Rudi Bakhtiar is an Airhead by David Dvorkin Some time ago, on a leftwing discussion site, I called Rudi Bakhtiar, the news anchorwoman at CNN Headline News, an airhead. The hostility of the response surprised me. It was more than just disagreement with my opinion. It was bitter condemnation that I would dare say such a thing. Mixed in with this was adulation of the airhead in question and occasional attacks on my manhood. The controversy faded and I forgot about it. But from time to time I still get hostile e-mails, presumably from new members of the discussion site who are reading old archived messages and coming across my heresy.§ Their e-mails tend to repeat the main elements of the first round - basically, "She's spectacularly wonderful!" and "You must be a homo!" One - surely young - e-mailer said I'm hostile to the woman only because I know I'll never have a chance with her. I guess the e-mailer thinks he will. Well, well. It really does take all kinds to make a world, doesn't it? At first, I replied to the e-mails. Sometimes thoughtfully. Sometimes sarcastically. Sometimes at length and sometimes curtly. But it's a wearisome game in the end. And a repetitive game. So, to save myself some typing and for a bit of amusement, I decided to summarize my replies in this Web page. This will also be a good tool to help the adulators vent their spleen. Unvented spleen is surely a bad thing for one's health. Whyyyyy? Let's start with why I called her an airhead. Oh, come now. Do you really expect me to watch CNN Headline News with a pad and pencil and record everything the woman does that strikes me as airheaded? Is airheadedness something objectively quantifiable and measurable? How long does anyone have to watch an airhead to conclude that the person being watched is, well, an airhead? It's not enough that Bakhtiar reads the news as if she has no idea what she's reading, what all those people and places and events mean. She also has to smirk and wriggle and fuss with her hair try to flirt with the camera. Sometimes the half hour opens with a shot of Rudi standing on the set, giving us time to admire her figure and newest outfit while she smirks. Sometimes she reads something nasty some awful Democrat has said about Glorious Leader,§§ and she wrinkles her little brow in disapproval and pouts at us. Good grief, people! She's an airhead! Owieeeee! Rudi will be hurt by my opinion! How can I be so cruel? Yes, I've been told this in e-mail. Do those e-mailers think that network anchorettes read leftwing discussion sites, let alone Web sites like this one? Let's suppose for the sake of argument that the anchorairheads do read such pages. (Let's also suppose for the sake of argument that the anchorairhead in question can actually read.) Let's further suppose that my opinion would matter to someone whose opinion of herself is obviously unassailably high - in other words, that she would be hurt and would wrinkle her brow and pout and sniffle and shed a little tear. Does that place me under an obligation not to say anything that might hurt such a person's feelings? Hell, no. People who choose to be in the public eye can't claim immunity from being judged, especially not concerning whatever it is they're in the public eye for. Which in this case, ostensibly, is journalism. Homo "You must be a homo!" said one e-mail. I guess the fellow meant that only a man who prefers men would not be captivated by Rudi's physical beauty. No, I'm not homosexual. I have friends who are, though, and they seem quite able to appreciate the beauty of a beautiful woman, in much the same way, I suppose, as heterosexual women often admire a beautiful woman's beauty. In other words, it's an aesthetic rather than a glandular appreciation. So even if I were homosexual, that would not of itself make it impossible for me to admire Bakhtiar's looks. Maybe I just don't agree with the abovementioned e-mailer's estimation of those looks. But I guess people who use the word "homo" as an insult aren't sensitive to all of these complexities. Nor are they likely to consider the possibility that I'm heterosexual and don't agree with their opinion of a given woman's looks. Or that, trying to be objective, I can agree that a given woman is pretty but various other things about her vastly outweigh that prettiness. Such as the fact that she's an airhead. Prettttyyyyy! Bakhtiar's looks are a common theme in the hostile e-mails. Apparently, to some men, if an anchoress is nice to look at, then nothing else matters. Boys, there are Web sites for that purpose. And DVDs you can rent. When I turn on the news, I really, really want to hear the news delivered well and intelligently. (The real news, at that, not garbage like sports or the latest way Glorious Leader has embarrassed America in the eyes of the world. But that's not the subject of this essay.) Being prettttyyyyy doesn't preclude having real journalistic ability, of course, but neither is it an acceptable substitute for such ability in a news reader. Now, if a news reader is a good journalist and also a pleasure to look at, that's a fine thing indeed. Who can forget the days when ITN broadcasts were carried on many PBS stations in the evening, with the news being read by the lovely Daljit Dhaliwal? (Who is now an anchorwoman for CNN International. Hey! CNN! Think how she'd boost the ratings and quality of CNN Headline News!) But we don't even have to look that far afield. Just think of the spectacular Lynne Russell.§§§ Now, there is a woman of striking beauty and screen presence who also clearly understood what she was reading aloud to us, could pronounce foreign place names (such a rare talent on today's CNN!), and radiated both intelligence and sly wit. My only problem with the remarkable Russell was that when I watched her reading the news, I sometimes didn't catch everything she was saying because my higher mental faculties were being short circuited. You might ask, how does that differ from the men I sneer at above? The difference is that Bakhtiar is an airhead, whereas Russell converted me into one. Or to put it another way, when Russell was the CNN anchorwoman and I was watching her, there was an airhead on only one side of the screen. And any man who doesn't agree with me about Lynne Russell must be a - No, I won't say it. Bias It's reasonable to assume that anchorthings have political opinions too, just as we real people do. It's also reasonable to expect them to keep their opinions out of their reading of the news. Oh, not if they work for Fox News. But on non-Fox networks, one used to expect a pretense at neutrality. Not so with BakhtiRudi. She makes clear her disdain for all who would oppose Glorious Leader or even express the slightest disapproval of GL's latest bit of buffoonery. When she tells us about such opposition, she frowns. Sometimes she shakes her head slightly. You expect her to tsk, tsk. Those awful Democrats! Those awful liberals! Why don't they just go away and let CNN concentrate on Glorious Leader and sports and fashion and entertainment?§§§§ Oh, possibly she's doing all of that under orders. Possibly it's just another aspect of the ongoing Foxification of CNN. Possibly she even objects in private. But I doubt it. I suspect she was an enthusiastic member of some Young Republican Sturmabteiling organization when she was in college - which would have been a month or two before CNN hired her.§§§§§ A Real Professional I get e-mails telling me that I'm wrong because the Bakhticreature is a serious and fine professional, a top-level journalist. ("And you're just some looooser with a Web site.") I suspect they base this opinion on watching her read the news. How much do they really know about the accuracy of the few reports she's done in person from distant locations? Kurt Francis knows. He lives in Bangkok, Thailand and can can testify to the way his city was slandered by Bakhtiar's sloppy, incompetent, slaphdash work. Read his letter here, and then visit his Web site, Bangkok A to Z. A Real Fox At some point after I wrote the original version of this essay, Rudi Foxtiar vanished from CNN. All her little fans were soooooo saaaaaad. I gather she's surfaced again, however, and is now smirking on Fox itself. How appropriate. How inevitable. Executive Summary So there you have it. Not only is Rudi Bakhtiar an airhead, she is a right-wing, kneejerk, pouting, posturing, absurdly vain airhead. By the way, she also has one of the most irritating voices on television. And in Conclusion, I Would Like to Add How's your spleen? Rudi's Little Friends Once the search engines picked up this essay, it started getting lots of hits. It's astonishing - and, I'll admit, a bit depressing - how many people are searching the Web for any information they can find about their beloved bimbo. Quite a few of them, having read this essay, fired off angry e-mails to me, furious at me for denigrating the twit of their desires. So I decided to put the most amusing of those e-mails up on the Web, as well. Not all of the e-mails were hostile. Some people wrote to agree with me, and I've included a sample of their letters. Click here and sneer along with me. § Or so I assumed when I wrote that. But I've since discovered that if you enter, say, "Rudi Bakhtiar CNN" into Google, my post on that leftwing site comes up high on the list. Remarkable. §§ But not often enough, damn it! §§§ I do. Frequently. §§§§ Oh. It does anyway, doesn't it? §§§§§ For her journalistic abilities, of course.