Leno's Huckabee Bounce or Vice Versa? (The TV Zone)

Last night's Leno Redux reminded everyone (awake) exactly what sort of role these shows play at moments like this - the provision of a nice bright sheen to a politician battling for one last vote in a breadbasket state like Iowa (where they probably actually prefer "Tonight" over "Late Show.") Mike Huckabee showed up after a long day of rumors that he would not - reportedly shaken by the fact that (ohmygod) there's a strike going on and mustn't alienate the fifty unionized employees who actually vote in the Iowa caucus!

He was there and he was quite good, and if somehow miraculously 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, and no reason to take my word - here's just one YouTube clip that actually begins with his musical stand-up.

Of course, we all know viewer/voters are hip to this sort of slick political gimmicky, don't we? Oh yeah...

The usually sober AP even zapped Huckabee's supposed flip-flop on "Tonight" with this report filed long before it was clear he would trade jokes with Jay:

"Mike Huckabee once again displayed an inability to grasp the facts of a conflict when he said he didn’t know he was crossing a picket line to appear on the Late Night with Jay Leno on NBC last night.Campaigning earlier yesterday in Iowa, Huckabee said he believed the writers had agreed to allow late-night shows on the air, the Associated Press reported. But when told that only David Letterman and fellow CBS host Craig Ferguson struck deals allowing writers to come back to work, Huckabee murmured, "Hmmm," and, "Oh."

Meanwhile, wonderful to have both Dave/Jay back last night. "'Caucus' is a Greek word," explained Jay, "which means 'the only day anyone pays attention to Iowa.'"

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Comments (33)

Posted by Tracy Hall Jr | January 3, 2008 13:02

As long as we're learning Greek, here's the word for the day, which explains Huckabee's "non-use" of his attack ad:

Paraleipsis \Par`a*leip"sis\, n. [NL., fr. Gr. ?, fr. ? to leave on one side, to omit; ? beside + ? to leave.] (Rhet.) A pretended or apparent omission; a figure by which a speaker artfully pretends to pass by what he really mentions; as, for example, if an orator should say, ``I do not speak of my adversary's scandalous venality and rapacity, his brutal conduct, his treachery and malice.'' [Written also paralepsis, paralepsy, paralipsis .]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/paralepsis

hthalljr'gmail'com

Posted by Jill | January 4, 2008 16:45

The brief period of time when politicians could milk the comedy shows for a bump in the polls is over. It became so overt that any "senese of humor" they displayed in that brief appearance was sometimes as fabricated as their political positions, the trick didn't work anymore. Some folks are funny, so ain't. But they all try to play a funny person to improve their image. Satire ought to fight back by pretending to be serious: http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s2i28439

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