By Lee Pfeiffer
When Sarah Palin mentions her fellow "grizzly moms", it warms the cockles of her supporter's hearts, even as it sends her critics heading toward the nearest barf bag. However, Ms. Palin has nothing on the definitive overly-protective mother: obnoxious chat show host Kathie Lee Gifford, who has driven many a viewer to the brink of jumping out their windows with her incessant talk about her kids over the years. After being off the air for years, Gifford is now one of the hosts on NBC's top-rated The Today Show. The network has apparently done an exhaustive search to find the most qualified person to do film reviews on the show and -shockingly- it turns out to be Gifford's own 20 year-old son Cody! There was a time when seasoned professionals were given these plum spots but Cody's main qualification is that the 20 year old likes movies and is studying film in school. Good thing he doesn't like airplanes or mama probably would have pulled enough strings to have him play around with steering airbuses over to Europe. Gifford may think she is doing her son a favor, but his reviews don't indicate he's in any danger of becoming a veteran film critic once her influence is gone. Young Gifford says the word "like" countless times in...you know, like, many different sentences. Worse, he's forced to do his reviews while chatting with mama grizzly herself (apparently Kathie Lee doesn't want to cede a moment of the spotlight even to her son). Cody says he can bring more "irrelevancy" to the reviews than older critics could. We think he meant "irreverence", but this is one Freudian slip that is accurate. He should take a lesson from Ben Lyons, the last high profile victim of a nepotism-obsessed father. His dad, critic Jeffrey Lyons, help land Ben a co-host job on At the Movies, the show founded by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. His lack of qualifications made him a laughing stock and ultimately Ben took the heat for driving a show that had lasted 30 years off the air. To watch Cody in action click here
