Obama, Boehner, & The Human Burrito

Published Sep 01 2011, 10:06 AM by David S. Bernstein

You may have heard that President Obama wanted to give his jobs speech to Congress on Wednesday at 8:00pm, but has now agreed to Thursday, a little earlier in the evening to squeeze it in before NFL season kickoff. There was a lot of hoopla over the fact that the original time slot would have put the President directly up against the next Republican Presidential debate.

I just want to point out that, outside the DC beltway, nobody actually cares about counter-programming against the debate -- including the debate's own media host, NBC.

The "NBC/Politico debate" is not scheduled to air on NBC, which has instead scheduled the following episode of "Minute To Win It":

09/07/2011 (08:00PM - 09:00PM) (Wednesday) : NEW HAMPSHIRE MOTHER/DAUGHTER TEAM COMETE FOR THE MILLION-DOLLAR TOP PRIZE—Mother and daughter team Donna Coleman and Talana Deshaies from Sandown, NH work together to try to win the million dollars. Excited to play, Talana takes on the "Human Burrito" challenge where she must roll herself in five bed sheets placed on the floor and then unwrap herself from them. Guy Fieri hosts.

The debate will air on MSNBC. If Obama gave his speech Wednesday, it would preempt the contest show, not the debate -- the folks who should have been upset are the women's-amateur-Human-Burrito enthusiasts, for whom I imagine this is a rare opportunity. I suppose that the debate might have gotten shifted to CNBC, worst-case scenario. Either way, I'd imagine the debate will be hard-pressed to equal the viewership of the last GOP debate, on the more Republican-friendly FOX News network, which nevertheless got trounced by an episode of Jersey Shore.Incidentally, this debate was originally scheduled for May, but was postponed for lack of interested candidates; it was rescheduled for September 14, and then rescheduled to the 7th to accommodate candidates who weren't going to show up on the 14th. Maybe they would have be more interested in attending if NBC was actually willing to put them on the network -- but I bet Romney refused to do the Human Burrito challenge.