(Photo: Getty)

At a press conference earlier today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced public schools will continue be closed on Thursday and Friday, but will "hopefully" be open again on Monday of next week.

"Schools will remain closed for students tomorrow and Friday," Mr. Bloomberg said. “However, on Friday we ask all teachers, administrators and school staff to report to work. Friday, Chancellor Walcott and the Department of Education will have lots of things to do to get ready for next week."

As for parents who will struggle with the simultaneous tasks of taking care of their children and needing to go to work, Mr. Bloomberg sympathized with their plight but said the damage from Hurricane Sandy was too great.

"I know this is a great inconvenience for parents who are missing work because they don't have anyone to take care of their kids," he said. "But the bottom line is that there are an awful lot of schools that have received damage or don't have power. It's just so many that, in the end, we need the next four or five days to clean up and hopefully, by Monday, everything will be back perfect."

George Will vs. Jesse LaGreca on ABC's "This Week"

Occupy Wall Street's articulate champion of the Nu-New Left, Jesse LaGreca, finally made it to air this Sunday when he was invited on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour. Watch the Daily Kos writer made famous by his un-aired Fox News interview hold his own against the likes of George Will and Peggy Noonan. We've also transcribed Mr. LaGreca's segment below for those of you at work without headphones.

Christiane Amanpour: Okay, we've spoken a lot about them, now I'm going to bring in Jesse LaGreca, who is a blogger for the liberal website Daily Kos, and he's been a fixture at the Wall Street Protests. So Jesse, you've been listening to all of these descriptions of your movement, where do you come down? We've talked about it being immature, it hasn't had a policy, a sort of directives...what is it that you are trying to consolidate around there?

Jesse LaGreca: Well I think that the matter at hand is that the working class people in America - 99% of Americans who aren't wealthy and aren't prospering in this economy - have been entirely ignored by the media. Our political leaders pander to us but they don't take action, they stand in the way of change, they filibuster on behalf of the wealthiest 1%, and they fold around the wealthiest 1%. So the conversation we need to have is about the future; what kind of country we really want to be. And I think the most important thing we can do in this occupation is to continue to push the narrative that's been ignored by so many pundits and political leaders. I mean, the reality is that I'm the only working class person you're going to see on Sunday news... political news... maybe ever. And I think that is very indicative of the failures of our media to report on the news that matter most importantly...

Christiane Amanpour: (cutting in)...We are trying our best, Jesse..

Jesse LaGreca: Thank you.

Christiane Amanpour: And I wanted to ask you: Some of your most vociferous supporters like our colleague Paul Krugman have spoken quite glowingly about this populist movement. And you've even heard people around this table say that it should be harnessed. But you also say that it's the moment now to try and perhaps translate that into some kind of political question... political demand. Is there something that you can make this about?

Jesse LaGreca: I think the entire movement is about economic justice. I mean to me - and I'm not speaking on behalf of Occupy Wall Street, I'm just giving my personal opinion - I think it's a matter of economic rights, and I think it's a matter of social rights, and social justice. And to the people who would take offense to the word "social" being placed before the word "justice," I'd invite them to re-read the Constitution.

Christiane Amanpour: Let me ask George Will, who wanted to ask you a short question.

George Will: Mr. LaGreca, I hear a certain dissonance in your message: Your message which is that Washington is corrupt, Washington is the handmaiden to powerful, and a lot of conservatives would agree with that. But then you say that this corrupt handmaiden to the powerful should be much more powerful in regulating our lives. Why would you want a corrupt government bigger in our lives?

Jesse LaGreca: You know, I find that a lot of these conversations about government tend to deflect away from Wall Street, because let's be honest: the lobbyists have enormous power, and they've shut out a lot of the voice of the American people. So I think we should demand a government that is listening to people, and I find it ironic that when people demand action from their government, suddenly people tend to overreact and say "That is uncontrollable government." Our government is a function of our democracy; by attacking our government we are attacking democracy. So to me, yes, I think the government should represent the will of the people, and if the will of the people are demanding action, then they should follow suite.

Christiane Amanpour: Do you think these demonstrations are going to have momentum? Is it going to continue now, day after day?

Jesse LaGreca: Absolutely. People are extremely excited about what we are doing. We're engaging in a direct democracy conversation. I mean, the General Assembly is really the new town hall, and we don't have filibusters, we don't have lobbyists, we don't have a system that can be co-opted. And I invite anybody to come down and talk to us.

(Ms. Noonan says some B.S. about the Brooklyn Bridge protests.)

Christiane Amanpour: You know we're going to have to ask Jesse that really quickly. Jesse, are you going to harness this into a movement, or are you going to hang out for months?

Jesse LaGreca: You know what I find amusing is that now people are looking to us to solve the political problems...and they should. But I'm not going to support one party or the other, I'm not going to tell you who to vote for, but I will encourage you to be a voter. I think we have succeeded tremendously in pushing the narrative that working class people can no longer be ignored, and I think it's very important that we have this conversation, because it is about the future of our country. You know, right now working class people are being told to sacrifice, we're being told that our future is going to have to be put on hold in the name of austerity. And I can't name another country that has succeeded their economic problems with austerity. So I think the important thing to do is to come out and speak to us: the town halls that you see are very top-heavy. Our political leaders come and try to sell us a message...they should be listening to us.

Today, Mr. Westin, the president of ABC News, officially announced that the network had hired Christiane Amanpour as the new anchor of the Sunday public affairs program, This Week.

The high-profile D.C. gig has been vacant since the fall when George Stephanopoulos replaced Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America.

During the intervening months, speculation has been rampant about who would fill the job made famous by David Brinkley. Along the way, everyone from Jake Tapper to Terry Moran to Jonathan Karl to Barbara Walters to Elizabeth Vargas to Matthew Dowd have taken turns filling in.

In the end, past was precedent and Mr. Westin bypassed the young up-and-comers, such as Mr. Tapper, in favor of a more established star, CNN's Ms. Amanpour.

In a note to staff today, Mr. Westin announced that Mr. Tapper would serve as the interim host until August, when Ms. Amanpour would take over.

"Christiane will join us from CNN where, for two decades she has reported from the world's major conflicts, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda, and the Balkans," wrote Mr. Westin. "She has received every major broadcast journalism award.  A formidable interviewer, she has sat down in global exclusives with many of the world's leaders and military chiefs from the Middle East, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan to Africa, Europe and the United States."

Just as Mr. Stephanopoulos' appointment to GMA raised questions about his suitability for morning television, Ms. Amanpour's appointment to This Week is sure to raise questions about her suitability to the beltway-centric position after building a career based largely on reporting from overseas.

In his note to staff, Mr. Westin suggested that This Week would tweak its format once Ms. Amanpour comes on board. "With Christiane we have the opportunity to provide our audiences with something different on Sunday mornings," he wrote. "We will continue to provide the best in interviews and analysis about domestic politics and policies.  But now we will add to that an international perspective."

Whether that's a smart strategy for, at last, catching up with perennial Sunday morning ratings champ Meet the Press remains to be seen.

According to FishbowlDC, Ms. Amanpour has told colleagues that she'd prefer to stay in New York, and not move to the capital, if she takes the job.

Politico mentions that ABC chief executive Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, might be particularly fond of Ms. Amanpour, which appears to have given Ms. Amanpour the nod over more predictable hosts--Jake Tapper, Terry Moran, Gwen Ifill--for a Sunday morning show.

Mr. Colbert posited a theory about why the successful host of This Week would bolt for a soft-focus morning show.

"[Diane Sawyer] was at GMA and now she’s got the anchor chair for the evening news. Charlie Gibson was at GMA and then he got the evening news," Mr. Colbert said. "Is this tit-for-tat, like, 'I’ll do GMA and flip the blueberry pancakes and then I get the chair?' Is there a quid pro quo here with you and ABC News?”

“It all depends on how good the pancakes are," Mr. Stephanopoulos quipped, before getting serious. “A lot of people who’ve done the job go on to do the evening news, but this is Diane’s job for as long as she wants it," he said.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
George Stephanopoulos
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

]]> George Stephanopoulos had a Heineken with Steven Colbert last night, and talked about his new gig at Good Morning America, which requires him to not only rouse himself at 3:45 every morning, but sit through soft-focus segments on, say, the best online coupons.

Mr. Colbert posited a theory about why the successful host of This Week would bolt for a soft-focus morning show.

"[Diane Sawyer] was at GMA and now she’s got the anchor chair for the evening news. Charlie Gibson was at GMA and then he got the evening news," Mr. Colbert said. "Is this tit-for-tat, like, 'I’ll do GMA and flip the blueberry pancakes and then I get the chair?' Is there a quid pro quo here with you and ABC News?”

“It all depends on how good the pancakes are," Mr. Stephanopoulos quipped, before getting serious. “A lot of people who’ve done the job go on to do the evening news, but this is Diane’s job for as long as she wants it," he said.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
George Stephanopoulos
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

]]> http://observer.com/2010/02/stephanopoulos-working-on-his-pancakes/feed/ 0 jhanasobserver http://observer.com/2009/04/nbc-exploring-possible-changes-at-its-longtime-headquarters-in-washington-dc/#comments Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:39:31 -0400 http://observer.com/2009/04/nbc-exploring-possible-changes-at-its-longtime-headquarters-in-washington-dc/ Felix Gillette http://www.observer.com/2009/04/nbc-exploring-possible-changes-at-its-longtime-headquarters-in-washington-dc/ NBC is currently exploring the possibility of leasing out part of its longtime headquarters in Washington, D.C., to an outside organization, according to sources familiar with the situation.

One possible partner? American University.

The longtime home of NBC News, MSNBC, and WRC-TV Channel 4—NBC’s owned and operated station in D.C.—is located on Nebraska Avenue, a short walk from the university’s bucolic campus in Northwest Washington.

What American University would do with space in the building remains unclear. But the university’s School of Communication, which offers graduate and undergraduate degrees to hundreds of students, is currently undergoing a $20 million renovation that will eventually modernize and expand its journalism facilities. In the meantime, the school remains under construction.

If the two institutions strike an agreement, NBC is expected to maintain much of the ample space at its sprawling compound. And, presumably, bringing in a roommate would help NBC pay for some of the much-needed upgrades on a facility that predates HD technology by many, many decades.

Earlier this year, a number of employees at the bureau accepted buyout offers from NBC. As a result, the overall size of the staff working out of the D.C. offices has dwindled, freeing up even more room in a building that was never particularly cramped to begin with.

NBC News is not alone is reconsidering its physical footprint in Washington. In recent years, ABC News has significantly reduced the size of its Washington bureau on DeSales Street NW transfering the bulk of its Nightline staff up to New York City and moving This Week with George Stephanopoulos into a studio at the Newseum.

Sources say that efforts have already begun within NBC's three-story building to consolidate the network's operations there—which in addition to studios for
The Chris Matthews Show and Meet the Press also houses the studio, transmitter, and newsroom for WRC-TV.

Recently, WRC-TV (which technically owns the building) began work on modernizing its facilities there. Management recently told the local NBC staffers that the corporate executives were considering various options for the future of the building, ranging from a possible sale to the leasing out of space.

"We're always interested in exploring options to improve our facilities, not only in Washington DC, but also across the country and around the globe," said an NBC corporate spokesperson in a statement to The Observer. "However, at this point, there is nothing to announce."

Mr. Stephanopolous' show, which featured an extensive interview with President Elect Barack Obama, pulled in 4.34 million viewers while Mr. Gregory's show pulled in 4.30 million.

ABC claims it was the first time This Week has beaten Meet the Press in total viewers since June 27, 1999.

More from the release:

It certainly made for good campaign rhetoric – it never hurts to tell voters that you’re very different from a man with a 72 percent disapproval rating – and it’s not like he had much choice in the matter, anyway: With his celebrity appeal and active interest in policy details, Barack Obama was never going to be overshadowed by his vice president, inside or outside the White House.

Still, you’ve got to wonder if Biden really appreciated what he was getting himself into. Cheney’s bargain with George W. Bush was fairly simple: I’ll handle the messy and cumbersome policy minutiae from my undisclosed location; you deliver the speeches, pose for the photos and travel among the people. Both men got what they wanted out of the deal. But is Biden really happy with his deal? While he’s surrendering Cheney’s internal power, if the six weeks since the election are any clue, he seems on pace to be just as invisible as Cheney in public.

The tone was set on Election Night, just after the polls closed on the West Coast and Obama was declared the winner. Recent tradition, inaugurated by Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992, calls for both the president-elect and his running mate to address their supporters – and the nation. By including Gore in the festivities in ’92 (and again in ’96), Clinton made a statement about his commitment to making his vice president a crucial player in his administration, privately and publicly. Bush even included the dour Cheney in 2004, when both members of the Republican team declared victory the morning after the election. (In 2000, when Bush declared victory by himself from the Texas state legislature’s chamber, it was a unique circumstance, because of the 39-day recount drama.)

But when Obama stepped onto the stage before hundreds of thousands of supporters in Chicago last month, Biden was nowhere in sight. He was kept behind the curtains while Obama delivered his historic victory speech. Only after Obama was finished was Biden ushered into public view, silently joining his running mate on the platform. And that was it.

It would have been easy for Obama and his team to include Biden in the program. He could have served as the warm-up act, rallying the crowd and building some suspense before calling the man of the hour to the stage. Especially given the Clinton-Gore precedent, it is noteworthy that Obama chose not to do this. It’s equally noteworthy that no one seemed to notice.

And since then, Biden’s visibility has only diminished. Again, part of this is because, perhaps more than any president-elect in history, Obama commands such interest from the press and public. Merchants are scrambling to slap his likeness on any product they can think of – even dinner plates – and people are lining up to buy them. Supposedly objective newspapers are even getting in on the act by hitching their wagons to Obama’s star. Rest assured, this is not the kind of reaction that greeted the election of, say, George H. W. Bush. And in this atmosphere, it would be tough for Biden to get much attention even if he was holding three press conferences a day.

But this is not just a case of the press ignoring the un-sexy vice president-elect. The Obama team has, since the election, seemed remarkably hesitant to put Biden out there at all. Mainly, he’s showed up at press conferences unveiling various cabinet selections, where, typically, he steps to the podium after Obama to briefly tell the assembled press that each nominee will be very good at his or her job. Otherwise, he’s refused interview requests and made almost no public appearances. (He did get a new dog, though.)

On Sunday, at last, Biden emerged with an extended interview on ABC’s This Week, the first real chance for the vice president-elect to speak at length and in his own words since Election Day. Fittingly, host George Stephanopoulos told Biden near the beginning of the session that “you’ve been fairly invisible since the election.”

Biden, not surprisingly, painted a picture of intense behind-the-scenes engagement. He’s been present for every critical transition decision Obama has made, he said, and has also assumed two specific responsibilities: “honchoing” a “baseline study” of the situations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and heading up a committee of cabinet members that will give Obama guidance on the needs of the middle class.

This, he insisted, is what he had in mind when teamed up with Obama four months ago.

“I said I don't want to be picked unless you're picking me for my judgment. … I said I want a commitment from you that in every important decision you'll make, every critical decision, economic and political as well as foreign policy, I'll get to be in the room,” Biden said, adding that Obama has lived up to that commitment.

Maybe Biden really is happy with this. No matter how muted he’s become, he’ll earn a place in history just by serving as vice president. And it’s entirely possible that his counsel will weigh heavily on Obama’s decision-making process as president. With access like that, there’s no quantifying the influence Biden could exercise on any number of critical issues.

Then again, it’s also possible that Obama will just listen to Biden politely, nod his head and then do whatever he was planning to do all along. And the specific tasks Biden has been assigned don’t really amount to much. As Stephanopoulos noted, the middle class commission he’ll be running won’t have any formal powers, and his “baseline” study essentially overlaps with the work of the National Security Advisor – who will be working in the West Wing and meeting with Obama daily. And, as we’ve seen these past six weeks, life in the Obama administration probably means that Biden’s days of pontificating on Sunday morning shows will be sharply curtailed.

The life of the vice president isn’t exactly a tough one. But for Joe Biden, it might prove a very frustrating one.

In that sense, John McCain’s comments in an extended interview on ABC’s This Week on Sunday were utterly unremarkable. Asked to define his role in politics now that Barack Obama will be president, the vanquished G.O.P. nominee replied: “I think my job is, of course, to be a part of and hopefully exert some leadership in the loyal opposition. But I emphasize the word loyal.”

It’s a nice sentiment, but not different from anything we’ve heard from the losing side in past presidential elections. When he and the first President Bush were forced from office by Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992, for instance, Dan Quayle said of Clinton, “If he runs the country as well as he ran his campaign, we’ll have nothing to worry about.” But Quayle and his fellow Republicans treated Clinton to one of the roughest presidential honeymoons in memory.

But there is something different about the position McCain is in right now compared to past non-incumbent presidential losers: He’s still in office (and recently announced plans to seek another six-year Senate term in 2010) but, at 72 years old, has absolutely no illusions about ever running for president again. We really haven’t seen this combination in modern times.

Some losing candidates have stayed in office like McCain, but they all believed – however irrationally – that another White House run might be in their future if they played their cards right.

John Kerry is a perfect example of this. When it became clear that he’d come up short on election night 2004, he made sure to offer a quick and gracious concession the next morning, the better to avoid the “sore loser” tag. Then, after offering a few weeks' worth of obligatory bromides about uniting the country and pulling for the president to succeed, he moved into 2008 campaign mode, loudly objecting to George W. Bush’s agenda in the Senate in an effort to convince the left he would be in 2008 everything he hadn’t been as a candidate in 2004.

Kerry’s plan, of course, was never going to succeed. He had blown an election that Democrats believed could and had to be won. There are no second chances after that kind of failure. But Kerry didn’t grasp this. Clear through 2005 and 2006, he was running for president again, even headlining a major Democratic dinner in New Hampshire weeks before the '06 midterm election. The proximal reason he didn’t end up running was the toxic reaction to his “botched joke” on the eve of the '06 vote. Absent that, who knows if wiser voices would have ultimately prevailed on him and kept him out of the '08 race? What is clear is that Kerry returned to the Senate after his '04 loss not to legislate, but to run for president again.

The same has been true of the other sitting senators who have lost modern presidential elections. George McGovern, even after coming within inches of a 50-state wipeout in 1972, still believed he could secure a future Democratic nomination. He won reelection in South Dakota in 1974 and then began positioning himself to step in late in the game and claim the 1976 Democratic nod. (Back then, it was still customary for major candidates to skip some or all of the primary season and to bid for the nomination behind the scenes.) His plan failed, and even after losing his Senate seat in the Republican landslide of 1980, McGovern still wouldn’t drop his White House dreams. He ran for the Democratic nomination again in 1984 (his best showing was third place in Massachusetts) and even toyed with trying again in 1992, when he was 70.

Hubert Humphrey was not actually a senator when he lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon (he had given up his seat four years earlier to become Lyndon Johnson’s vice president), but he successfully returned to the chamber two years later, in 1970, so that he could position himself for the presidency again. He sought the 1972 Democratic nomination, losing out to McGovern, and while he never officially entered, he did all he could do to entice Democrats into “drafting” him in 1976. Like Kerry and McGovern, his post-campaign Senate service was hardly focused on finding ways to work with his old opponent’s administration.

Other unsuccessful nominees have simply disappeared from politics. Walter Mondale, a former vice president when he lost 49 states to Ronald Reagan in 1984, exiled himself to his native Minnesota, where he began practicing law. He briefly considered running for the Senate there in 1990 (when he begged off, Paul Wellstone entered the race) and emerging once again in 2002, when Democrats needed an emergency candidate after Wellstone’s death days before the election.

Michael Dukakis still had a job when he lost to George H. W. Bush in 1988, but when he returned to the Massachusetts governorship, he found a state in fiscal collapse, with an ugly recession looming. Within months, he swore off a 1990 reelection campaign and watched his popularity slip under 20 percent in his final year in office. He has been in academia since 1991.

McCain is different from all of these men. His Senate seat makes him an automatic player in national politics, but his age makes it pointless for him to use that role to position himself for another presidential campaign. Theoretically, this puts him in position to do what every losing candidate promises (and fails) to do: to help the winning candidate govern successfully.

A comparison to one more defeated candidate, Bob Dole, might be relevant. Dole, like McCain, long harbored presidential aspirations, and actually ran for the job three times. Through it all, he was never particularly liked or respected by the Republican Party’s conservative base, and it could be painful to watch Dole pretend to share their values in an effort to keep them from revolting against him and denying him his dream. The same, roughly, was true of McCain these past few years.

Once Dole lost to Clinton in 1996, though, he recognized that the it was over. He was 73 years old. He’d actually quit his Senate seat six months earlier in an effort to jump-start his campaign with a dramatic gesture. Dole was free to be Dole. There was no pressure to sabotage Clinton and to attack Democrats at every opening, no fear of fomenting a mutiny on the right. It’s not that Dole underwent an ideological overhaul, but he was publicly complimentary of Clinton and even found ways to work with his old foe. Clinton even awarded Dole the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

McCain, like Dole after '96, doesn’t really need to fear the right anymore. If he really is at odds with his party’s base on issues like immigration and the environment or, for that matter, on cooperating productively with the Obama administration -- he has the freedom to express those differences without worrying much about the political cost. And, with his clout in the Senate, he is in position to do more than just talk.

Whether he’ll take advantage of his position to work closely with the new president is anyone’s guess. But the fact that it’s even plausible is nearly unprecedented.

Under the heading, "Ten Things David Gregory Needs to Know," Mr. Stephanopoulos, the moderator of ABC's This Week, offered this gem to Mr. Gregory: "Rapping with Karl Rove is a guaranteed bump during sweeps."

Read the rest here.