Of all the reasons I am not a political reporter, the greatest is that, media junkie though I am, the idea of being compelled to watch the Sunday talk shows every weekend is the most depressing thing I can imagine. So even this weekend, as President Obama did a round of five Sunday shows, including Univision’s, I was at the park with the …
President Obama will be on five-count-them-five political talk shows Sunday, on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Univision. I picture him hurriedly fishing one interview, running off, being handed a cup of Gatorade and dumping it over his head, dashing into the next studio…
Then on Monday he’ll be appearing on Late Show with David Letterman, …
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This is the media world we live in: you can sweat for days over an hourlong speech, and the next morning, some yahoo gets all the attention for barking out two words. “You lie!” shouted Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) at President Obama when the chief executive, addressing a joint session of …
Hope Davis as Hillary Clinton, in the upcoming HBO film The Special Relationship, is one of the more inspired casting picks I’ve heard in a while. (The “special relationship,” by the way, is not that between Bill and Hillary—or Bill and any other woman—but Bill and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.) Davis, besides being simply a …
Still deep in catch-up work, but the folks at Swampland have inexplicably failed to post on today’s biggest political news, and, (my bad!) frankly, I just wanted to use that headline: Former Republican majority leader Tom “The Hammer” DeLay will be on Dancing with the Stars.
A list of the remaining competitors, courtesy of ABC, after …
And speaking of hot-button issues involving the President… there is suddenly renewed media attention to the claim that Obama was not born in the United States and thus is not eligible to be President. This theory has been around for years, was hot on the Internet during the election, has been thoroughly debunked, and at this point, …
Last night, President Obama gave a press conference aimed at helping to sell his health-care overhaul plan. This morning, TV news was all over it—though not necessarily over health care. The last question was about the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates in his Cambridge home, raising the question of whether the African …
America’s Got Talent. And, Wednesday night, America is getting yet another President Obama press conference, this one focused on the President’s pitch for health-coverage legislation. Can it get both?
It will on NBC, which agreed to carry the press conference after the White House moved it an hour earlier, guaranteeing that David …
Think TV entertainment doesn’t influence politics at its highest levels? Think again! At Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing, new U.S. Senator Al Franken, who came to public fame on Saturday Night Live, reminisces with Sotomayor, who had said she was drawn to the law by watching Perry Mason (h/t …
After South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s bizarre disappearance to Argentina and confession of an affair, you’d think he hadn’t a friend in the world. You’d be wrong. Behind the scenes, journalists, eager to land a big interview get, reached out to feel his pain.
The State newspaper, which had been leading Sanford coverage from the …
Between closing a dead-tree article and packing up my office, I had time to watch the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings only on and off. Which is probably the most any sane person should be watching.
The point of a televised hearing, this one demonstrated again, is that it is a televised hearing. That is: barring new developments, …
I’m better than this. I’m better than this, right? Sigh. Who am I kidding? I’m not better than this.
So a photo has been making the rounds appearing to show President Obama, along with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, checking out the posterior of a young woman at the G8 summit. After the photo graced the cover of Drudge, sped around …
In the issue of TIME that came out last Friday and that was not about Michael Jackson’s Death, I have a column about the rash of primetime medical shows breaking out (rash? medical? get it?), and how they reflect the health care debate going on in Washington. If you’ll journey back with me to 1994, you’ll recall that the last time …