Any Way The Wind Blows

[This was originally going to be a more political main page entry, but upon further reflection, it's about TV. And yet, the propensity to use song/album titles persists. Hmmm...]

A couple of slow nights this week, due to a dearth of rehearsals, so I've fallen into a Family Guy - Futurama - Countdown groove from ten until midnight. I didn't particularly care for Family Guy (or Futurama, for that matter) when they first debuted, but both have definitely grown on me. Apparently, Fox is giving FG creator Seth McFarlane a new animated series, based in part on the post-cancellation popularity of the first one. Seems like an interesting way to admit you're wrong.

Anyway, one byproduct of this lineup is that I catch the last two minutes or so of Hardball on MSNBC, the channel Jon Stewart described as having more letters than viewers. While I'm not terribly fond of cable-news channel bluster, taking in just a minute or two gives an interesting perspective on where the wind is blowing. Or the non-hurricane-related wind, anyway.

On Wednesday night, Matthews was coming down hard on Wes Clark as being too late and too vague. On Thursday, after a full day of media coverage, his tone had completely reversed, and he sounded an awful lot like a believer in the retired general's ability to make this Democratic primary much more interesting. On the one hand, I would have been interested to see just what swayed him, but the fact that he was swayed seems, in the microcosm of cable TV blowhards, somewhat significant. Maybe because it continues to prove me right, I don't know.

Also, big ups to Keith Olbermann and the Countdown crew for going to commercial with "Man in a Box" from Alice in Chains after a story on "magician" David Blaine's latest stunt of living in, natch, a box for 44 days in England. The music as they go to commercial is one of the funnest parts of that show.