viewers” who fell for Clayton’s joke: April Fools? No. Even though the purportedly patent jest may have been funny to Clayton, Dave, and Aly, it may have been a cruel reminder to Aly’s fans of her inexplicably leaving F&FW for five months for a purported “maternity shuffle”  last year. And, they may not have been quite as amused at F&FW‘s spoof–seemingly at their expense.

*Fox & Friends Weekend – 04/01/12 (@ 6:01 a.m. ET, @ 7:01 a.m. ET, and 9:03 a.m.  ET)

[Author’s aside: The title comes from Clayton’s comment as F&FW opened, i.e., “We should make the announcement this early morning on this Sunday morning. Sad news here at Fox & Friends: Alisyn Camerota leaving the show, being replaced by Oprah Winfrey.”]

Palin: Was the AMFix In?

Even if she was on Oprah, SARAH PALIN WILL NOT BE PRESIDENT! American Morning viewer, if you did not get the message in the first hour, it was repeated in a less than subliminal fashion throughout the next two hours. Before each of its three Sarah Palin segments (two by Carol Costello and another by Christine Romans), a clip of Conan O’Brien’s monologue on the Tonight Show was run.

[In the selected snippet, Conan joked, “The other day Sarah Palin said that she would like to have coffee with Hillary Clinton. Now, Hillary is saying she looks forward to it. The two have agreed to meet at the Never Will Be President Cafe.”]

If the Palin slights had stopped at Conan’s comedy, they would have seemed insignificant. However, Carol’s “Palin vs. Oprah” story (which ran twice) seemed to go over the top to discount Palin’s appearance on the talk show queen’s program yesterday. In the promo to Carol’s segment, AM co-host Kiran Chetry had said, “It was Sarah Palin and Oprah: Very interesting, very interesting sit-down interview. And, we’re gonna have Carol Costello join us: she sat down with Libertarians, Independents, Democrats, and Republican women, and said, ‘Hey, what did you think?” However, when Carol appeared after the break, she remarked, “I sat down with four very sharp women, and you know what they thought of the interview? Boring!”

Then she said, “I talked with these four women, a Republican, a Libertarian, a Conservative, and an Independent to watch [sic] Palin vs. Oprah. We chose not to talk to a Democrat because Sarah Palin doesn’t seem to be trying to win over Democrats.” More telling, and, perhaps, a bit damning, she added, “Let’s face it: We know what Democrats think of Sarah Palin.” (She failed to note that according to most polls, approximately 80% of the media votes Democratic.)

Furthermore, Carol did not tell the  viewer how these four women in the focus group were chosen nor their particular political proclivities. E.g., she did not apprise the audience that the Independent Leighann Lord, who claimed that Palin had “almost trivialized the serious decision of abortion,” has been a pro-Obama HuffPo blogger. Moreover, Carol’s other three panelists appeared to be coastal “country club” Republicans at best: one (Jamie Maarten) was an Ivy League Libertarian prez who proclaimed that Palin “was well-spoken” (but cattily added “she did look nice but I feel it stops there”); the second (Marianna Picciocchi) was a “conservative” attorney who asserted that the interview was “boring” and later admitted that her friends, “of course, are all liberal”; and the third (Joyce Giuffra) was a former press secretary of failed GOP nominee Bob Dole, who indicated that she would not be buying the book but clairvoyantly discerned that “supposedly in a 432-page book, only 13 pages were dedicated to policy issues.” Incredibly, Carol stated that these women wanted “substance” [political]–from an Oprah interview. (Perhaps, they prefer their news from Oxygen as well.)

This segment should be an embarrassment to correspondent Carol Costello, American Morning, and, by extension CNN. Perhaps, AM executive producer Jamie Kraft did not get the memo from CNN news chief Jonathan Klein. According to the New York Post, Klein wants CNN “to position itself as an opinion-free, middle-of-the-road alternative to its cable news rivals — conservative Fox News and liberal MSNBC.”

American Morning should have followed Klein’s admonition and played it down the middle. AM is a good show with excellent anchors and gifted correspondents. Its viewers deserved better today. Hopefully, they will get it tomorrow and in the future.

O’Reilly No Cronkite?

One culture quiz question too many? Bill O’Reilly appeared to be hoisted on his own petard today.* Or, at least, that of his O’Reilly Factor Culture Quiz queen and Live Desk (LD) co-anchor, Martha MacCallum.

During a LD discussion on who was the most trusted person in America after the death of Walter Cronkite, of lib Forbes columnist and FNC frequent guest Dan Gerstein, MacCallum facetiously asked, “What do you think, Dan? Bill O’Reilly is what you were going to say, right?” Not necessarily towing the network line, Gerstein subtly reminded viewers of O’Reilly’s embarrassing sexual harassment lawsuit by Andrea Mackris,** a former producer: He replied, “We know some things about Bill that we might not have known twenty years ago that affects [sic] people’s trust….I would probably say Oprah.”

Not the answer that MacCallum expected. Nor the one that the cable king and his network probably appreciated.

*LD (07/22/09) – 1:41 p.m. ET
**http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7578-2004Oct28.html

Gretch: As Usual, Total Support from the Guys

Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson was not amused by her co-anchors’ lack of laughter at her attempted joke. In a segment on the possibility of Oprah Winfrey being named ambassador to Great Britain by Barack Obama (if elected), a straight-faced Gretchen said, “I’ve never heard that Oprah had an interest in moving to England: you might think that Barack Obama would choose Madonna.” Silence. When Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, bewildered, began to try to respond, Gretch gamely declared, “It was a joke, guys: Talk about silence–let me try another joke on you.” Piqued, she perceptively postulated, “As usual, total support from the guys on the couch.”