Campbell Brown Appeals to the Failure in All of Us

Meghan Daum happily joins what she calls the "love-a-thon"—or at least the "respect-a-thon"—for Campbell Brown, the CNN anchor who's leaving her 8pm show after admitting her ratings were too low. Brown didn't use the word "fail," but nor did she "couch her failure in euphemisms," writes Daum in the Los Angeles Times. And that's why people are just a little more charmed by Brown these days.

"By refusing to be cagey about her reasons for leaving, by being brutally honest about her less-than-stellar ratings, by admitting, in essence, to failure, she pulled off something quite magnificent: She appealed to those of us who have failed at one time or another. That is to say, she appealed to all of us, something she apparently couldn't do in the context of hosting a cable news show." (More Campbell Brown stories.)