TVSquad

Tim Russert, the chief political reporter for NBC and host of the long-running Meet The Press, died of a heart attack this afternoon. Russert was recording voiceovers for Meet The Press and collapsed.

This is obviously sad and odd because he was young, but it's also crazy because we're in the middle of an election year, and Russert was one of the faces of NBC and MSNBC when it comes to politics. He was an unabashed political junkie and was front and center in this year's election, being involved in all of the primary coverage and even participated in debates along with colleague Brian Williams.

Russert worked in for Democratic Senator Daniel Moynihan's campaign in the mid 70s and in the early 80s worked on Mario Cuomo's campaign for Governor of New York. He joined NBC in 1984 and became moderator of Meet The Press in 1991. He also wrote two books.

• CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN have Election Coverage all night.
• At 8, FOX has a new American Idol, followed by the series premiere of New Amsterdam.
• ABC has a new Just For Laughs at 8.
• NBC has a new, two hour Biggest Loser at 8.
• TCM has Hitchcock's Spellbound at 8.
• At 9, CBS has a new Big Brother, then a new Jericho.
• The CW has a new One Tree Hill at 9.
• Also at 9: Food Network has a new Throwdown with Bobby Flay.
• At 9:30, HBO has a new In Treatment.
• At 10, Travel Channel has a new Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern.

Check your local TV listings for more.

Were The West Wing writers psychic or just very clever in their reading of the political landscape?

Several writers, including Stephen Siilver at NorthStarWriters.com, have noticed that the current Presidential election is very similar to the election that The West Wing had in its final season and a half. The show had a Democrat that inspired people by his speeches but didn't have much experience (Matt Santos), a Republican from the West that even liberals liked because he wasn't too far right (Arnold Vinick), and a candidate that had already been in the White House as a VP (Bob Russell). Does that sound like Barack Obama, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton?

I wouldn't call myself a political junkie, though I guess I do get that way every four years. The massive coverage the election gets from the news channels is both way overdone and endlessly fascinating.

Last night I watched the coverage of Super Tuesday. My plan was to try to stick to one station, since they'd have the results eventually, but my remote trigger finger got itchy and I was surfing all night. Here are a few random thoughts I jotted down.

1. I couldn't watch CNN, at least not all night.. Those giant screens and all those graphics. At one point Wolf Blitzer was standing next to a massive lineup of 24 different pie charts, and I think he wanted to just throw his notes down and walk down the street to the nearest bar. John King was doing all these fancy things with his fingers on a screen, and it was hard to follow and kind of glitchy. It was the world's most insane PowerPoint presentation.

Comedy Central's election coverage, "InDecision [insert year]" began, if I recall correctly, before The Daily Show ever hit the airwaves. Of course, it seemed perfectly reasonable that Jon Stewart and the gang would take the reins, and they did. They took those reins like you wouldn't believe. Boy howdy hoo.

So anyway, now Comedy Central has launched a companion site for InDecision 2008, which is scheduled to launch Wednesday, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The article also reads that the election spoofery began in 1992 and was always associated with The Daily Show, which I find hard to believe since The Daily Show began in 1996.

Also, you can go to the site now (http://www.indecision2008.com/index.jhtml), and I must say, for not having launched there's a lot of stuff there. There's clips from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Lil' Bush, and some funny blog entries: did you know Ron Paul is more popular than iPhones and crotches? He is.

You can watch several episodes of the TV Land talk show Sit Down Comedy with David Steinberg right at the TV Land web site (full episodes from the second season and highlights of the first). Steinberg has interviewed everyone from Jerry Seinfeld to Bob Newhart, but the show that I'd like to talk about is the one where he interviews Daily Show host Jon Stewart. It's actually one of the best interviews with Stewart I've ever seen.

If you don't remember the presidential election debacle in Florida in 2000, here's a brief summary of what happened:

First, networks declared Gore the winner, then they declared Bush the winner, then they decided it was too close to call, then they decided no one was the winner, then they decided Bush and Gore were figments of our imagination, then James K. Polk was posthumously re-elected and immediately impeached within a six-minute time frame, and then after that it just got really confusing.

I knew that Chris Matthews hadn't been on Hardball for a couple of weeks, but I didn't know the reason: he was hospitalized due to complications from diabetes.

Matthews will be back on the MSNBC show tonight at 7pm, where he will interview former Vice President candidate and probable future Presidential candidate John Edwards at one of those "College Tour" stops, this one at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Various hosts have been filling in for Matthews while he was in the hospital. Andrea Mitchell went in his spot during a panel discussion at the Castle at the Smithsonian at the end of November, and then Campbell Brown filled in on the college tour. For the past several days, columnist Mike Barnicle has filled in for Matthews on Hardball.

(S01E11) So Gracie the store owner is dead, stabbed by an unknown assailant, and you just know five minutes into the show that the person who is suspected of the crime, is not the guilty party. And when Mitchell comes back into town, injured, saying that Jonah "confessed" to the crime and then ran off, you know that Jonah didn't do it. But Gray and the townspeople form a posse to go get Jonah anyway. He's hiding at Emily's house, and Jake finds him there, bleeding to death.

Dale finds guilty about the way he quit the job at Gracie's store, but Gail has some shocking news for him: Gracie left the store to him in her will.

Ex-CBS newsman will be the guest tonight on Comedy Central's live Indecision 2006 special at 11pm. The show will be co-hosted by Daily Show host Jon Stewart and Colbert Report host Stephen Colbert. A quote from Rather, from the article linked above:

"J. Stewart and company offered the chance, and I've taken it...I don't do comedy, I do politics, which sometimes is one in the same."

J. Stewart? That seems like an odd way to say his name. Was this an e-mail interview? Even if it was, does it really take longer to write three characters (Jon) than two (J.)? But I digress...

(S02E03) This episode, in which Chris runs for class president, borrowed plenty of quotes from famous speeches about race and race relations. Chris tells his best friend and campaign manager Greg he plans to beat Joey Caruso "by any means necessary," a clever nod to Malcolm X. Later, during a Q&A with the school body Caruso answers every question with a variation of Alabama governor George Wallace's infamous "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" line from his 1963 inaugural speech. When asked what flavor of Jello should be in the cafeteria, he answers: "grape today, grape tomorrow, grape forever." When asked about handicap access, he just repeats the quote with "ramps" in place of "grapes." After swiping the speech Greg wrote for Chris and presenting it as his own at a school assembly, Caruso rattles off quotes from both Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson, a stark contrast to his own racist outlook.

(S06E05) Sideshow Bob: No children have ever meddled with the Republican party and lived to tell about it.

One of the benefits of being a satirical show like The Simpsons is that for the most part, the gags remain somewhat timeless. I say "somewhat" because once in awhile there will be moments that really date that particular episode. In this episode it's a reference to Rush Limbaugh in the guise of Springfield's loudmouth celebrity radio yakker Birch Barlow, author of Only Turkeys Have Left Wings. I know Rush is still around, but I think it's safe to say he's no longer in his heyday.