This is one of the reasons why I'm an NBC Nightly News fan. Aside from the fact that I really admire the way anchor Brian Williams delivers the news and selects which segments to highlight each weeknight, there are classy moments -- like this one last night -- that remind me why, when it comes to big news, I prefer to turn to the down-to-earth Williams.
In a segment near the end of Monday night's broadcast (link is here), Williams ran some still photos of Malia and Sasha Obama that were released by their father's transition team of the girls and their parents preparing for the girls' first day of school in Washington. Then he said that, like his predecessor, NBC Nightly News would refrain from hounding Malia and Sasha with cameras and would only cover their exploits if a news event specifically warrants such coverage.
In the day and age where there are the thousands of web sites and the 24/7 cable news networks willing to exploit the children of celebrities and politicians -- some which go so far as to declare diaper-wearing toddlers of celebs as being very hip and fashionable (as if the kids were picking out their attire), it's refreshing to see that a major news organization (or at least the Nightly News) plans to give Malia and Sasha a break and won't chronicle their every move and document their wardrobe selections.
The Boston Globe'sMatthew Gilbert got me thinking with his recent article about Christmas TV episodes. I like several of the selections on his list ranging from the slightly off-kilter (South Park's "Mr. Hankey and the Christmas Poo," which is about exactly what it sounds like, and Seinfeld's classic Festivus episode, "The Strike") to dramatic (The West Wing's "Noel," still a favorite of mine, can't stop thinking of it whenever I hear "Carol of the Bells") to dark (Six Feet Under's "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," on the first anniversary of the death of Fisher family's patriarch).
Thus, I started thinking of other stand-out Christmas episodes from other shows. In particular, I remembered Once and Again's "The Gingerbread House" in its first season. Not only did it inspire me to seek out Tori Amos' haunting song "Winter," but it featured the main couple, Lily Manning and Rick Sammler, splitting up after Lily's confession that she'd slept with her soon-to-be-ex-husband from whom she asked for a divorce on Christmas Eve while decorating the Christmas tree.
In the third (and tragically) final season, Once and Again'sChristmas episode, "Pictures," had the woman who broke up Lily's first marriage give birth to Lily's daughters' half-sister in Lily's bedroom, in the middle of a blizzard on Christmas Eve. Talk about melodrama . . .
A decade earlier, Christmas in an interfaith family was the subject of two episodes of thirtysomething, created by the same people behind Once and Again. In a first season episode entitled, "I'll Be Home for Christmas," Michael and Hope Steadman argued over how they should celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas during their daughter Janie's first year. The last scene makes me tear up every time, where Hope gets a menorah for him and Michael gets a Christmas tree for her.
In the second season, Christmas and Hanukkah evoked a crisis of faith for Michael in "The Mike Van Dyke" episode as Hope was in a serious car accident while out Christmas shopping. This is the one where Michael imagines himself as a character in the black and white "Dick Van Dyke Show."
Do you have any favorite Christmas TV episodes for which you'd like to give a shout out?
Fox News Channel's Shep Smith, who hosts The Fox Report, first gained my respect for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina when he witnessed, first-hand, the failure of the government's response on every level (local, state, federal) and called them all on it. Didn't play politics or file a "this person said this" and "this person said that" kind of report.
I cheered when he tried to hold Joe the Plumber accountable for an odious statement made during the presidential campaign.
I became even more enamored of the anchorman after reading this new Esquire piece, where he was provided the beginning of several sentences and asked to complete them.
For example, when given the words, "I didn't decide," Smith told Esquire:
"I didn't decide Joe the Plumber was going to go out on a tour for John McCain. They decided it. And once they made that decision, then it is my belief as a journalist that he deserves, now, more scrutiny. And one of my senior writers came over to where I sit and said, 'Joe the Plumber just agreed with a guy that a vote for Barack Obama is a vote for the death of Israel.' Okay, he needs to be asked why believes this. Well, he came on and he said it was up to our viewers to find out why it was that he would say such a thing. When a man representing the GOP says what he said and doesn't know why he said it, or, if he does, won't let us know, and then tells our audience to go troll the Internet for reasons he might think that, I don't think it's the job of a journalist to further that line of thinking."
My favorite answer? The one he offered following the words, "The way." "The way we elect a president is -- it's like nothing in the world, it's spectacular," Smith said. "But I hate the hate. I can't take it."
Sure, his news show may be, at times, dizzyingly jam-packed with flying graphics, a pounding bass and a recitation of news at such a fast clip that you might've thought that Smith just downed a case of Red Bull. But at least you get the feeling that he's trying to be fair and politely calling people out when it's necessary.
The news coming out of Illinois is absolutely ripe for satire, and the late night comedians haven't let that go unnoticed. Just as they were feeling blue about the departure of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin from the national scene, in walks Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and all his hair.
The Late Show's round-up of TV news coverage of the "Who Wants to Buy a Senate Seat?" scandal made me laugh. (Link here.)
I can't wait to see how Saturday Night Live handles this.
Voting: I took the kids with me to vote in our small town in the western suburbs of Boston this morning at around 10. (There's no school today.)
We saw no lines as we entered the school gym and were greeted by a sweet Girl Scout. We waited patiently as she explained in a whisper-soft voice, where we needed to go first -- to check in by our street address. With my ballot in hand, the kids jockeyed for a good position in which to get a look at it as we crammed ourselves into the polling booth. They couldn't believe how many people were running for president. They thought it was just John McCain and Barack Obama.
"The Green-Rainbow Party?" my daughter asked incredulously.
"Yep," I said, as I read aloud all the different presidential/vice presidential candidates and their corresponding parties and the children shook their heads.
They were a bit dismayed when I wouldn't let them fill in the bubbles with the black pen provided -- there was no chance I was going to risk them filling in the wrong circle and ruin my opportunity to vote in this election -- but I did let them help me feed the paper ballot into the machine when we were done. The dullness of putting a ballot into a machine made me miss the time I voted in my first election in my hometown where they have actual levers to pull and a curtain that would dramatically open and record my choices when I was done. It's anti-climatic to fill in a bubble with a pen.
MSNBC All Day: I've had MSNBC on TV all day. I'm a sucker for their "Election Center" in Rockefeller Center and am a big crazy fan of the crew from Morning Joe.
Random Observations:
I thought Barack and Michelle Obama took a really long time filling out their ballots in Chicago. They must have a huge number of Illinois ballot questions or many contested races. (Massachusetts had three ballot questions.) Their 10-year-old daughter Malia, in her hoodie, looked thoroughly bored and yawned several times.
The first thing that came to my mind when I saw Sarah and Todd Palin leave the polls in Wasilla? Shamefully, it was that, as I looked at the vice presidential candidate, I wondered if she'd already given all the expensive campaign-funded duds away to charity.
Calling the Winner Early: I was disturbed by a piece I saw in today's New York Timesabout when the broadcast and cable news networks will project a winner tonight. I'm a big believer -- even in the age of the Internet, Twitter and Facebook -- of officially holding back on projecting a winner in the presidential race when people are still in the process of voting.
If a candidate concedes, then that person is affecting the voter turnout in places where the votes haven't yet been cast and it's not the media's doing.
But if a candidate hasn't yet conceded, the decent, patriotic thing to do is to wait until polls have closed before calling a state's results. If the networks call the entire election before the folks on the west coast have finished voting, that move would essentially tell people who haven't yet voted that their votes are irrelevant.
