David Letterman officially made his return to late-night television just after 4:30 on Wednesday afternoon, when he opened the taping of Wednesday night’s show by passing through a chorus line of long-legged showgirls clad in white tie and bearing placards that read, “Writers Guild of America on Strike.”
After the taping was concluded, the show’s producers inserted a one-line joke to precede the host’s entrance — delivered not by Mr. Letterman but by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, via satellite from Iowa, on the eve of the state’s presidential caucuses.
“Dave has been off the air for eight long weeks due to the writers’ strike,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Tonight he’s back. Oh well. All good things come to an end.”
Mr. Letterman’s “Late Show” had been in reruns for two month — enough time for the host to grow a thick gray beard, which he did not shave — ever since the writers for his show, and those of other television shows and movies, went on strike against the networks and production companies to demand more revenue from the Internet and other new media.
Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel are also preparing to return to their late-night perches on Wednesday night, but without benefit of their writers, who remain on strike.
By contrast, Letterman, whose show goes on the air at 11:30 p.m on CBS, and Craig Ferguson, who follows him at 12:30 a.m., were able to draw on a full complement of their writers because of a side deal reached last week between Mr. Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, and the writers’ guild.
Letterman, whose first guest was Robin Williams, devoted much of Wednesday night’s taping to jokes about his time off and the strike.
“Without writers and without caffeine, I’d have virtually no personality whatsoever,” he told the audience at the Ed Sullivan Theater in midtown Manhattan.
The most unusual moment came during his regular “Top 10 List,” in which 10 striking writers — including those from O’Brien’s show, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” — presented their tongue-in-cheek demands of their employers.
One of the few mostly serious moments came when Bill Scheft, a writer for the show who described himself as its “strike captain,” interrupted a bit the host was doing about electrically heated underpants (the better to keep a striking writer warm, apparently).
From next to the host’s desk, and with Paul Shaffer playing “Look for the Union Label” on piano in the background, Mr. Scheft urged Hollywood producers to “stick a crowbar in your wallets and start bargaining in good faith with the writers.”
Letterman was in obviously high spirits, and never missed an opportunity to make fun of himself and his beard.
“I know what you’re thinking to yourself: Dave looks like a missing hiker,” he said, before adding later that it had been brought to his attention that he now resembled a younger Kenny Rogers.
“Ladies and gentleman, General Lee,” Mr. Williams said, when it was his turn, before he added, “Nice to be with you, rabbi.”
Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee appeared on the restarted Tonight Show, with Jay Leno.
There’s a big difference between Hillary’s spot on Letterman and Huckabee’s appearance on Leno. Letterman owns his production company and has signed a deal with the WGA. Leno’s producers, NBC, has not; so Huck is crossing the picket line…
Huckabee on Wednesday professed his support for the striking television writers union just a few hours before he was expected to board a plane for a taping of the “Tonight Show” with Jay Leno where he will face a vocal picket line of striking writers.
Leno’s program is returning to the air for the first time since the strike began on Nov. 5. Speaking to reporters, Mr. Huckabee said he was unaware that he would be crossing a picket line and believed that the program had reached a special agreement with the union.
Typical Mike Huckabee. He is totally clueless on so many issues.
However, he was quite good on the show. If somehow miraculously he pulls off a win tonight, that slick jam on bass with Kevin Eubanks will go down as a nice asterisk in political history (not quite Bill on sax, but it'll do.) The guy's a very poised talk show guest.
Tonight, the caucus-goers of Iowa will trudge through the snow and drizzle and gently, calmly tear the Republican Party into a dozen different shreds.
The Republicans will vote for men with wildly conflicting visions to be their candidate for President: the plastic Mormon-marketeering of Mitt Romney, the theocratic fever of Mike Huckabee, the near-anarchism of Ron Paul.
After seven years of Bush, American conservatism is coming apart at the seams, dazed and foggy about where to go now.
The first contest in the US presidential primaries is a perversion of democracy that does not deserve to be taken seriously
Hillary herself has become, at 60, absolutely formidable. Superbly briefed on every issue, almost word perfect, scarcely ever putting a foot wrong, tried and tested as few human beings have been.
At a cattle auction site in Ames, Iowa, the other day, she joked that they could "look inside [her] mouth", as farmers do with cattle, if it helped them to make up their minds.
Few of Huckabee’s critics have actually come out and said what many of them think. The language is coded, as it usually is with class and race in this country.
The Wall Street Journal, the anti-tax jihadists at the Club For Growth, the National Review – these pillars of Old School Republicanism have signaled that Huckabee is Not One of Ours. But they’re careful to say it’s not about class, because, of course – it is!
"Charlie Wilson’s War" [Tom Hanks as the "white saviour"] is the latest Hollywood blockbuster to promote underlying cultural stereotypes of Third World peoples and Muslims, while sanitizing the American record and its promotion of imperial violence.
The appointment of Benazir Bhutto’s son and husband to the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is a stark reminder of the absurdity of Pakistan’s condition. How could democracy thrive while feudalism remains so dominant in society?
For the 2008 presidential election, Ann Lewis, senior campaign adviser for Clinton's campaign, has identified A new voting bloc: the Single Anxious Female, or SAF, that was mocked even as it was incorporated wholesale into election analysis.
The Democratic race — three lawyers married to lawyers who talk too much — is tight and volatile. The jittery pack of seasoned political operatives gazing into their BlackBerrys doesn’t have a clue which way the Iowa snowdrifts are blowing.
Bhutto was the ideal US front for "democracy." She was articulate when speaking the lies of imperialism (the propaganda of democracy) and could even appeal to some of the Islamophobic liberal-left crowd with her fake social-democratic credentials.
Shopping is America?s true national pastime, and not just during the holidays - which simply exacerbate the condition. Like our other pastimes - football, gambling, drinking, porn - shopping can change from guilty pleasure to nasty addiction.
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