Tuesday, August 5, 2008

The Chuck owns the airwaves on Super Tuesday



Chuckolytes the world over were treated to a special day Tuesday. Not only was The Chuck on Morning Joe. Not only was he on Hardball; but he also anchored the 3pm EST/12pm PST Super Tuesday slot on MSNBC.

At 12:02pm EST, The Chuck dove head first into a one-on-one with DNC Chairman Howard Dean. We're not going to suck up and say it went smooth as glass. But we're also not going to tell you that there appeared to be a bug up Chairman Dean's ass that made him a cranky and combative interview subject. Maybe it was the laughably fake backdrop with the nondescript books or the fact that he was being interviewed by the one cat who was not going to succumb to his bombast. Either way, The Chuck showed a wonderful combination of journalistic aggression and congeniality that served him well.

After Dean, The Chuck hit his stride and jockeyed between passing it off for news breaks and continuing his Super Tuesday coverage that included Mr. Personality, Grover Norquist and a threadbare segment about women voters; especially those over 65 who are still bitter over Hillary and leaning towards McCain (yawn).

But, a gold star needs to be put on the paper belonging to the individual responsible for having The Chuck interview Frank Newport, Editor-in-Chief of the Gallup Poll. Those that follow The Chuck are well aware of his oft repeated phrase "live by the daily Gallup tracking poll, die by the daily Gallup tracking poll". So the fact that the one guy who could communicate to The Chuck to cease the bad-mouthing of his daily tracking poll squandered the opportunity and morphed into The Chuck's prison bride and was submissive and complimentary throughout the whole interview. The Chuck's raw power shone as he requested a custom three and five day average tracking poll report, and Newport practically pulled out his laptop and made The Chuck one right there. The appropriate response would have been a sassy, "Kiss my tracking poll Todd! You'll take what we give you and like it!". But The Chuck now calls the shots and that's a sweet sight indeed.



The next segment was with Dan Balz of the Washinton Post, Dotty Lynch of the American University School of Communication and Mike Allen of Politico.com. Pretty standard fare in this segment and The Chuck was cruising comfortably on impulse power. But the most notable thing about this segment was not anything of particular profundity but strangely it came from Mike Allen's schizoid ensemble consisting of a dapper dark suit coat and tie paired oh so adventurously with light-colored casual pants and sensible black shoes that looked like orthotics. Hats off to the production person who assured Mikey that he'd just be shot from the waist up.


All in all The Chuck performed masterfully. Very quickly the hour became a confident presentation humming with The Chuck's personal energy and cool excitement. We're looking forward to seeing The Chuck manning the con more often. At the very least it'll give us a chance to dust off the Chuck Todd-y drinking game and make an early evening of it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good opener, VCT! He IS ready to lead. It was a good, smart and funny show.

stephanie said...

hell yeah, he's ready to lead. ;)

Anonymous said...

Oh supposedly Cheetoh dust strewn overlords of VCT, forgive for i have sinned. AGAIN. I chose an afternoon with my gf over Super Tuesday coverage and in so doing missed Chuck gain power legitimately instead of stealing it like a majestically bearded ninja. I deserve and welcome whatever punishment your itchy scalps chose to rain upon me.

Anonymous said...

Boy, perhaps you need to say six Hail Chucks. Repeat after me...

Hail Chuck, full of numbers,
Pray for us voters now and in the final hour of election coverage.

Rinse, repeat.

Anonymous said...

Good Luck Mr. Todd, we are with you, if only in spirit.

Katty said...

Hey, what was Niles of Frasier doing on Chuck's show talking about polls?