Some bleary-eyed observations after a long night of news channel channel surfing:
Moment of the night: Karl Rove refusing to concede Ohio to Obama on Fox News. The Republican rainmaker dug in his heels and lashed out at his own news network’s decision desk as they moved Ohio into the blue column late Tuesday night–handing president Obama the election.
Rove, as I tweeted last night, was like the guy who doesn’t care, he just wants his money right now from the Bailey Building & Loan. The petulance stirred an otherwise dull night of reporting and made even Jon Stewart’s Daily Show election night mockery seem less funny by comparison.
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace squirmed and acknowledged things were getting “awkward.” Anchor Megyn Kelly, bless her, got up and walked all the way over to the decision desk who confirmed on-air that Rove was wrong.
At the time Rove seemed to have a point. A quarter of the returns had not come in and Obama’s lead was razor thin. But by that point all the networks had conceded Ohio to the president, so you would think Rove, if anybody, would know the math just wasn’t there for Romney.
Rove’s stubborn refusal to concede Ohio was quickly skewered on rival MSNBC. Anchor Rachel Maddow jumped all over the balloon-faced pundit, questioning his motives, labeling him as not just on-air talent but “one of the single largest outside contributors in favour of Mitt Romney.”
Colleague Chris Matthews cheekily asked Maddow to define “talent.” Her terse response: “People who wear makeup and have cameras pointed at them.”
Meanwhile, over at ABC, Diane Sawyer’s sleepy, slur-y, at times sing-song delivery had many on Twitter wondering if she had begun celebrating Obama’s victory a tad early. Hollywood Reporter scribe Tim Goodman seemed hypnotized by her behaviour all night. “Diane Sawyer just said ‘tinking’ instead of ‘thinking,'” he tweeted. “In 90 minutes she’s going to be nude.”
No such luck. Instead, someone using the handle “Drunk Diane Sawyer” tweeted out, “nothing to c here guys im ok d’ont worry abot me.”
It did seem odd to see Katie Couric as the weather girl-like twitter correspondent on ABC. Last election she anchored the whole election coverage deal at CBS. Tuesday night she was reading tweets from the likes of Paris Jackson. Yikes.
On the plus side, you have to give it up for CNN’s John King who really knows how to take touch screen technology to a whole new level. His rapid use of screens to zip through data state-by-state, pulling up all kinds of detailed information, seemed light years ahead of the competition.
NBC’s idea to ink an electoral map onto the ice surface of Rockefeller Plaza’s skating rink was a nice seasonal touch, although in Canada it just reminded folks the NHL lockout was still in effect. Hats off to the team that inked the blue and red states within the lines.
On CBC News Network, Peter Mansbridge seemed to have some sort of whiskey growl on, which gave their coverage a whole after dark kind of spin. Mark Critch’s comedy bits at the desk were peppery and kept everybody awake.
The Comedy Central live reports from Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert had their moments, but, again, neither seemed as funny as the shenanigans going on at Fox News.
Tweet of the night probably goes to Chris Rock: “Kenyans don’t lose races.”
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