Ann Romney said, “Tonight, I want to talk to you about love.” Chris Christie, batting clean-up at the Republican Convention on Tuesday night, said, “Tonight, we choose respect over love.” It was a Beatles versus Rolling Stones kind of thing. You know: Love, love, love contrasted with I-can’t-get-no-satisfaction-with-Obama. READ FULL STORY »
Gore Vidal, who died on Tuesday at age 86, almost always stirred things up when he appeared on television. Coming on the scene around the same time Marshall McLuhan had dubbed TV the “cool medium,” Vidal heated up the screen with his forthright, usually liberal, often radical, opinions on politics and culture. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Melissa Moseley/HBO
Early on in The Newsroom this week, Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) delivered a manifesto detailing what his cable-news show News Night would stand for from now on. No more giving viewers what they think they want; the show will give them what Will McAvoy thinks they need. Why? Because, he concluded, “We’re the media elite.” READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Melissa Moseley/HBO
Airing at the close of a week with big news stories both heavy (the Supreme Court ruling on health care) and light (Ann Curry exiting The Today Show), The Newsroom’s second episode was both timely and windbaggy, to varying degrees of entertainment. The scene that might have echoed most ringingly in your ears was the one that introduced Olivia Munn’s character, financial news reporter Sloan Sabbith. She was interrogated and cajoled by Emily Mortimer’s MacKenzie about the former’s masterful command of complex issues and wonderment that she wasn’t making more money doing what attractive women on TV do, according to Mac: Go for a glossier TV show or into the private sector. Sloan replied that she was, indeed, “offered a morning show” but turned it down because “I’m not interested in cooking.” Ding, ding, ding!: There you had it — the Ann Curry imbroglio in neat reverse. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Melissa Moseley/HBO The Newsroom
President Obama’s Wednesday declaration that “I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married” was uttered on television (to ABC News) and was provoked at least in part by Vice President’s Joe Biden’s TV remarks last Sunday, on NBC’s Meet The Press, that initially raised the subject to a Presidential level.
The New York Times reports today that, according to several sources, Biden’s words accelerated the President’s announcement, which he’d planned to make… also on television: On The View next Monday. (We’ll see what the View gals have to say about that, later this morning.) READ FULL STORY »
On Thursday night’s O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly got all het up over a scene from the season finale of Parenthood. It was the moment in which Sarah Braverman’s teen son Drew had sex for the first time with his girlfriend Amy. O’Reilly convened a summit with his so-called Culture Warriors, Gretchen Carlson and Margaret Hoover, to bemoan what the segment called “The Coarsening of Our Culture.” READ FULL STORY »
