Greta Van Susteren Makes Up With Al Sharpton, Slams Convention Coverage, And Talks Twitter: Our Interview
The rift between Greta Van Susteren and Reverend Al Sharpton has healed — with the Reverend planting nine conciliatory kisses on Greta's neck in what he referred to as "the biggest news of the convention."
What started in June, after the Reverend allegedly ditched a commitment to Greta's "On The Record" to appear on her CNN rival "Anderson Cooper 360," came to an end Thursday just hours before Barack Obama accepted his party's nomination at Invesco Field in Denver.
As Reverend Sharpton walked past Greta in the Fox Experience at Braun's Bar & Grill, Greta shouted, "There's Reverend Sharpton, who's in so much trouble with me! He still hasn't apologized!"
Reverend Sharpton quickly responded, "She assaulted me!"
Greta replied, "And I've been your biggest fan!"
At this point, the Reverend took to Greta's neck, planting nine kisses all over her as she announced, "Oh, I love you. I forgive you. I officially forgive him!"
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"I always liked him," Greta told me," calling the Reverend "a smart guy" and noting that she "[doesn't] stay mad at anyone long enough."
And it's likely she agreed with his declaration of their reconciliation as "the biggest news of the convention." In an interview with the Huffington Post, Greta slammed the news networks' coverage of the political conventions as a waste of resources on scripted events that produce no real news.
"Each year, the conventions get worse for me because they're so scripted," she said. "We really could do these back home. But the reason why the networks come and spend millions of dollars...is because everybody else does," she said. "I think if all the networks got together and said, look, we're not gonna be held up by the two political parties, I think it would be a really smart idea because the conventions are so scripted. There's no news, no newsgathering. This really does have to end," she continued.
"I'd much rather see this money spent on every network going to Katrina, to Gustav next week," she said. "This is not why we all got into journalism....It's really time for the networks to revisit whether or not they should come to these."
Regardless of her feelings on the need for convention coverage, Greta still expected Fox News to win the week, and she was disappointed that the network came in second to CNN in the ratings race.
"I expect to be number one, frankly," she said. "You are looking at the only person in all of cable news who has only been on the number one news network — because, coincidentally, I won't take credit for it, the last month CNN was number one was the month I was there, and the first month Fox became number one was the first month I was there. So I'm not comfortable with second place. I prefer to win"
While on the topic of ratings, Greta also predicted that the recent infighting that has taken center stage on MSNBC will help the third place network's numbers.
"That's great TV," she said. "It's great for their numbers. And here's what it does: it gets the other networks looking, cause we're a little bit of vultures — we like to see each other fall apart. The other thing is it gets them a lot of press, and it may not help them in the short run but unfortunately bad news, bickering news, might help their numbers in the days to come."
But infighting is not a tactic Greta expects to see on Fox News anytime soon. "We're probably less inclined to have that here because we do have our real estate and you have your hour," she said. "They don't put everything together [on Fox News]. These guys were together...and so you've got the guys trying to outmuscle each other."
Throughout our interview — while personalities like Karl Rove and Dick Morris and Howard Wolfson streamed through the Fox Experience and downstairs Fox News staff filled up on a fair and balanced buffet ranging from mixed greens and veggie burgers to Sloppy Joes and beef-a-roni — Greta's various devices beeped nonstop. She has two BlackBerries and an iPhone (she calls it her "Barbie phone"), three digital cameras, and a MacBook Pro — and she credits herself as the first person at Fox News to have either a BlackBerry or a Mac.
"You are looking at one of the first BlackBerry people," she said. "You know why CNN was the first to get the verdict in the OJ Simpson civil case? I had a BlackBerry! Nobody else had one, and the courts hadn't banned them or anything. I love it."
The BlackBerries are just one small example of Greta's gadget addiction. A prolific blogger, Greta admits, "There's a thin line between being digital and being crazy, and I'm right on that cusp. Any second now, I can go to the crazy side."
But one tech-trend you won't see Greta embracing, at least for now, is Twitter. While she just set up an account as a way of pushing her blog posts out, she's "not so wild" about the micro-blogging platform.
"I'm not sold on it yet," she said. "I have so much going — I have a webcam, I have GretaWire, I have Greta LiveWire which is my internet show that I do every night between 9:45 and 9:50, I'm now doing the Strategy Room, I've got my pictures, my video...remember I told you it's that hairline? Twitter may be it.
"It also sounds mildly obscene. Am I the only one who thinks, like, Twittering ...I don't know. Do you Twitter? It's like, I thought we had a don't ask, don't tell policy!"
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Huffington Post | Danny Shea
First Posted: 09- 1-08 03:57 AM | Updated: 10- 1-08 05:12 AM