NEW YORK (AP) – CNN’s prime-time talk show “Parker/Spitzer” is no more with the departure of Kathleen Parker. Her partner, former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, will remain in the time slot in a new show called “In the Arena,” working with E.D. Hill, Will Cain and others.

CNN described Parker’s exit as a mutual decision. The show that matched the liberal former governor and conservative syndicated columnist debuted last fall and started slowly in the ratings.

Parker said that she wanted to concentrate on her writing and that “with the show moving in a new direction, it was time to move on.”

I think everyone always knew that CNN only recruited Kathleen Parker for “Parker Spitzer” as an effort to somehow make it socially acceptable to introduce a man known nationally only for prostitutes as a TV personality and anchor envisioned to match O’Reilly and Olbermann.  After all, a CNN source quoted by New York Magazine said Parker was chosen because “a young, beautiful co-host wouldn’t work” with Captain Black Socks.  Someone forgot to tell Kathleen Parker, who apparently has been increasingly frustrated by producers allowing Spitzer to dominate the program.

The New York Post reported Wednesday that Parker “actually stormed off the set of the ‘Parker Spitzer’ show during a pre-taping a few weeks ago — furious that her co-host is continually allowed to take charge of their nightly CNN chat-fest, the insiders said.”  More importantly, she’s threatening to leave the program.

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Someone doesn’t have a problem with self confidence.

Actually, I did not take part in it. I led it. OK?

This entire discussion presupposes that Palin is dead politically and that Parker is a conservative. Considering that Palin has a better record than our President at turning endorsed candidates into winning candidates says the complete opposite. I don’t know that I would be claiming credit for something that hasn’t actually happened because it reinforces the idea that your influence is null.

I didn’t think it was possible, I don’t think anyone did, but it appears that CNN can and has done worse than Sanchez! It’s not like the bar was set that high, I mean really, it was Sanchez. Now we have faux-conservative Kathleen Parker who has an odd paranoia concerning Sarah Palin.

It’s the first night of your big show, your chance to make something happen, to do something newsworthy! What do you talk about? For Parker the answer is simple: Sarah Palin. Okay, okay ,we can give her that for the first night. I mean, Sarah Palin is the only reason that anyone knows Parker’s name. It’s the topic that put her on the map. I get it. But in three separate interviews in two nights the number one question on Parker’s mind is Sarah Palin? Is this going to be a running thing?

Even more repellent than Parker’s unhealthy vitriol toward Palin is the lack of challenge to the most egregious, ill-informed and downright mean comments said about Palin — in the first two nights of the new Parker/Spitzer show. In her first interview, which kicked off the show, Parker asked Andrew Breitbart about Sarah Palin. After Breitbart responded that she is the conservative “Oprah” for the new media, fellow guest Thomas Frank went on to say that Sarah “captures a sense of grievance” that Americans identify with.

Not only was he not challenged on what he said about Sarah Palin, forcing him to give proof beyond the title of a book that someone else wrote about her, but he was never asked to defend his statements about what he implied about the American people. (more…)

All yours:

Following last week’s cable news bloodbath featuring the replacement of network chiefs at both CNN and MSNBC, I had to think,  “What will MSNBC and CNN be doing differently today, effectively the first day of the rest of their newsy lives?”

Well sir, CNN has a boatload of change in the offing.  Next week is the sort-of-anticipated debut of Parker Spitzer, CNN’s almost original idea of pairing a liberal and a conservative together in prime time.  And then in January, once Larry King finishes cleaning out his locker, we can’t wait to see what will happen when Piers Morgan steps into Larry’s time slot.

Not to be outdone, MSNBC has started the week with its finger pressed firmly on the pulse of America.  At 10 p.m. eastern tonight we will be treated to “The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell.”

Vice President Joe Biden (the man who believes he is second in the line of Presidential succession) and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be part of the inaugural program that is replacing a replay of Keith Olbermann’s ratings-challenged show.  Vegas is posting better than 3-1 odds on Keith naming O’Donnell as tonight’s Worst Person in The World. (more…)

How about the RINO/Client No. 9 Show?

Ick. We liked this Spitzer show better: (more…)

Kathleen Parker is an allegedly conservative columnist at the Washington Post, but if there’s any evidence she is, in fact, conservative, it’s certainly scant. About the only support for this allegation comes from liberals, who always cite her as a “conservative” they like.

Here’s her latest.  You be the judge:

The Ground Zero mosque must be built

Right — you love it already, don’t you? An exercise in morally preening, fatuous sophistry now follows:

The mosque should be built precisely because we don’t like the idea very much. We don’t need constitutional protections to be agreeable, after all.

This point surpasses even all the obvious reasons for allowing the mosque, principally that there’s no law against it. Precluding any such law, we let people worship when and where they please. That it hurts some people’s feelings is, well, irrelevant in a nation of laws. And, really, don’t we want to keep it that way?

Parker goes on to say that she, personally, would prefer the mosque to be built somewhere else, but hey: (more…)

You have to give mainstream journalists credit. No matter how high the evidence of liberal bias stacks up, they stick to the notion they don’t play favorites.

Rathergate? An aberration. A Washington Post ombudsman admitting journalists favored Sen. Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election? Nothing but reporters chasing down history in the making.

Press blackouts on the Van Jones controversy? Oops, we missed it.

The New Black Panther case? Not enough reporters to cover it.

Ezra Klein, JournoList founder

Poll after poll after poll revealing journalists vote for Democrats over Republicans by a wide margin? Doesn’t matter, since they don’t bring their political impulses to bear on their work.

Meanwhile, the public’s faith in the media continues to plummet. And the one cable news outlet with enough reporters – and curiosity – to cover subjects like Jones and the New Black Panther Party, Fox News, continues to see its ratings soar. (more…)

And so it ends, not with a bang but a Tweet: Larry King, a fixture at CNN since God Almighty was a pup, has announced he’s ending his show in the fall. According to Variety:

Here’s what he said at the start of Tuesday night’s show:

Before I start the show tonight, I want to share some personal news with you. 25 years ago, I sat across this table from New York Governor Mario Cuomo for the first broadcast of “Larry King Live.”

Now, decades later, I talked to the guys here at CNN and I told them I would like to end “Larry King Live,” the nightly show, this fall and CNN has graciously accepted, giving me more time for my wife and I to get to the kids’ little league games.

I’ll still be a part of the CNN family, hosting several Larry King specials on major national and international subjects.

I’m incredibly proud that we recently made the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest running show with the same host in the same time slot. With this chapter closing I’m looking forward to the future and what my next chapter will bring, but for now it’s time to hang up my nightly suspenders.

Over at Mediaite, they’ve got a nice wrapup of King’s announcement: (more…)

No sign of desperation at CNN these days. Nooooooooo. After all, what TV producer wouldn’t jump at the chance to premiere a new prime-time political show this fall with a disgraced former attorney-general/governor-turned-high-end-john?

Yes, that’s right—CNN jumped first. They’ve just announced their new hour-long show with “conservative” 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner Kathleen Parker and 2008 Booby Prize winner Eliot Spitzer. This program has class writ large all over it. It’s low class—but it’s still class.

Once details of his secret life as “Client No. 9” in a haute-poitrine call-girl business emerged back in March 2008 (and after he subsequently resigned as New York’s governor), no doubt the TV offers just poured in for Eliot Spitzer. “The usurer hangs the cozener,” complains King Lear. And in Spitzer’s little tragedy of pimp and prejudice, the john hangs the hooker. (more…)

Basement-rated CNN announced yesterday that disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and “conservative” columnist Kathleen Parker will co-host a new political talk show at 8 p.m. Regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, CNN should hold its airways to a higher standard and not give an open platform to an admitted john and sex trafficker.

Eliot Spitzer, aka “Client No. 9,” broke numerous state and federal laws, but has never taken responsibility for his actions, nor shown any real remorse. The once-dreaded “Sheriff of Wall Street” was reduced to droning his resignation in front of a microphone while his long-suffering, grim-lipped wife looked on — a familiar trope for those involved in Democrat politics.

Joe Klein, President of CNN and Spitzer’s close friend, demonstrates an utter lack of morality by putting Spitzer on the national airwaves at all, much less during the family hour at 8 p.m. How can parents teach their children about consequences to their actions when Spitzer breaks laws and gets his own TV show? (more…)