Idle question: Why do some talk show hosts still have microphones on their desks?

If you look at the clips of some talk show hosts such as Conan O’Brien, Seth Meyers, and Jimmy Fallon, who all sit at desks and talk to their guests, you will notice a large microphone on the desk. As far as I am aware, all the hosts and guests nowadays have wireless microphones attached to their clothing somewhere so why is there a desk microphone? Nobody actually talks directly into it. Does it serve some purpose or is it just a nod to tradition?

Roger Ailes is truly disgusting

For those who thought the revelations in the lawsuit by former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson about the way that Fox News head Roger Ailes’s sexually propositioned her were disgusting enough, you ain’t heard nothing yet. Gabriel Sherman interviewed six women who experienced similar things, one of whom was just 16 years old at the time, and their descriptions are revolting.
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Gretchen Carlson on Fox News

Here is a supercut of the kind of banter that took place on Fox and Friends with Gretchen Carlson who has filed a sexual harassment suit against the head of Fox News Roger Ailes. It is hard to imagine in this day and age that people could be so obviously sexist and obnoxious, though they clearly seem to think they are being complimentary. They are like the men on the street who ‘compliment’ women on their looks as they pass by.
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Charges of sexual harassment at Fox News [UPDATED]

It has long been obvious that the objectification of women is an integral part of the Fox News business model. The network features a bevy of attractive women who are required to wear dresses that emphasize their cleavage and show their legs and some shows even have a ‘leg cam’, a camera placed strategically to get the best view of whichever woman on the panel happens to have the ‘best legs’ that day, whatever that means. I kid you not.
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Morley Safer in Vietnam

The recent death of Morley Safer, veteran correspondent for the CBS news magazine program 60 Minutes, has led to an outpouring of tributes such as this one. Long before he became the genial avuncular reporter of human-interest stories that viewers were familiar with, Safer made his name for his hard-hitting reporting from Vietnam where, rather than depend on the sanitized and dishonest press briefings given by the US military, he and a few others went out with the troops and reported on the horrors being committed by the US military on hapless innocent Vietnamese villagers in angry retaliation for attacks on the US forces by the Viet Cong, something that came as a shock to American TV viewers who like to think of their military as always acting righteously and wholly on the side of angels.
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Over to you Marco, once you’re done playing

As we head into the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses on February 1, if you live in that state expect to see a barrage of ads from each candidate featuring the familiar Republican story that the country is besieged by dangers on all fronts that is threatening the very existence of the republic and only their particular candidate knows what to do to meet the challenge.
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Should a newspaper’s owner be allowed to be anonymous?

This question has arisen because the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the state of Nevada’s largest circulation newspaper, was bought by someone and no one, not even the reporters working at the paper, knows their identity. What is more, the new owner paid a sum of $140 million, which was well above what people considered the market value.
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Leave aging celebrities alone

The public has a love-hate relationship with celebrities, idolizing them when they are at their peak and then turning on them when they inevitably decline with age. That thought occurred to me when I looked at the sponsored advertisements at the bottom of each post. It is depressing to see the number of them that have titles like Gross: See Photos Of 35 Celebrities Who’ve Aged Horribly and Celebs Who Went From Bombshell to Bummer. Since these ads are designed to be click-bait, it is clear that there is a market to simply see people who are no longer as young and conventionally attractive as they once were.
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