Who's that knocking at my window?

On a humorous note, it was nice to see year end episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Of course, they didn't go very far in this episode. The President seems remarkably relaxed, but that has been his hallmark throughout his tenure. He took to the '63 Stingray as if it was his own.

I was a bit surprised by the banality of the coffee break room in the White House. One would think this place could be jazzed up a little with one of those vintage espresso makers with a bald eagle on top, but I guess Mr. Coffee is tres americain.

President Obama has received a lot of flack over the years for engaging in talk shows and humorous interviews, including a memorable episode of Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis early last year. It's OK to appear on Laugh-In or the The Tonight Show if you are campaigning for the Presidency, but there are those who consider this beneath the office of the Presidency to engage in such chatter while in the Oval Office. Yet, here was Obama letting Jerry Seinfeld munch on an apple while he finished up some business before going out for a short drive in Jerry's Corvette.

Bill Clinton was probably the first sitting president to use the talk show circuit as a way of striking back at all the late night comedians who made him the butt of their political jokes. It was a way of showing he was a good sport, and that's pretty much the way Obama approaches it too, often giving as good as he gets, as was the case with Zach. George Bush wasn't very quick on his feet so it is understandable that he avoided these talk shows, preferring to get his digs in at press conferences.

The talk shows are generally seen as being Democratic-friendly, which is another reason Bush made very few appearances. He did go on Dr. Phil back in 2004, but the pop psychologist is more friendly to conservatives and the interview was staged at his Crawford Texas Ranch. Dana Perino considered the late night talk shows a no-go zone for the former President.

However, Obama hasn't been afraid to step into the lion's den, letting himself be interviewed by "Papa Bear" O'Reilly twice. It is hard to think of O'Reilly as a serious journalist, but that's who Fox chose to have interview the President in what has now become the annual Super Bowl interview. O'Reilly was determined to take down the president, turning the interview into an inquisition. Last Year, NBC took a lighter approach, going into the President's kitchen.

Like it or not, President Obama has definitely changed the dynamic of the interview, using it as a way to engage with the television audience, often in refreshing ways that allow the public to see the President with his guard down. Of course, these interviews are well scripted, and Obama very much knows what's coming and has time to respond. Just the same, there was a friendly spontaneity to the Seinfeld interview.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

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