This is what CNN thinks tarnishes its brand?
We are now on Day 4 of the Andy Cohen crisis, the network’s execs and unnamed top staffers in high dudgeon over Cohen’s savage, drunken farewell to outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Really, CNN: Why the pearl-clutching? This is a network that propped up Chris Cuomo through multiple scandals, not least of which included using his position to smear his disgraced brother’s accusers.
Don Lemon, credibly accused of sexual assault, is still there, still getting drunk on-air every New Year’s Eve.
Where’s the outrage?
And what of comic Dulcé Sloan? She told Lemon, on this same broadcast, that her New Year’s resolution was, “No more broke dick. No more penis from a man that has no money.”
There’s also Cuomo’s former news producer John Griffin, just fired by the network after he was arrested on federal charges of soliciting young girls for sex — suspended at first.
Despite dithering over such disrepute, at least CNN axed Griffin within days, rather than allowing him to, you know, tarnish the brand for weeks. Or months.
And now a second former CNN producer, Rick Saleeby, is under investigation for serious allegations involving “juvenile victims” in Virginia.
Spoke for all New Yorkers
But none of this is as outrageous to CNN brass and high-level staff, it seems, as Cohen’s rant that “the only thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on is what a horrible mayor [de Blasio] has been. Sayonara, sucker!”
Please. This is what we in New York used to call a Bronx cheer.
Say what you will about Andy Cohen, but he spoke for the bulk of New Yorkers with that little outburst, and it felt like he channeled the id of the city. He said what this very newspaper has been saying since de Blasio took office.
As importantly: It was good TV!
For CNN to pretend that they didn’t know who they were getting is rich. Cohen’s job description can be summed up in one word: Mess.
He’s the face of Bravo’s “Real Housewives” franchise. His job is literally to create mess, cultivate it, commodify it and exploit it. He’s better at it than anyone in reality TV. He’s given CNN days of headlines and, let’s face it, a welcome distraction from the network’s very real scandals.
Of the network’s very problematic employees, Cohen isn’t one of them.
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