Ticket Replay: CNN's Toobin reveals what 'analysts' prefer to watch
This week The Ticket is republishing some of our favorite items from this past political season. This humorous item (or, humourous if you're reading this in Canada) originally appeared in this pace on Oct. 6, 2008. Check back here in a couple of hours for a follow-up item that makes this one even worse:
You know how you watch these presidential and vice presidential debates on television, as a near record number of us did last Thursday with Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, and millions more will tomorrow night from Nashville with John McCain and Barack Obama?
And then afterward the networks switch to what seems to be a palpably proliferating panoply of pundits who tell us all instantly and precisely who won, who scored and lost points and what it all means for America's future? And they keep consulting open laptops for their perceptive notes and quotes?
And sometimes you wonder who appointed them and what makes them think they know more than you?
Well, maybe they don't. The brilliantly observant folks over at Gizmodo.com were watching CNN's political palaverers, including here on the nearest end the big legal expert Jeffrey Toobin. Here's a photo of the panel during coverage of last Thursday night's vice presidential debate:
But the clever Gizmodo.com folks didn't leave it there. They examined the photo more closely.
To see what shocking image they actually found, click on the "Read more" line below.
Ooops, Toobin wasn't even watching the debate. He was pontificating about it, but not watching it at all.
He was watching the baseball playoffs on his laptop. See the embarrassing enlargement of the first photo here:
Do you suppose the other CNN "analysts" were watching Fox News to crib their insights? Here's the full Gizmodo story.
-- Andrew Malcolm
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Photo credit: Gizmodo.com
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Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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