Who the hell is he, and how the hell did anyone let him on Fox News?
I'm talking, of course, about Mississippi's own Shepard Smith, the anchor of cable's highest rated newscast, who possesses the mock gravitas of Stephen Colbert and the vicious wit of Jon Stewart. He's entered the Youtube pantheon through genial-seeming but barbed friendly fire at all those other Fox News personalities. How did he get this job? Here's a story from Fox's early days, back when there was a Democrat in the White House, you could unironically talk about an American "welfare state," and Fox News could still be thought of as the Jedi knights instead of just the Death Star:
"There are several Shep Smith Creation Myths circulating around Fox — several stories of how Fox brass came to see that he was Their Guy — and what they all have in common is his willingness to do what needed to be done, without standing on ceremony. For John Moody, executive vice-president of news, it was the time when Roger Ailes — Moody's boss and the president and architect of Fox News — looked up at a television and saw footage of O. J. Simpson's civil trial and said, "You know, just once I'd like to hear some reporter have the guts to say that he's here at the O. J. Simpson trial, where there's nothing going on and nothing happened today." Moody: "I called Shepard in L. A., which is where he was at the time. I said, 'Let's think about this.' He said, 'I got it.' I said, 'Well . . .' And he said, 'No, I got it.' It was the kind of thing where he was on the air before I finished my sentence. And Shepard just did this dry, absolutely dead-on thing where he said, 'There's nothing going on at the O. J. trial today. If something happens, we'll let you know about it. But for now, this is Shepard Smith in Los Angeles, at the O. J. trial, where nothing's happening.' That's when you knew, that's when you went, 'Oh yeah, oh yeah. . . .' "
The same belief that no news is, in fact, no news animates this amazing three minute clip covering the short-lived imprisonment of Paris Hilton. He re-enacts the telenovela happening inside the courtroom, makes fun of an anonymous slackjawed dullard standing behind Paris' lawyer, explodes with joy while observing the Paris Hilton caravan driving past an actual circus, and earns a million nerd points saying "I feel like Mystery Science Theater all of a sudden." It's a bravura performance, like Jon Stewart's intro segments being done live. He gives Rod Blagojevich the same treatment, recapping the previous weekend's college football scores over a live Blago press conference. He can even come up with an instant genius monologue in reaction to a sudden fire alarm in the studio.
I'm talking, of course, about Mississippi's own Shepard Smith, the anchor of cable's highest rated newscast, who possesses the mock gravitas of Stephen Colbert and the vicious wit of Jon Stewart. He's entered the Youtube pantheon through genial-seeming but barbed friendly fire at all those other Fox News personalities. How did he get this job? Here's a story from Fox's early days, back when there was a Democrat in the White House, you could unironically talk about an American "welfare state," and Fox News could still be thought of as the Jedi knights instead of just the Death Star:
"There are several Shep Smith Creation Myths circulating around Fox — several stories of how Fox brass came to see that he was Their Guy — and what they all have in common is his willingness to do what needed to be done, without standing on ceremony. For John Moody, executive vice-president of news, it was the time when Roger Ailes — Moody's boss and the president and architect of Fox News — looked up at a television and saw footage of O. J. Simpson's civil trial and said, "You know, just once I'd like to hear some reporter have the guts to say that he's here at the O. J. Simpson trial, where there's nothing going on and nothing happened today." Moody: "I called Shepard in L. A., which is where he was at the time. I said, 'Let's think about this.' He said, 'I got it.' I said, 'Well . . .' And he said, 'No, I got it.' It was the kind of thing where he was on the air before I finished my sentence. And Shepard just did this dry, absolutely dead-on thing where he said, 'There's nothing going on at the O. J. trial today. If something happens, we'll let you know about it. But for now, this is Shepard Smith in Los Angeles, at the O. J. trial, where nothing's happening.' That's when you knew, that's when you went, 'Oh yeah, oh yeah. . . .' "
The same belief that no news is, in fact, no news animates this amazing three minute clip covering the short-lived imprisonment of Paris Hilton. He re-enacts the telenovela happening inside the courtroom, makes fun of an anonymous slackjawed dullard standing behind Paris' lawyer, explodes with joy while observing the Paris Hilton caravan driving past an actual circus, and earns a million nerd points saying "I feel like Mystery Science Theater all of a sudden." It's a bravura performance, like Jon Stewart's intro segments being done live. He gives Rod Blagojevich the same treatment, recapping the previous weekend's college football scores over a live Blago press conference. He can even come up with an instant genius monologue in reaction to a sudden fire alarm in the studio.
But it takes more than cheerful mockery to become Youtube legendary. Live conflict brings the hits whether it's Christian Bale or Bill O'Reilly throwing tantrums, MSNBC anchors butting heads, or Tracy Morgan taking off his shirt and climbing onto the counter on live morning TV, and then showing his imitation of a pregnant woman. (The show's female anchor gets eternal love for self-awarely quipping "this is going be dubbed a million times on the internet and we'll be the two idiots sitting behind him with no idea what to do." This clip was pretty close to being my third pick, as you can imagine).
Shepard Smith adeptly brings the drama, going after such eminently worthy targets as Joe the Plumber (who had recently claimed that a vote for Obama was a vote for the death of Israel, was not expecting to be ambushed by the home team media at Fox, and under attack admits that he knows "just enough about foreign policy to be dangerous.") and Ralph Nader, who ushered in the election of the first African-American president by asking whether he'll be "Uncle Sam or Uncle Tom." Shep says everything that needs to be said in the face of Nader's risible disingenuousness in pretending he has no idea why his comment could be viewed as offensive. (Incidentally, the comment thread on that clip proves the Onion right yet again. When did the racists start voting Green?)
Shep discusses both interviews with Bill O'Reilly, justifying his beatdowns while slyly subverting the Fox News pity party O'Reilly keeps trying to turn the conversation into. Papa Bear claims that this shows Fox News is not biased against Democrats, and Shep retorts that people who think that must only be watching the O'Reilly Factor. The filleting is so elegant that the legendarily thin-skinned O'Reilly does not even notice the dig. The Fox-on-Fox violence continues on Fox and Friends, where Shepard busts on the three vacuous hosts for hyping a couple toy grenade paperweights as an airport bomb scare, then admits to not watching the show. Still better is his evisceration of Glenn Beck, mocking his wonky camera angles, his faux-populist fearmongering, and his hilarious penchant for crying on air:
"We are here to celebrate, worship and adore." So are we, Shep, so are we. The right turned on him after his heroic refusal to play defense for the Bush administration during Katrina. The left will probably never embrace someone willing to wholeheartedly defend his station. But us here in the bleachers will always love America's best anchor no matter what channel he's on.
