It's too bad NBC had such an important NFL football game Sunday night. Maybe the peacock network could have given a free showcase to President Obama as ABC and CBS did, and we could have had an all-Obama night of prime-time TV straight from 7 to 11 p.m. on the Big Three networks.
Prime time began with a yet another "60 Minutes" Steve Kroft interview with the president at 7 p.m., and it ended with an Oprah Winfrey's "Christmas at the White House" special from 10 to 11. Maybe this is what network TV will look like after Team Obama nationalizes it along with the auto industry and health care -- wall to wall prime-time specials and interviews showcasing the president.
Seriously, Presidents Kennedy and Reagan were skilled TV presidents with savvy media handlers, but never has prime-time entertainment TV been so exploited by the White House for political purposes. As I have said before, when the going gets tough, President Obama gets air time.
In fairness, I thought Kroft did a tougher interview than any of the others he has done with Obama in the last year. And you could see the president actually bristle when this previously tame interviewer suddenly posed a question that implied the president's West Point speech on Afghanistan was contradictory and met with confusion.
In the end, though, Kroft did let him talk tough about the bankers who are giving themselves huge bonuses again, even though the White house consistently favors those same large bankers in its monetary policies and never takes them on in any concrete way. That's why the big banks keep behaving ooutrageously: They know President Obama won't take them on. So, he goes on TV and talks tough. That's what I mean about Team Obama exploiting the medium for political purposes.
He has a chance Monday to tell the bankers to give the bonuses back. But I suspect once again he will just talk tough as he has been doing on TV. This time he'll talk the talk in soundbites for the evening news -- and have the photo op of bringing the bankers together to "show" how tough he is. And then, the bankers will be the ones walking the walk -- back to their desks and business as usual with big bonus checks for themselves and their senior management teams. Merry Christmas from the White House to all of you on the unemployment lines.
But "60 Minutes" couldn't hold a candle to Oprah when it came to serving the president's political ends Sunday night.
Look, It was a pleasant hour with the president and Michelle Obama showing Oprah around the White House in all its Christmas glory. And other presidents have done such broadcasts with favored reporters. Oprah, though, isn't so much a reporter as she is a king maker, given the role she played in helping Candidate Obama become President Obama. In that sense, the lucrative hour of prime-time TV could be read as a Chicago-style payback by him to her for the helping hand she extended -- and public airwaves should not be so used.
But even that doesn't bother me as much as Oprah constantly feeding him slow pitch softballs so he can say how much he cares about the folks who are unemployed and how much he "agonized" over his decision to send more troops to Afganistan.
If you want to do a Christmas special, stick to Christma stuff. Don't use the mistletoe and Christmas tree as a backdrop for him to spin his West Point speech that has been criticized by both the right and the left -- or to try and spin the unemployment numbers that are driving down his poll ratings.
I am not going to rant, but I do need to mention one thing that really troubled me. If President Obama is as sensitive to the millions of people who are out of work and won't have money to buy gifts this holiday season as he claimed to be over and over during interviews with Kroft and Winfrey Sunday, he should have been more careful in attracting attention to the very expensive looking pearl necklace Michelle Obama was wearing. It was gorgeous, and he proudly pointed out that he bought it for her as an anniversary present. He even reached over and touched it as he spoke about his superior qualities as a giver of gifts.
And just like the TV Chistmas ads that equate being a good lover or spouse with your ability to buy expensive jewelry, he made millions of viewers feel a little worse about themselves and all that they can't affored to buy the people they love this Christmas.
