http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/zontv/2008/11/barc.html'60 Minutes' and Obama: TV to calm a jittery nationTalk about television as a social force in American life.
Last night, a correspondent from the number one show on network TV conducted an interview with the number one "get" in the nation, and millions of Americans could go to bed feeling reassured that someone with brains, determination and grace was working on their behalf to help the country out of the horrible mess in which it is mired.
The correspondent was Steve Kroft, of the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes, which last week was the highest rated series on television with an audience of 18.5 million. You remember 60 Minutes, that’s the "dinosaur" many of the media pundits pronounced dead a decade ago.
The "get" was President-elected Barack Obama for the first half-hour of last night’s show, and then, Barack and Michelle Obama for the second half. In some ways, the full hour combined the reassurance of a Franklin Delano Roosevelt Fireside Chat with the First-Family-friendliness of Jackie Kennedy’s TV tour of the White House. But it was all re-fashioned into a smart and in-depth but casual feeling TV conversation for a mainstream audience of today.
What a smart choice 60 minutes made in breaking the show into two parts, and what a splendid job Kroft did of being prepared and touching many of the bases that needed touching by the reporter who got the exclusive with the man on whom a battered nation’s hopes now ride.
- snip -
Here are some of the bites:
STEVE KROFT: Once you become President are there things that you'll change?
BARACK OBAMA: We have not focused on foreclosures and what's happening to homeowners as much as I would like…We've got to…set up a negotiation between banks and borrowers so that people can stay in their homes. That is going to have an impact on the economy as a whole. And, you know, one thing I'm determined is that if we don't have a clear focused program for homeowners by the time I take office, we will after I take office.
- snip -
STEVE KROFT: Have there been moments when you've said, ‘What did I get myself into?’
BARACK OBAMA: I will say that the challenges that we're confronting are enormous. And they're multiple. And so there are times during the course of a given a day where you think, "Where do I start in terms of moving-- moving things forward?" And I think that part of this next two months is to really get a clear set of priorities, understanding we're not going be able to do everything at once, making sure the team is in place, and moving forward in a very deliberate way and sending a clear signal to the American people that we're going to be thinking about them and what they're going through.
Reassuring, but with a healthy dose of adult reality about the sacrifice ahead.
The second half of the show with Michelle Obama sitting alongside the president-elect was a delight. It brought the couple that had become iconic since Nov. 4 back to a human scale, with her teasing him about the shabby apartment and the ramshackle car he had when they first met, and him kidding about how carefully chooses his words when talking his mother-in-law.
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