Any one else feeling a little sorry for Donny Deutsch lately? I mean, this guy just can’t catch a break. Truth be told, the cards were stacked against the ad mogul from day one. According to Wikipedia, Deutsch was born November 22, 1957, six years to the day before JFK was assassinated. Try having your birthday co-opted by a national day of mourning right after you leave kindergarten and see how lucky you feel.
I used to like watching Deutsch’s The Big Idea program on CNBC. That was back in the good old days–two years ago–when America still watched non-political television once in a while. After The Big Idea was canceled in December 2008, our Man of Marketing resurfaced on the money network’s midday show, Power Lunch. That is, until one day in February 2009 when he and Charlie “Blood on the Street” Gasparino mixed it up pretty good. Guess who got “powered” off the show. (In an interesting twist, about two months ago Gasparino fled to Fox, where he now dishes the Street with his paisano, Neal Cavuto.)
The cable-TV Furies, however, hadn’t quite finished with Donny Deutsch. In July of last year, while he co-anchored an MSNBC daytime slot, the station decided to ambush Deutsch by showing an embarrassing photo of him in his salad days wearing a Speedo. The painfully awkward on-air exchange between Deutsch and his female co-host gives a whole new meaning to the slogan “THE Place for Politics.”
Flash forward to February of this year and Donny’s “this coconut Rubio” remark made on CNN’s The Joy Behar Show. Deutsch claimed the comment was innocent, but in our mea culpa-loving society he apologized anyway–just in case. Better safe than canceled.
And now, the piece de resistance. What? You missed it? Oh, right. With South Park‘s censorship story monopolizing the media oxygen all week, you probably blinked during Deutsch’s latest attempt at assisted hara-kiri. If so, here’s a quick refresher course on the latest Donnybrook, America the Angry.
Now you see why I’m feeling a little sorry for Donny Deutsch? With the South Park saga completely eclipsing the rapid rise and even rapider demise of America the Angry, poor Donny can’t even go down in flames right. Instead of a hero’s death in a big blaze of glory, he gets the puny Wile E. Coyote smoke puff. While Matt and Trey get all kinds of play, the hapless Deutsch goes down.
And all for what? For daring to lump Keith Olbermann in with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly. O tempora, o mores!
But I think I have just the solution. Donny, you’ve already gone from CNBC to MSNBC. Maybe you should change channels one last time. In other words, Herr Deutsch, Sprechen Sie Fox?
Why not give Roger Ailes a call? Yeah, it’s true you did push for that boycott of Beck’s advertisers, but that was ten months and three scandals ago–eons in TV time. Who remembers that now?