Stay On Path
Sunday 19 October 2014
From an old Larry Wall interview:
At the University of California at Irvine, when they first built its campus, they just planted grass. Then they waited a year and looked at where people had made paths in the grass and built the sidewalks there.
I have no idea if this is true, but I like to think it is– one of those “why didn’t I think of that?” ideas.
The Jon Weekly Show
Wednesday 8 October 2014
Via Political Wire
Before choosing Chuck Todd, NBC News president Deborah Turness held negotiations with Jon Stewart about hosting “Meet the Press,” three senior television sources tell New York magazine.
One source explained that NBC was prepared to offer Stewart virtually “anything” to bring him over.
What I would give to have been a fly on the wall during those meetings…
Update: But seriously, the fact that NBC considered Jon Stewart to host one of the oldest and most storied institutions in television is shameful and embarrassing. Jon Stewart isn’t a journalist, he’s a comedian. And a very funny and effective one at that. But just a comedian, nonetheless.
Meet The Press isn’t a comedy show. To treat it as such, hoping to get a quick bump in ratings, is disrespectful to the American public. Meet The Press is where the issues should be debated, where our Representatives and Senators should be questioned on their positioned. In recent years it’s turned into somewhat of an echo chamber. But placing Stewart at the helm would have erased any influence the show still maintains.
I shutter to think what Tim Russert would think.
Someone In Desperate Need Of The Colbert Bump
Friday 3 October 2014
Dick Cavett, writing on his NYT Opinionator blog, back in 2013:
And speaking of Dave’s presumably stepping aside some sad day, if CBS is smart, there is in full view a self-evident successor to The Big L. of Indiana.
I can testify, as can anyone who’s met him and seen him as himself, how much more there is to Stephen Colbert than the genius job he does in his “role” on “The Colbert Report.” Everything about him — as himself — qualifies him for that chair at the Ed Sullivan Theater that Letterman has so deftly and expertly warmed for so long. Colbert is, among other virtues, endowed with a first-rate mind, a great ad-lib wit, skilled comic movement and gesture, fine education, seemingly unlimited knowledge of affairs and events and, from delightful occasional evidence, those things called The Liberal Arts — I’ll bet you he could name the author of “Peregrine Pickle.” And on top of that largess of qualities (and I hope he won’t take me the wrong way here), good looks.
Should such a day come, don’t blow it, CBS.
Wow did Mr. Cavett nail it, over a year before Letterman announced his retirement in 2015– which means you could argue that Mr. Cavett called it over two years before everything would transpire. I wholeheartedly agree that Stephen Colbert will do a phenomenal job.
And as an aside, Northwestern University will be nicely represented across both networks: Stephen Colbert at CBS and Seth Meyers at NBC.