Media goes into overdrive for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding
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Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton’s wedding on Saturday has taken on the trappings of a royal affair — at least when it comes to the media glare. CBS News announced Thursday that the weekend edition of “The Early Show” will broadcast a live special called “A Chelsea Morning” to kick off the wedding festivities Saturday.
Anchor Erica Hill will be live on location in Rhinebeck, N.Y., where Clinton is set to marry Marc Mezvinsky. The newscast will feature a piece examining the interest in presidential children with commentary from historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. A news release from CBS said the special will also offer an intimate look at how Clinton “developed from a pre-teen to the self-assured young woman who campaigned alongside her mother in 2008.” Jim Langan, executive editor of the Hudson Valley News, will weigh in on how the affair has impacted the town.
Despite the Clintons’ efforts to keep the wedding under wraps, Rhinebeck promises to be besieged with reporters Saturday trying to lap up details. For weeks, the New York tabloids have been filled with tidbits — some purely speculative — about the event. The Daily News guessed the final tab will run $3 million for what it has dubbed “the wedding of the millennium.” On Thursday it ran photos of the wedding site, snapped from the air, with a map detailing where the festivities will take place. Even the fashion press has gotten into the action, with Women’s Wear Daily splashing on its cover a photo of Clinton hidden underneath a floppy sunhat on her way to visit designer Vera Wang.
The frenzy is a marked contrast to the more restrained coverage of Jenna Bush’s 2008 wedding, held in Crawford while her father was still president.
On Thursday, the Internet buzzed with the news that President Obama was not one of the reported 500 guests invited to the nuptials, as previously reported. But he tried to quell any frisson, telling the hosts of “The View:” “You don’t want two presidents at a wedding.”
-- Matea Gold