Agent Provocamanpour?



(image via ohiou.edu)

Did you happen to catch the clearly starstruck Renee Zellwegger interview her "girl crush" Christiane Amanpour on "Iconoclasts"? It was really quite sexy to see Zellwegger so flush and overwrought about another woman.

Christiane -- and we can't say enough good things about this lady -- is intellectual catnip to people of a certain amount of Being and Taste. (The Corsair pops open a Pouilly Fuisse) Urbane, yet tough, intelligent, internationalist, principled, fearless -- The Corsair is, as we speak, becoming quite physically aroused just discussing her qualities. We'll spare you the visuals; good taste, you see.

But we digress. If Angelina Jolie is a peppery cognac, then Christianne Amanpour is a floral Armagnac. In a sense, it is a rich but fitting irony that an Administration so proud of its lack of sagfroid may or may not have Amanpour dead in its sights as the enemy. According to TVNewser:

"Yesterday, MSNBC.com published a transcript of Andrea Mitchell's interview with author James Risen about the CIA's domestic spying program. In it, Mitchell asked Risen if he had uncovered evidence that CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour was eavesdropped upon. It was a specific and pointed question that led AMERICAblog to ask if the veteran journalist had been spied on by the Bush administration.

"This afternoon, MSNBC.com removed the portion of the transcript that referred to Amanpour. (Here's what it originally said.) In a statement to TVNewser tonight, NBC explained why:

"'Unfortunately this transcript was released prematurely. It was a topic on which we had not completed our reporting, and it was not broadcast on 'NBC Nightly News' nor on any other NBC News program. We removed that section of the transcript so that we may further continue our inquiry.'"

"I sure hope NBC continues the inquiry."

Me too. Other web coverage:

Indymedia
TPMCafe
The ReidReport