Mike Wallace Gets the Gasface



(image via brainwavescience via cbsnews)

(The Corsair puts on a jazzy old Benny Goodman 78'' to get in the swingin, octagenerian mood) Is it just us, or is Les Moonves avoiding the old CBS News paradigm like a junkie cycling himself off the smack via sweet methadone? First, there is the very noticeable boosting of "Sports" on 60 Minutes -- a new development which, we cannot fail to note, scored boffo ratings albeit with some critical opprobrium from this blog -- now, the once mighty Mike Wallace gets braught low with the proverbial "gasface" (tm). One can almost feel the invisible gauntlet of the dark Darth Moonves closing in around the supine neck of the vulnerable CBS News division. The cartilege is cracking, can't you hear it! This, from Rush and Molloy:

"Rivals at NBC are gloating now that CBS eminence Mike Wallace has turned first to the Peacock Network to promote his new memoir, 'Between You and Me.'

"'Nobody was interested at CBS,' claims Wallace, who taped a sitdown with Katie Couric for 'Dateline NBC' on Sunday, with another segment to run on 'Today' the next day. 'CBS knew the book was coming,' Wallace says. 'It's really strange. Nobody reached out.'

" ... says one source, 'There's nothing in Mike's book,' which Publishers Weekly called 'tepid' and 'dull.' And since Wallace told Time that CBS chief Les Moonves couldn't compare with the company's late founder, Bill Paley, some at Black Rock are just as happy to let NBC have him."

Tepid? Tepid like infamous Mike Wallace's meatloaf, of which we once wrote most snarkily:

"Can you just see Mike Wallace in the back of the limo, agitated, the 60 Minutes clock is ticking -- ticktickticktick; his temperature rising, he's sweating a cold sweat right now, adjusting his tie, his bad dye job glistening, he's emitting grandfatherly smells, and the officers are chatting away with his driver, probably althewhile eating doughnuts, causing Wallace's mouth to water

"...Now look at Mike ... it is a few minutes later ... the gravy is now coagulating in his doggie bag, oiling the paper, seeping through to his neatly pressed slacks, perhaps even soiling his Depends undergarment. And he thinks of how he used to be. The holy terror of the 1970s; Ayatollah-like. The Dean of Guerilla journalism. CEO's guilty of financial improprieties broke into a brisk sprint when our man Mike Wallace chased them with a cameraman in tow, shouting, on the hoof, 'Can I ask you a question, sir,'.

"THE Mike Wallace ... reduced to THIS?

"The poor guy just snapped. There are few joys, few comforts of senectitude, and mashed taters and meatloaf slathered with heart valve clogging bone gravy are that aplenty."

Mike Wallace, wholly without respect; to paraphrase the Methuselan Clara Peller, "Where's the Beef au Jus?"