Hype Stalker

Despite the horrible reviews and tepid ratings, we took a part of the holiday weekend to take a gander at "Conversations With Michael Eisner," on CNBC. The former Disney CEO holds court in a restaurant (audience inexplicably seated half a football field away) as the camera angles and lighting attempt to add gravitas to Eisner's poor Charlie Rose imitation.

Apparently we tuned in just in time as this week's episode featured two of Eisner's former employees: new Disney chief Robert Iger, and the worst comedian in show business today, ABC's late night host Jimmy Kimmel (next to him, even his irritating girlfriend Sarah Silverman becomes a comic genius and his MTV hobbit-spawn, Andy Milonakis, is momentarily tolerable).

The show trudged along methodically as Eisner pretended to care that he's no longer one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Things finally got interesting when Iger arrived on set and submitted himself for questioning. The issue burning on Eisner's mind? "It was clear you were going to get [the Disney CEO job] in the end," said Eisner, "but you had to sit there and watch the board interview in front of you all these candidates who weren't as qualified as you were. You did something in a million years I couldn't do. You kept your cool. For a year! I would have told everybody off."

Put on the spot by Eisner's ham-handed compliment/machismo chest puff, Iger calmly replied that after 30 years in business, he learned a little thing called patience. The cameras didn't quite catch all the flames shooting out of Eisner's skull after that comment, but the point had been made: Eisner still doesn't get that fire and brimstone do not a great CEO make. A sigh of calm washed over an in-studio audience secure in the knowledge that the house that Mickey built is no longer being run by the Heat Miser?

We will not utter their names here (even we can't stoop that low), but the media frenzy this past weekend over the birth of a new child by two prominent Hollywood actors must be noted. Not since the crowning of the new pope has CNN devoted such reverent coverage to an event. At one point, given the animations, graphics and epic music, it truly seemed as though the Messiah had been born in Africa. Instead, CNN's music score may as well have been the Decline and Fall of Media theme song we've all been secretly humming. If you have no idea what we're talking about, consider yourself lucky-you are not yet a pod person!

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