Obama changes Wed. press conference timing to accommodate NBC and Susan Boyle

[Captain Hilts]

I've got to be honest, I was wondering how long this would take to happen seeing both were on at the same time...

http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/tv/2009/07/susan-boyle-causes-obama-to-move-press-conference.html

http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2009/07/21/obama-shifts-health-presser-for-nbc-the-hoff/?iid=tsmodule

America's Got Talent. And, Wednesday night, America is getting yet another President Obama press conference, this one focused on the President's pitch for health-coverage legislation. Can it get both?

It will on NBC, which agreed to carry the press conference after the White House moved it an hour earlier, guaranteeing that David Hasselhoff would still be able to judge child singers and circus acts on the network's highest-rated summer show.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

1. Healthcare comes and healthcare goes, but Susan Boyle is forever

:silly:

[Captain Hilts]

2. Well, somehow the shittiest national healthcare there is - Britain's NHS - has kept her alive.

There you go.

[MADem]

3. Their healthcare isn't shitty. It's basic in some overserved areas, but it's

not awful. It's certainly better than none.

[Captain Hilts]

5. I agree. But it has a terrible reputation. And it works fine.

Despite the Scottish diet.

The Guardian defends Boyle's right to say 'fuck':

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/31/susan-boyle-media-effect-twitter

[MADem]

7. That article's brilliant! "Of course she swore. She's from West Lothian!"

I don't like his conclusion, though. I was looking forward to an album, actually.



The picture that graces many of Britain's front pages this morning is of a Scottish woman with crinkly hair whose mother, Bridget, an Irish immigrant shorthand typist, experienced difficulties during birth. Susan Boyle was deprived of oxygen for a number of minutes and has had learning difficulties since. She was born three months before Diana Princess of Wales; four months before me. Susan has rarely held a proper job, caring instead for her mother, who died two years ago at the age of 91. Susan likes to sing, and is really rather fine at it.

The picture needs words of explanation. Because it could mark, and should mark, a moment of national reappraisal. Never in our fast-changing history, until Susan Boyle, have we managed to quite so swiftly canonise and then pillory another
human being, for our own titillation. For our own grubby, voyeuristic amusement: just because we could.

It was just six weeks ago, on 11 April, that Susan first sang on Britain's Got Talent and became an instant hit. Then, in the semi-finals, rather than being jailed for consciously singing a song written by Andrew Lloyd Webber while not actually being held at gunpoint, her success continued. Through the internet, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. We all watched, and watched again, the starched brows of the judging panel crinkle to genuine emotion; the sneers of the audience cartoon into delight.

Then, of course, we started discussing her. America joined in. And so the world had its say. On Susan. On every blog and website: on every online newspaper asking the mob to fill their pages for them. On her hair and her voice. On her figure. On her accent. On, most recently, her swearing, after she got rightly peeved at a couple mocking her....Of course she swore. She's from West Lothian. She drank, normally in a corner alone, in her local pub (called, with savage Scots humour, the Happy Valley). She swore with the best of them. Hell, if he'd been brought up there, Terry Waite would swear the hole out of a drunken navvie. And sometimes she would get up and sing, and her singing was lovely, and it was what people liked about the lass they'd called "Simple Susan". That, and her love for her mother.....

[KansDem]

4. Man! Just when I thought it was safe to come out after the colossal Jackoganza...

...now SB comes on the scene...again!

[Captain Hilts]

6. It's fookin' great! As Sue would say....nt

[FrenchieCat]

8. Walter Cronkite understood this long ago......

We Americans get what we deserve, or at least what we don't seem to mind so much!

[Abq_Sarah]

9. Presidential news conferences have always

Been seen as a no-win situation by broadcasters. They lose ad revenue during the news conferences and when the President schedules a conference during a networks most highly viewed show, they can lose a sizable chunk of revenue.

[Captain Hilts]

10. They should rotate networks. Clinton pretty much gave up on prime-time ones. nt

[marshall]

12. I thought the administration decided to use NBC solely

NBC may lose ad revenues but they will make up for it with karma.

[Hippo_Tron]

13. We give them the airwaves to do as they wish 99% of the time

It is in the public interest to show presidential press conferences, political conventions, state of the union addresses, etc. and thus the networks should be forced to air them even if they suffer a revenue loss.

[Freddie Stubbs]

16. If people want to watch politics instead of entertainment, they have the remote control

It is in the public interest for people to have choices what to watch, not be dictated by the government.

[Hippo_Tron]

18. Some people don't have cable

[Captain Hilts]

19. I have NO televison right now as I can't pick up an HDTV signal. nt

[Captain Hilts]

11. Okay, one weblog calls it PresBO vs. SuBo. nt

[Captain Hilts]

14. The Independent:Bigger Than Barack: Boyle Forces President to Move Speech

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bigger-than-barack-boyle-forces-president-to-move-speech-1755890.html

[Cha]

15. And, the President doesn't mind because Americans

Health Care is the most important issue right now.

[Captain Hilts]

17. Yes, it is. And I'm liking what I'm hearing him say. nt