As you may have heard, President Obama is going to appear on five Sunday shows this Sunday (rumor has it that McCain is despondent to learn that he hasn’t actually been President for the last eight months).
That, by itself, is notable. But there’s another notable detail about Obama’s Sunday blitz. Here are the five shows on which Obama will appear:
- CBS’ Face the Nation
- NBC’s Meet the Press
- ABC’s This Week
- CNN’s State of the Union
- Univision’s Al Punto
Note the last one: instead of rounding out the top five with Fox News Sunday, Obama is appearing on Univision’s Sunday show, Al Punto.
Now, this not the first time that Presidents have appeared on Univision: Clinton appeared on Univision five times, W was on six times, and Obama has done a couple of interviews with Univision as well.
But this is the first time a Obama is the first President who has appeared will appear on Al Punto (the show started in September 2007, at the same time as Univision was hosting a Presidential debate) [correction: Obama has been on before].
As such, it seems to me, it ought to focus some attention on Al Punto’s role in the Sunday line-up. And, as it turns out, the White House can justify blowing off Fox for Univision not just to reach out to Latinos rather than white racists. According to Univision’s corporate communications, Al Punto (531,000) does better than FNS (417,000) in the all-important 18-49 demographic (and has done so for the last 10 months), and it often beats CBS’ Face the Nation in that demo as well.
The white racists are in a tizzy crying that Obama is unfair in ignoring Fox.
[Joe "You Lie!"] Wilson, who was reprimanded this week by the House for his outburst at Obama last week, said that by excluding Fox, the president was not being fair.
“If people are going to be on the Sunday talk shows, they should be on all of them,” Wilson said.
Wilson, incidentally, appeared on “Fox News Sunday” last week, but not on any of the other Sunday shows.
Rep. Pete Sessions (Texas), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told The Hill that Obama has “handpicked” his audience.
“I think that Fox News would ask some realistic questions that members of Congress are asked and the American public is aaaasking. And he’s the one who’s choosing not to take part in that,” Sessions said on Wednesday.
But what’s really going on is that Obama has chosen to appear on the more popular show. Of course, as it turns out, Latino news is more popular among key demographics than white racist news, at least on Sunday shows. Which might explain why people like Joe Wilson are so upset.