I completely forgot it!
What instrument does Harris play?
Oh, here’s an answer.
“I played the French horn. I also played the xylophone and the vibraphone,” the Vice President said, before adding, “and the kettle drums”, which received a roar of enthusiasm from the young musicians.
I don’t think playing the xylophone on Kimmel will win her votes but who knows.
No, but if she can still tune timpani by ear I’ll at least be impressed.
Needless to say, it’s a different media environment today versus 32 years ago – pre-popular-Internet, for starters. Clinton was definitely getting on the radar of young voters (esp college-age first-time voters) by going on Arsenio Hall and doing something memorable (playing the sax).
I’m not sure there’s anything quite equivalent in today’s media environment, but Harris going on podcasts and such in 2024 plays to much of the same voting bloc as Arsenio Hall’s program did in 1992.
I don’t remember him on Arsenio, though I don’t think we watched it for whatever reason. I do remember him playing sax on the tonight show.
They may need to hum a few bars.
Long enough ago my memory fails … I sit corrected. Gawd I barely remember Arsenio Hall! I just remember playing the sax and recovering in public opinion.
That’s how I always did it. Well, for getting the pedal movements right and all. Hum quietly into the head.
Anyway, I wonder what the impact will be. I see the argument that going so non-linear these days means that the audience is fractured and that a candidate may only get true believers to actually listen. So then it’d depend on the reporting of the content, which I swear is more likely to be how most will hear of it. Which could be worse, due to out of context or perhaps completely fabricated reporting. For example, I’ve not seen the 60 Minutes content, but I did see a posting of a tweet that claimed this as a response from Harris: “Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes: The work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.”
Which of course hits at the criticisms of her speaking style.
And yet it’s still more coherent than Donald Trump any time of the day or night.
But she’s the one hit for creating “word salad.”
Thing is, I don’t even know if it’s a true quote. But it’s believable, which is the danger really to any candidate.
I recall when candidate Donald Trump went on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in 2016, right before the election. They were pretty jokey with each other, and then Fallon asks Trump about his hair, leading Fallon asking Trump if he could rub his hair. Trump smiled and agreed, and Fallon playfully mussed Trump’s hair with Trump smiling. Ugh. I turned to my wife and commented that that might win the election for Trump: “See, he’s an ordinary, fun guy.”
I was hoping Colbert would muss Harris’ hair, but that would be kind of inappropriate in so many ways.
It worked for Obama. The White House even brewed beer while he was there.
Harris knocking back a cold one does not bother me.
Yes I was remembering right!!
It was the aftermath of his DNC lsnoozefest which he bombed badly. Carson’s show is credited with saving his career.
So how did he go from the laughingstock of the 1988 convention to the 1992 Democratic presidential nominee? Riley credited a subsequent appearance on the most popular late-night talk show of the time, The Late Show With Johnny Carson, with saving Clinton’s career.
My memory of Clinton playing the sax has been overlain by the Animaniacs opening theme.
That was indeed a thing.
Jay Kuo, in his Status Kuo Substack, summarized and contextualized both Harris’ and Trump’s media moments this week. Kuo presents demographic breakdowns of the various outlets on which Harris appeared to present the comprehensiveness of her campaign’s approach to media: The Call Her Daddy podcast reached many millions of young women; The View reached millions of middle-aged women; Howard Stern reached millions of non-college-educated men; 60 Minutes reached many traditional media consumers (older); and Steven Colbert reached less traditional media consumers (younger).
In sum:
In the quest for the centrist voters who will decide the election, Harris is building bridges, while Trump continues to slink beneath them.
Harris went alone on to 60 Minutes, indicating she’s tough and ready to answer questions from the media. Trump was nowhere to be seen. Women watching The View were thinking about how much Harris’s proposal around elder care might help them, not only in their current need to take care of their aging parents, but also when they themselves might need such care in a couple decades.
Millions of gettable voters, including Republican and independent women, heard Harris talk about abortion and the need for women to be something other than humble. And non-college educated white men heard their hero, Howard Stern, call Harris the law and order candidate and endorse her without reservation.
… Harris is moving the needle with voters through affirmative outreach to anyone willing to hear more about her. We are seeing this show up in the polling, which keeps inching her way.
That’s a botch of research and fact checking. Arsenio’s show was The Arsenio Hall Show. Carson’s was The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. NBC and David Letterman owned The Late Show. A mistake like that makes me wonder which show the author is actually trying to credit.
From 1982 to 1993, Letterman’s show on NBC was Late Night with David Letterman, at 12:30 am, after Carson. I’m pretty sure that Letterman didn’t own it, NBC did. That was one of the attractions of going to CBS in 1993: he could own the show.
From 1986 to 1988, The Late Show was a Fox program competing with Carson, hosted by Joan Rivers. (IIRC, it was her attempt to get back at a Carson for snubbing her bid to be permanent guest host.)
From 1993 to 2015, Letterman hosted The Late Show with David Letterman on CBS.
“Right now”—yes. Late this afternoon the forecasters finally committed to the area of landfall of the hurricane, which is crucial information for many.
Yesterday (Tuesday)? Day-before-yesterday (Monday)? No. No one could predict the path of the hurricane other than a hundreds-of-miles cone. There was no information in the map the guy was standing in front of, other than ‘there’s a hurricane out there.’ And a half hour of that, which conveniently pre-empted the Harris and Walz interviews, told no one anything they didn’t already know.
Your comment makes no sense for the situation at the time I was posting. At the time I was posting, the number of potential paths of the hurricane could be covered in depth during the actual news shows, and could be placed in the corner of the screen during the 60 Minutes interviews with no loss of information. Because there wasn’t any information other than the pic of the hurricane out in the Gulf.
Pre-empting Wednesday-night programming? Makes sense. Those who still have power and TV or internet will want to know the details of what’s happening.
Pre-empting Monday-night programming? Makes sense only for venal purposes, such as grabbing commercials-revenue (and they WERE running commercials). Makes sense for political purposes too, perhaps.
Anyway. For the point of this thread, the part that matters is that late night entertainment talk show appearances have value. See Bill Clinton’s experience.
(deleted, avoiding hijack)