TVSquad

If you watch ESPN's daily round table sport talk show, Around the Horn, you know that Jay Mariotti is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. Or I should say, he was a columnist. Right after the Beijing Olympics, Mariotti returned to the show and all the other reporters -- and host Tony Reali -- kept zinging Jay about not being with the Chicago Sun-Times anymore. At no point did they explain that Mariotti was not fired from his post, he quit.

Then I discovered that a fellow Sun-Times employee, and former TV star himself (At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper), film critic Roger Ebert, was ticked off with Mariotti. Specifically, Ebert reviewed the way Jay chose to walk away from his job. Ebert pointed out that Mariotti had screwed his editors at the Sun-Times by signing a new contract, going to China on their dime (which was actually thousands of dollars), then left the job with a cold e-mail that said simply, "I quit."

I guess Mariotti felt like the newspaper could dump him with an equally cold, "You're fired," but common courtesy suggests that he should have given two-week notice. Or maybe that kind of courtesy is as outmoded a concept as saying thank you for service or holding the door for someone else?

The reviews from the political talking heads -- right and left -- have been mostly positive. The visuals were spectacular and riveting. History was made at Mile High Stadium in Denver last night when Senator Barack Obama accepted the nomination of the Democratic party as the first African-American presidential candidate. There were 80,000 people packed in the stadium, and now Nielsen has determined that 38 million people tuned in to watch on TV.

How impressive is that number? It's more than the opening ceremonies from the Beijing Olympics. It's also more than the 2008 Oscars and the finale of Fox's American Idol.

The networks cleared just one hour of prime time -- from 10-11 ET -- and the Democratic organizers made sure to present Obama's speech right in that slot, not drifting into the local late news.

Saturday Night Live is about to kick off its 34th season, and they're determined to do it with a bang. Doing a smart job of quickly pulling in America's biggest star of the summer, the show has announced that super-crazy Olympian god slash merman Michael Phelps will be hosting the premiere. It also looks like the musical guest will be Lil' Wayne, but who has time to care about that? Michael Phelps is swimming back to America and he's hosting!

"All the Gori Details": Russia and Georgia's conflict rages on, even though everyone else is playing pool games at the Olympics. President Bush and company seem to think that this sort of conflict is, like, so old. The show managed to perfectly nail Condoleezza Rice's disapproval of overthrowing government. This was kind of depressing, actually. I would have liked to see more cartoon clips of Michael Phelps swimming against Black Manta.

This particular episode of The Daily Show was super extra Chinese, but you guys get an extra layer of Chinese via this review written by me. That makes you special. The only way to push it even further would be for me to write this completely in Chinese. Consider yourselves lucky that I'm too embarrassed to write like that, as my Chinese vocabulary and syntax reads like that of a five year-old's.

"Anti-Olympic Update": Instead of using sports as a metaphor for war, Russia has been juggling the Olympics and attacks on neighbor Georgia. I can never get enough of The Daily Show's graphics department. Just check out that hardcore anti-Olympic intro with the rings of doom. Jon Stewart got a lot of applause for that "Oh, war... It's just God's way of teaching Americans geography." Does it count as stealing if the joke is super, super old and reasonably well-known already?

Amid controversy and the threat of certain world leaders boycotting the upcoming Beijing Olympics, the word came out yesterday that President George W. Bush would attend the opening ceremonies. According to the Hollywood Reporter, this is good news for NBC, and the companies that have bought advertising for the Games.

While I can see how a boycott based on human rights abuses in China and Tibet would be a serious problem for the network -- and it still may lose viewers who choose to individually tune out rather than give positive sanction to China's misdeeds by watching -- I don't see how NBC can think a Bush appearance will bolster ratings.