Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1010

Muslim Brotherhood Leaders Are Being Rounded Up in Egypt

The day after President Mohammed Morsi was forcibly removed from office by the military, it appears Egypt's new leaders are hunting for his Muslim Brotherhood pals and arresting the Islamist political party's top officials. 

According to reports from Reuters, the Associated Press and the AFP, Egyptian authorities issued arrest warrants for the Muslim Brotherhood's supreme leader Mohammed Badie, his first deputy Khairat El-Shater, and around 200 other Brotherhood members on Thursday. The Associated Press reports Badie has already been detained in a coastal city close to the Libyan border and is now being flown back to Cairo.

Meanwhile, the newly deposed Morsi is still under house arrest at an undisclosed location somewhere in Egypt just a year and a few days after he became Egypt's first democratically elected President. Reports of his house arrest started trickling out Wednesday evening. At least a dozen of Morsi's closest aides and advisors are also under house arrest. 

Badie and Shater are wanted on charges they incited violence in front of the Muslim Brotherhood's headquarters in Mokattam, a neighborhood in southern Cairo, on Sunday that left eight people dead. Badie and Shafter are seen by opposition officials as the real brain trust behind Morsi while he was in office. Badie was the original muslim Brotherhood candidate before prior convictions forced him to resign and let Morsi take his place. Regardless of the charges, some in Egypt don't think arresting top Brotherhood officials if the new government wants to avoid inciting violence:

Wait they want to arrest the morshid?? Are we TRYING to drive the Brotherhood insane? WTF?

— ashraf khalil (@ashrafkhalil) July 4, 2013

The arrests came at an off time considering, earlier Thursday morning, Egypt swore in Adly Mansoor (pictured above) (who you can follow on Twitter here) as the country's new interim leader and he offered an olive branch to the spurned religious group. "The Muslim Brotherhood group is part of this people and are invited to participate in building the nation as nobody will be excluded, and if they responded to the invitation, they will be welcomed," he said, according to the state newspaper. Mansoor will replace Morsi with the help of a panel of technocrats until a new election can be called. But the Muslim Brotherhood has already rejected Mansoor's invitation for cooperation. "We reject participation in any work with the usurper authorities," Sheikh Abdel Rahman al-Barr said, via a statement on the group's website, while urging Brotherhood supporters to "stay peaceful" while rejecting the country's new leaders.

       

Egypt's Rorschach Test After Morsi's Ouster

After just one year of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government, a popular uprising opened the door for a military intervention — leading to the ouster of Mohammed Morsi, the country's democratically-elected Islamist leader. And while the insta-analysis on the change in power has largely been a Rorscharch test of how outside observers see and talk about the country, there's plenty of fodder for more nuanced view of the situation in Egypt now and going forward. 

One of the most bold examples of insta-analysis here came not from a pundit, but from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who took the opportunity to crow about the "fall of political Islam," in reference to Morsi, an ideological and political enemy of Assad. 

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times, in a piece today, contextualized the conflict in terms of a "secular" military against the religious "Islamist" party, while MSNBC characterized Egypt as "largely secular," with an incongruous Islamist ruler. 

And obviously, this presented an opportunity for those who see Islam itself as a threat: 

Blow to Radical Islam Worldwide if U.S. Tells Morsi to Go http://t.co/OLEIwPeq82 via @CounterJihadRp

— Allen West Republic (@AllenWestRepub) July 3, 2013

Egyptian politics and culture are often discussed from the outside in terms of "religious" and "secular" — Islamist groups, representing the religious, stand in opposition to modern, democratic groups, representing the secular. But the Arab Spring was an uprising against an authoritarian, not a religious, regime. And it was a revolution in which Muslims, including Islamists, participated together with liberals. Talal Asad, an extremely influential anthropologist, argued at the time that the forces against Mubarak, Islamist and liberal included, were united however uneasily not by by common beliefs, but by a shared oppositional stance. This massive popular uprising since June 30 is likewise best understood as violating that plurality which Morsi is guilty of breaking. 

The "religious" and not religious are further, and more obviously, entwined by the fact that the democratic revolution that brought down Mubarak, a revolution that was not visibly Islamist, especially from the West, was succeeded by the election of an Islamist president, and an Islamist party. And of course, there are elements to the past two years that are stories with substantial religious content: There's the Islamic-influenced constitution the party pushed through. And Coptic Christians, a minority population in Egypt, felt increasing fear for their safety after Mubarak's government was deposed. And, something that will no doubt become more important as the days go on, Morsi's supporters, who feel disenfranchised after their elected president was removed from office by military action, are talking about the change in power as a war on their religion. And yet, the images from the June 30th protests say otherwise: 

Anti-Morsy protesters in Tahrir praying. Brotherhood ≠ Islam http://t.co/qsgv8oAbbz

— שחררו את פלסטין (@SultanAlQassemi) June 30, 2013

But in the long run, the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood here will be a political one, not separate from, but also not driven by, religion. Nathan Brown, who is very much worth reading on the current events in Egypt, summed up the political context of the ouster of Morsi at The New Republic:

It is true that the Brotherhood did well in elections; that it was not able to govern fully but still saddled with responsibility for Egypt’s insurmountable problems; that important state actors never accepted its authority; that its opposition was unified only by a desire to make the Brotherhood fail; and that Egypt’s rumor mill transformed preposterous rumor into established fact with breathtaking speed.

But it is also undeniable that Morsi and the Brotherhood made almost every conceivable mistake—including some (such as reaching too quickly for political power or failing to build coalitions with others) that they had vowed they knew enough to avoid.

There were further problems for the group, namely a longstanding internal division that meant the party, while trying to move unilaterally, never really spoke with one voice in the first place. 

But the complications of the failures of the Brotherhood were less evident in many political responses to today's events, especially among conservative Americans. The position there is pretty clear: the Muslim Brotherhood are the bad guys, their failure was inevitable, and the U.S. should oppose, forever and always. But in the country itself, where the Muslim Brotherhood won a slim majority of the votes in the first democratic elections after an uneasy alliance to topple a common enemy, only to become that enemy themselves, it's more complicated. 

       

Senator Mark Udall's Brother Found Dead in the Rockies

Senator Mark Udall's brother was found dead in the Rocky Mountains, a week after James "Randy" Udall was supposed to return from a solo hiking trip. The senator released a statement from his family, saying that James probably died from natural causes: 

"Randy left this earth doing what he loved most: hiking in his most favorite mountain range in the world. He appeared to be on the obscure, off-trail route that he had proposed to his family...The entire Udall family is touched beyond words by the tremendous outpouring of support from people around the country. Randy's passing is a reminder to all of us to live every day to its fullest, just as he did."

James, 61, was an experienced hiker who lived in Colorado and would have known the trail he was on well. He was reported missing last Friday, and crews began searching for him that afternoon, covering a 225 square-mile area. 

       

Is More TV the Only Way to Get Women to Pay More Attention to Politics?

Why do women know less about politics than men? It's not because they're more illiterate than men (they're not). It's not because women are dumber than men (they're not). And it's not because of discrimination, either. New research from Britain's Economic and Social Research Council shows that even in countries with more gender equality generally, women still know less about politics than men. 

University of London professor James Curran interviewed 10,000 people in 10 countries and found that "the gap between men and women’s political knowledge was greater in Norway — a country with one of the best records for gender equality — than in South Korea," the London Telegraph's Cathy Newman reports. You might know Norway as the country where men are legally required to take paternity leave.

The research, conducted by Britain's Economic and Social Research Council, found that British men scored an average of 58 percent on a multiple-choice news quiz, while British women scored 39 percent. That follows what we often see in American public polls. In January 2012, for example, Pew Research Center found that there was a gender gap on political knowledge even among Tea Partiers — people you can think of as politics superfans. Only 45 percent of female Tea Partiers knew Mitt Romney had been the governor of Massachusetts, but 72 percent of male Tea Partiers knew that.

The researchers think they've found an easy solution to the problem: put more women on TV news so more women will watch TV news. "It’s enormously off-putting for women to be looking at the news as always being about men," Curran told the Telegraph. "Politics is projected as a man's world and that encourages a sense of disconnection." Only 34 percent of British hard news stories interviewed or cited women. Jon Stewart might have declared that cable news shouting matches were "hurting America," but these researchers say not watching them is hurting women's brains.

We don't claim authority on the state of British media, but at least in America, this claim does not stand up. CNN's audience is perfectly split between the sexes, according to a 2012 study from Pew Research Center while MSNBC's was 60 percent female. NPR listeners were 51 percent female. Maybe by moving Megyn Kelly to prime time, Fox News' 52 percent female audience will get even femalier. So more girls than boys are watching the hours and hours of political stuff being churned out every day by these channels, it's either not sinking in — or rather, it's not sinking in with the millions of women (and men) who don't watch cable news.

The London Independent notes that a 2001 study showed that in states where both senators were men, 65 percent of men could name at least one of them, while only 51 percent of women could. But in states that had at least one female senator, 75 percent of men could name one of them, and 79 percent of women could. But in 2001, there were only 13 female senators in the U.S. It would be easy to remember if you had one, since they were so rare. (There are now 20.) But here's the conundrum: How do you get more women to run for office if more women won't pay attention to politics in the first place?

I think there is only one solution: shame. We must impose a high social cost on women not knowing things about politics. We need judgey gasps. Gasps and cackles like the ones The Atlantic Wire's Philip Bump heard when he was a juror for the Brooke Astor trial. Bump explains: "During closing arguments, the assistant district attorney made a joke about someone buying fancy shoes, like from Steve Madden. And instantly, his female colleague every woman on the jury started laughing. He and the male jurors were like, 'Huh, OK. Steve Madden.'" We need that kind of eruption from women if someone were to suggest Vladimir Putin as a shining example of democracy. Or that the current Congress has been an exemplar of legislative productivity.

Being bored by politics is a pretty lame excuse, ladies. 

       

Unpaid Interns Are Suing MSNBC and SNL

After two former unpaid Black Swan interns got a judge to rule in their favor, the intern lawsuits have been flowing like water, with NBC Universal the latest to be internsued. The two plaintiffs named in the case, Jesse Moore and Monet Eliastam, say they worked without pay for MSNBC and on Saturday Night Live, respectively, but it looks like the case is seeking to build a class action for all unpaid interns across the media conglomerate and say they are seeking at least $5 million in back pay, reports The Hollywood Reporter. They are represented by the same lawyers as the ones who represented the Black Swan guys against Fox Searchlight, and they are clearly looking to build on that suit. The complaint even directly mentions their win last month as justification for the filing:

[image error]

That part about the "NYLL class" is particularly important: The lawyers are hoping they can get a bundle of money for a whole group of underlings, not just two part-time, minimum wage workers. Moore and Eliastam each worked about 25 and 29 hours per week respectively doing the usual intern tasks of filing, running errands, answering phones, and assisting production. They're seeking minimum wage back pay for the work. 

But the part of the suit that could turn this into a major corporate headache for all of NBC Universal, which is now owned by Cablevision, is that the complaint claims many, many others worked without pay. "Our clients and other unpaid interns seem to have been as integral to NBC Universal’s business as other employees, but are different in a crucial way -- NBC Universal didn’t pay them," said Justin Swartz, attorney for the plaintiffs, in a statement. Note the mention of "other unpaid interns." 

In other news, NBC Universal began paying all of its interns "just in the last six months," according to AOL. 

       

Our First Look at 'Lovelace'

Today in show business news: We've got the first trailer for the Linda Lovelace biopic, Steven Spielberg wants to adapt the freaking Grapes of Wrath, and Gravity will have its world premiere this summer.

After about a year of casting news and festival reports we are finally getting a glimpse of Lovelace, the star-studded biopic about Linda Lovelace, the porn actress who was made famous by Deep Throat. And it looks a lot better than I thought it would! The whole premise seemed kinda grim, and that porn era has been done already with Boogie Nights, but this is an effectively cut trailer. This could be a big thing for Amanda Seyfried, and there are already whispers about Sharon Stone getting some awards attention for one of those "barely recognizable" roles that awards people love so much. That's always a fun campaign to watch, so let's hope that this movie gets the traction it needs. Judging from this trailer, it will! Huh. Who knew?

Oh boy. Steven Spielberg is currently in the process of getting the film rights to The Grapes of Wrath. Not to direct! No, no. DreamWorks insists that's not what's happening. He just wants to produce. But still. A Steven Spielberg-produced movie version of Grapes of Wrath sounds intense, doesn't it? Like, why even bother having Oscars that year? "Here are all the Oscars, Grapes of Wrath. Good night." Or, conversely, it could be a complete disaster and everyone will be mad at Steven Spielberg for ruining a classic work, and for sullying the memory of the John Ford film. Either way, it's going to be big news. And who will actually direct it? I can't decide if I want Brett Ratner or M. Night Shyamalan. Who do you think?? [Deadline]

Speaking of big exciting movies that could win awards, Alfonso Cuarón's space drama Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock as an astronaut stranded in space after an accident, will receive its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in August. It's not in competition or anything, but it'll be there, hopefully wowing people. It has to be good, right? It's Alfonso Cuarón, it's space, it's Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. (Though I don't think Clooney is in it for terribly long...) It's going to be good. Tell us it's good, Venice. Even if it's not true. Just tell us. [The Hollywood Reporter]

That Winnie Mandela biopic that Jennifer Hudson, yes Jennifer Hudson, filmed a while back has finally been given a release date. It will open on September 6, which means it's coming a few months before the Nelson Mandela biopic starring Idris Elba. Lot of Mandela biopics these days! Terrence Howard plays him in Hudson's movie, which... Well, I mean, I can't imagine that it's a great movie. Jennifer Hudson is a lot of things, but a terrific actress is not one of them. I mean, I don't think Winnie Mandela is going to sing too much in the movie. I'm more excited for Naomie Harris in the role in Elba's film. But, anyway, there it is. September 6, everybody. [Deadline]

       

Jay-Z Is Selling 'Magna Carta' So Hard Everyone Forgot About the Music

Here's a quiz. Without leaving this tab, list every fact you know about Magna Carta Holy Grail, the much-discussed forthcoming release from Jay-Z. If you've clicked this far — or, you know, gone on the Internet in the past two weeks — chances are you know something. Great. Now list every fact you know about the music that is contained on Magna Carta. Not the marketing or the Samsung deal. Just the music.

Well?

If your latter list is slim — and I can't imagine how it isn't, unless you happen to be Hov himself — then it's probably time to consider how the massive marketing apparatus behind Jay-Z's twelfth album, including but not limited to the controversial Samsung promotion deal, has gradually but indisputably overshadowed interest in the album itself. The latest stunt involves displaying the album art on a lectern in Salisbury Cathedral, directly beside a frayed copy of the actual Magna Carta. If that seems like enough to make Bono blush with modesty, it's because it is. Tonight, when the album is made available to Samsung users at 12:01, Jay-Z's boldness will almost certainly pay off. But it's increasingly hard to tell if the people scrambling to download the #magnacarta app are buzzing about an album or a flashy new tech product by Samsung.

Bullett Media's Jeremy Gordon argued today that it doesn't particularly matter if Magna Carta is good or not, considering how slim our knowledge of the music is; so far it's been defined as much by what's not true about it as by what is. There was Rick Rubin, for example, holding fort in the initial primetime announcement, but then news broke that the Gandalf-bearded producer didn't actually work on Magna Carta — Jay-Z just invited him to be in the commercial for moral support, or something. Rubin did, of course, chip in with Kanye West's Yeezus, and the marketing contrast is irresistible. Sure, premiering "New Slaves" by hosting futuristic video projections in 66 cities around the world is a tad extravagant, if not outright goofy. But at least there was music involved, not to mention those SNL performance clips. By contrast, Gordon writes, "we're 12 hours away from Jay-Z's record coming out, and there's nothing outside of some detached beat snippets." In lieu of a single, there's a lyric sheet for a track called "Holy Grail" — made available, naturally, on the Samsung app.

Even Rick Rubin — whose inexplicable presence remains gimmicky at best — has defined the album in terms of what it's not, telling XXL that it was difficult to listen to (read: not produce) Magna Carta after Yeezus because "I was in a very alternative and progressive headspace, and Jay's record is a more traditional hip-hop record." Which is about as revealing as saying that Morrissey's upcoming LP might be a little bit, eh, moody.

Meanwhile, instead of discussing a single or teaser, the rest of us are busy bickering over whether or not Magna Carta can actually go platinum if Samsung has already purchased a million copies of the album before a single fan bought in. (Even Jay himself weighed in on Twitter.) As we discovered yesterday, the magnitude of the debate is such that Magna Carta actually caused the Recording Industry Association of America to change its rules, letting digital sales count for certification on an album's release date. "That’s why the internet is like the wild west, the wild, wild west," Jay argued in his primetime slot. "We need to write the new rules."

What isn't in question, amidst all these "new rules" and what-have-you, is whether or not Samsung will end up moving a metric fuck-ton of phones this month. "I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man," Jay-Z mouthed eight years ago. So is Samsung — and a savvy one at that.

       

The Government Is Snooping Through Your Snail Mail

In addition to the email and phone metadata the U.S. government is tracking, the feds also have an eye on your regular old snail mail, which is actually a "treasure trove of information," according to a former FBI agent who used to work with the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, as it's called. One would think that snail mail, a relic from a former century, wouldn't provide that much insight into our lives — isn't it all bills and unwamted brochures by now? But, it's just about as useful, it not more so, than digital collection. "Looking at just the outside of letters and other mail, I can see who you bank with, who you communicate with — all kinds of useful information that gives investigators leads that they can then follow up on with a subpoena," James J. Wedick, the FBI agent, told The New York Times's Ron Nixon.

That's pretty much what the NSA can find through digital tracking, as explained here, but the mail surveillance program is even worse from a privacy advocates standpoint because there is zero oversight. "You just fill out a form," Wedick explains. The U.S. Postal Service grants or denies the request without any judicial overview — there's not even a secret court involved. And it's all okay, say courts, because people shouldn't expect privacy for the outside of their mail. Which: sure, anyone can look at the outside of a given envelope. But, is that the same thing as someone rifling through our mail every single day? Apparently. 

The government has used that argument to justify digital surveillance, notes Nixon. "Officials in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, in fact, have used the mail-cover court rulings to justify the N.S.A.’s surveillance programs, saying the electronic monitoring amounts to the same thing as a mail cover," he writes. Congress hasn't even talked about the physical mail tracking program since 1976, even with "sporadic" reports of abuse, like opening letters to and from the Soviet Union. The whole thing sounds like a disturbing look at how the current digital surveillance program will look in 40 years: After debate, the program continues, people forget about it and then it's a weird precedent for more tracking.

Also eerily similar to the current NSA PRISM program, we have no idea how many requests the USPS gets with regards to terrorism:

The criminal activity requests average 15,000 to 20,000 per year, said law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the requests. The number of requests for antiterrorism mail covers has not been made public

That sounds a lot like the non-figures we didn't get from Facebook, Google, and all the other participants who can't say how often the government requests terrorism related intel.

There is one glimmer of hope, however: At least the snail mail tracking program has led to some successful arrests in Medicare fraud and drug trafficking. It's hard to say the same for PRISM right now.

       

The Great Illegal Fireworks Crackdown of 2013 Is On

This Fourth of July, feel free to grill as many burgers and drink as many beers as your heart desires. But know that if you decide to partake in one of the most American traditions of all — driving over state lines and returning with a trunk load of fireworks — cops all across the nation will be waiting for you more than ever.

In New York, for example, the crackdown is nearly a decade in the making, with state troopers and highway patrolmen and the good ole NYPD targeting cars with New York license plates as they head toward fireworks shops in Pennsylvania — one of the few states on the East Coast where the explosives are legal to buy and sell — around the big Independence Day push. Then comes the confiscation on the other side, road blocks and all. By July 1 of last year, NYPD officers had arrested 56 individuals, confiscated 12 cars, and made 93 seizures of fireworks. And that was only Sunday. The NYPD stores all its confiscated fireworks in the Bronx, where the bomb squad gets to have all the fun by safely blowing the whole bundle sky-high: 

This year police have already busted a few smugglers, including a 20-year-old from Richmond. The would-be entrepreneur planned on selling his goods on the black market for a cool grand, before getting busted by Staten Island's crack squad of firecracker stoppers. 

This season's biggest fireworks arrest, however, went down last week in Los Angeles, when former Washington Wizards star and notorious gun owner Gilbert Arenas was pulled over for speeding. That's when police found over 20 boxes of party favors in the bed and cab of his truck, TMZ reported. 

Despite a few high profile arrests, the real battle to change the hearts and minds of red-blooded (and, sure, illegal) fireworks users is taking place on the social-media accounts of The Man. Oklahoma City would like everyone to know that fireworks are still banned for those without the proper permits, just like they've been for the last 30 years. The fire department in Dallas posted a notice on their Facebook page and will be closing parks early on Thursday to keep people from getting too crazy with their Roman candles after hours, as they're wont to do. Massachusetts, which also has a ban, thinks fireworks are "best left to the professionals" — as in, not you dangerous Eastern idiots, since, as this handy map via Gizmodo shows, the fireworks bans tend to be concentrated far away from the truly red-blooded parts of the country.... (Red is a full ban; tan is only sparklers or "novelty items," per the American Pyrotechnics Association.)

[image error]

Still, the stakes are higher in the West and Southwest, where most states are dealing with Moderate to Exceptional levels of drought. With the tragedy of the Yarnell firefighters still fresh in the nation's memory, city and state officials are urging residents to not take their firework festivities into their own hands. New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez announced Tuesday that all fireworks and campfires would be banned leading up to the Fourth. The state is dealing with fires in both its northern and southern regions and over 285 miles of land have been burned this year. 

Still, outside of setting off sparklers in dry, brush filled areas, several people would argue that fireworks are far safer than several perfectly legal items.

Average 3 Americans every year are killed by fireworks, 30,000 by guns. Yet somehow fireworks are highly regulated and illegal in 12 states.

— Will Graham (@WillWGraham) July 3, 2013

Freedom! 9000 yearly fireworks injuries prompts states, cities & towns to ban fireworks. 36,000 yearly deaths caused by cars... no ban

— LACM (@LosAngelesCM) July 3, 2013

Besides, this is America and there are few things more American than brats, beers, fireworks, and vehemently opposing the regulation of products elected officials think are dangerous.

       

Katie Couric Isn't the New Ann Curry

According to the latest gossipy report, the behind-the-scenes at Katie Couric's new daytime show is a tumultuous mess as her producers fight to push the show towards softball celebrity coverage and the host wanting to steer towards hard news. Sound familiar? But, according to a source close to the show, things aren't nearly as bad as they seem. 

It's no secret that Katie, a syndicated chat show that's distributed by Disney mostly to local ABC affiliates, had a rough go in its first season. It suffered from a classic case of "too many cooks" syndrome at the very beginning. Among the many executive producers were Couric's former Today producer Jeff Zucker, but Zucker left Katie to run CNN at the end of 2012. Others soon followed: executive producer Michael Bass followed him a few months later. Kathy Samuels, who was one of the original executive producers running the day-to-day operations with Bass, left at the beginning of June along with another co-executive producer, Ethan Samuels. So that's a lot of turnover for a talk show to go through during its first season. To make matters worse, Michael Morrison, the guy who replaced Zucker, couldn't keep the show under control as Brian Stelter of The New York Times reported back in April: 

The executive who replaced Mr. Zucker just three months ago, Michael Morrison, has been marginalized, according to several staff members there, so much so that rumors are running rampant that he is about to be replaced.

On June 8, The New York Post reported there was a "very stressful" work environment, "staffing weirdness" with "no one making decisions." But that's why Rachel Miskowiec, a former producer on The Tyra Banks Show, was brought in to be the show's saving grace. "For the first time since Jeff left, there’s finally someone in charge who can handle the show," a source told the Post. But the reports of bad blood behind the scenes didn't stop. 

On Tuesday the New York Daily News reported Couric is upset with Miskowiec for trying to "dumb down" the show with more celebrity coverage, instead of the hard news coverage Couric has proven herself capable of doing. "If there is one thing Katie hates more than being called 'perky,' it's being called 'tabloid,'" a source told the Daily News. "She thinks of herself as a serious journalist, covering stories that make a difference. She’s fighting this." The battle between Couric and Miskowiec is being made out to sound a whole lot like the tiff  between NBC and former Today Show host Ann Curry. 

But a source close to Katie told The Atlantic Wire that she isn't unhappy with Miskowiec at all. "Since joining a few weeks ago, Rachel's been exactly what the show needs to develop," the source said. "The idea that Rachel is a problem is ridiculous." 

Any talk show, especially a ratings-sensitive daytime syndicated show, is going to have to balance the light and fun side of news with more serious stuff. "The notion of the show needing to work on that balance is true," our source said, "but there's always going to be that need." 

So Katie marches forward with steadily rising ratings despite the negative buzz, a new producer figuring things out, and press coverage that's desperately trying to turn this popular news lady into a casualty of evil execs looking for the softer side of silly news, even though Couric routinely does both. The thirst for another wounded news doe, like Curry, won't be satiated here.