In case you missed it, conservative commentator Ann Coulter was in town to give a speech a week ago Friday, and for a few brief hours, Wendy McCaw was not indisputably the "meanest woman in town."
Which perhaps accounts for why Wendy, accompanied by "the best kept man in Santa Barbara" showed up to hear Coulter when she appeared at the Young America Foundation's Reagan Ranch Center.
While McCaw is laying off employees left and right at the News-Press she layed a cool $1 million gift on the Young America Foundation through the auspices of her own Wendy P. McCaw Foundation. As a result, the ranch's center is being named after McCaw. This according to Travis Armstrong's column in Sunday's News-Press.
Sounds like a variation of that old country and western song, this time though the ranch center gets the gold mine while News-Press employees get the shaft.
You can't see her on Cox Cable here in Santa Barbara and if you could you'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to do so, but one of the biggest stars on Fox Business Channel is only about five years removed from her days as a coed at UCSB.
Jenna Lee not only graduated from UCSB with a degree in English and Global Studies, she played Division 1 softball while there.
Anyone care to start a petition to get Cox to carry FOX?
And while I'm on the subject of cable TV, according to the L.A. Times owners of HDTV's in Los Angeles are up in arms because they can only get 16 high definition channels with their basic cable service from their cable provider Time Warner.
Perhaps they shouldn't complain. Here in Santa Barbara Cox Cable only gives us 13 high definition channels.
However, in Orange County where Cox also has the local cable TV monopoly they offer 35 high def channels. What's up with that?
Does this sound familiar?
Joel Sappell, an investigative projects editor at the L.A. Times, describing why after 26 years with the paper he took a buyout.
"We had such high hopes in Los Angeles for (Sam Zell) the billionaire from Chicago."
But then Zell, who had purchased The Times parent Tribune Company, "quickly began to reveal himself as thin-skinned and crass, upbraiding Tribune journalists who challenged his vision. In a meeting with staffers in Florida, he punctuated his response to a female photographer's question about the public service nature of journalism with a self-satisfied "f_ _ _ _ you."
Well, at least Zell speaks to his employees.
