Hotline After Dark -- Toasted Mana
It was "7th Heaven" for the WB and the immigration protest rallies were mana from heaven for the cable nets.
Coverage of the rallies dominated cable news last night. Anderson Cooper did his show live from the L.A. protests. He also spoke with his colleague Lou Dobbs, who remarked: "I'm not a guy who's too keen on Americans celebrating their differences" ("AC 360," 5/1).
And Dobbs opened his show with: "Hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and their supporters today failed in their attempt to shut down most of our cities to support amnesty for all illegal aliens" ("Lou Dobbs Tonight," 5/1).
FNC's O'Reilly in his "Talking Points" memo: "Why are many in the media calling today's protests immigration demonstrations? They are not. They are protests in favor of the illegal immigration, largely calling for amnesty" (5/1).
"LKL" had Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM) and Senate Maj. Leader Bill Frist on to talk about the protests.
"Hardball" had Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO).
"O'Reilly Factor" had Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ).
ALMOST ACCOMPLISHED
The other major topic was the three year anniversary of the "Mission Accomplished" event.
WH comm. dir. Nicolle Wallace played "Hardball." On ex-Sec/State Colin Powell's comments: "He describes a process where he made his views known, but where in the end military judgments were made by our military leaders" (MSNBC, 5/1).
And Torie Clark made this admission about the event: "I will tell you what, I will take some responsibility for this. ... I was at the Pentagon at the time. And I was very eager to have lots of senior officials greet the troops as they were coming home from various missions. ... I think it is still a matter of debate who actually printed the banner and who actually put it up. ... I did not know ahead of time. But I should have dug into it deeper. It was a defense-related event. ... In fairness, the banner, mistake, absolutely, but if you go back and look at the whole speech, the president did say in that same speech, we have much more difficult work ahead. I will fully grant that the impression was this is all over and it wasn't" ("Situation Room," CNN, 5/1).