Trayvon Martin's stepmother Alicia Stanley wants you to know: "I exist... I'm the one... I'm the one...."

You don't see her at the trial where the biological mother sits with the biological father, and she's not the "father's fiancee" whose residence was near where the shooting took place, but she sees herself as Trayvon's real mother.

I don't know who made the decision to keep her in the background. Perhaps the Martin family's lawyers thought there were already too many mother figures in the Trayvon story and decided she should be eclipsed. If so, they should have worked harder to obtain her cooperation, because, as you'll see in the interview — here — she feels aggrieved. She wanted her time in the spotlight, and I'd be interested in knowing the details of the decision of the Anderson Cooper show to put her on. There's a "woman shunned" quality to much of what she says, and I suspect other news shows determined that it's too women's television or too outside the racial justice template.

If you have limited time, begin with Part 2, where Stanley — asked if she thinks Zimmerman "zeroed in" on Martin because of his race — says "I'd be lying if I said yes, so I'm going to say this: no." From there, she goes on to her "I exist... I'm the one... I'm the one..." monologue, which is quite dramatic. I felt like I was watching the Halle Berry performance in the role of Alicia Stanley. I wonder if she had this part scripted in advance and what we see on screen is acting.

I mean, she seems to be saying her lines in the fashion that actresses use when they are bidding for an Oscar, but those actresses are purporting to represent real people. Alicia Stanley may be exactly the kind of real person that actresses will want to study in order to give Oscar-worthy performances. Most real people — like the various witnesses I'd watched in the trial — speak in a rather flat and matter-of-fact style when they're invited to speak on television. You just know that if they made a movie out of this trial, the actors would have to punch up the emotion. Which is why I loathe most courtroom scenes: To avoid blandness, they've got to be phony.

But Alicia Stanley isn't a witness in the courtroom, she's a guest in the comfortable gaze of Anderson Cooper. She's not under oath, but maybe she's utterly genuine. Consider that line: "I'd be lying if I said yes, so I'm going to say this: no." Who answers like that instead of just saying no? A person who consciously and actively decides that not only shouldn't she lie, but she's got to be honest even about considering lying.

Sarah Palin could be the next Oprah.

That's what reality-show maestro Mark Burnett thought, but Sarah said no.

Burnett has insisted that Palin do the show from either New York or Los Angeles, which would require her to move for a significant portion of the year from her residence in Alaska where she lives with husband Todd.

Whether that was really the basis for the no or not, it's great PR. She's devoted to Alaska and her husband Todd. That's the kind of thing that gives women — some women — chills of feeling, I say — experiencing this bodily chills, even as I'm am typing out the skepticism toward PR that reigns over my rational mind.

IN THE COMMENTS: prairie wind said:

Sarah doesn't strike me as someone who wants to be an Oprah. She won't be pushed into "women's TV"... not when men are a huge percentage of her supporters. And not when her Facebook page has more political clout than Oprah's tv show ever had. 

A NYT exposé of the "boys' club" at the "Today" show — replete with "Operation Bambi" and what it really means when they say there's a lack of "chemistry."

A great NYT Magazine article, by Brian Stelter (who has an entire book coming out: "Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV"). Stelter explains why the morning shows are so important to the networks, and why being #1 matters so much. I just want to excerpt some of the imputations of sexism:

Many executives at the network never grasped how profoundly hurt and humiliated [Ann] Curry remained — not just by her televised dismissal but by all the backstage machinations that led to that fateful morning. Curry felt that the boys’ club atmosphere behind the scenes at “Today” undermined her from the start, and she told friends that her final months were a form of professional torture. The growing indifference of Matt Lauer, her co-host, had hurt the most, but there was also just a general meanness on set. At one point, the executive producer, Jim Bell, commissioned a blooper reel of Curry’s worst on-air mistakes. Another time, according to a producer, Bell called staff members into his office to show a gaffe she made during a cross-talk with a local station. (Bell denies both incidents.)...

Meanness.  Women are very sensitive to meanness. It's a show for "created largely for women." But it's "managed mostly by men." As "Today" got into ratings trouble and some were blaming Lauer, "Bell had another culprit in mind: Ann Curry."

So insistent was Bell that Curry was the problem — that she was “out of position,” as he put it in an e-mail to his deputies — that he had been talking about it with friends for months. One morning-TV veteran suggested to him that firing Curry, who had been co-hosting for only about six months at that point, would be tantamount to “killing Bambi.” Undeterred, Bell hatched a careful three-part plan: 1.) persuade Lauer to extend his expiring contract; 2.) oust Curry; 3.) replace her with Savannah Guthrie. According to this source, Bell called his plan Operation Bambi.

Bell, a 6-foot-4 former Harvard lineman, was well liked by his staff. He was considered a straight shooter who would do anything for the sake of the show. (Bell denies using the term “Operation Bambi.”) The coinage, however, was indicative of a few larger truths about morning television. Though it is created largely for women, the business is, even now, managed mostly by men, including those who like to think in terms of war, sabotage and embarrassing James Bond-like names for things they do in the office. 

(If you're watching these season "Survivor," you, like me, may think: Phillip!)

Curry was sad after signing off, but also enraged. When critics blamed a lack of chemistry for her departure, she dismissed it to friends it as a euphemism for something else. “ ‘Chemistry,’ in television history, generally means the man does not want to work with the woman,” Curry was known to have remarked. “It’s an excuse generally used by men in positions of power to say, ‘The woman doesn’t work.’ ”

Of course, viewers of "The View" found Elisabeth Hasselbeck "too extreme and right wing."

"People did not watch the show because of Elisabeth. So they told her yesterday her contract would not be renewed."

If there are 3 or 4 liberal women dominating the show, then the one righty is going to be irritating to the people who actually watch the show. How could the one righty attract viewers who will put up with the 3 or 4 liberals? Obviously, Hasselbeck was only there to give the lefties something to bounce off of. I'm not surprised that viewers, when polled, would fail to credit her with performing a useful function. Ah, well, what does it matter? The viewers want a squishier, more comfortable conservative or no conservative at all. Women's TV... I don't watch it. Who does?

"Oxygen Media has pulled the plug on 'All My Babies' Mamas,' a reality special... about a musician who has fathered 11 children with 10 different mothers."

The conceived the show. They gave it life. Then they walked away.

ADDED: Rush Limbaugh riffs on the O Media decision:

It's not gonna air now because a bunch of stuffed shirts, a bunch of prisses, a bunch of morality police... objected.... So we were going to expand the definition of a family to include whatever people wanted it to be.... It was a show of love and devotion, how Shawty provides for all, and it's being ripped right out from under him. I mean, who says that this is a marginalized existence?