Here we thought the guy was really doing something to lift the country's spirits, but no, it's just Gawker cracking a joke. Ah well. We still got the 411 on what Obama is really up to that will impact your TV habits, plus the latest on South Park, Psych, Burn Notice, Monk, what John Cleese thinks of Sean Hannity (guess), the most important gal on Two and a Half Men, and the fifty-million-yen Bruce Lee documentary.
-- So, back to that Gawker misunderstanding. There is, actually, a story behind it: Barack Obama has purchased half-an-hour on CBS (and possibly on other networks as well) for a final appeal to the voters of our nation October 29th. Word around NBC is if it does well, Ben Silverman is willing to give Obama a 12-episode fall replacement series, script unseen.
-- Did South Park go to far with all the weird Indiana Jones rape scenes in their season premiere? Yeah, we kind of think they did -- particularly since they did it in the service of a point they made years ago.
-- USA is renewing both Psych and Burn Notice -- but are cagey about another series of Monk.
-- Keith Olbermann had the pleasure of reading a poem about Sean Hannity by none other than The Minister of Silly Walks himself, John Cleese. The nicest line is probably "Plump as a manatee." [via CC Insider]
-- Every time underappreciated actors get a moment of due in this world, we are pleased as punch. Last week, it was Holland Taylor, who plays the domineering object of Oedipal confusion on the bawdy if generally useless Two and a Half Men. We loved you back when you were hanging out with those other men, Holland, good on ya!
-- And finally, kids, if you're a Bruce Lee fan, get ready to start scouring Not Available on DVD for all fifty hours of the fifty million yen documentary series on the late kung fu legend, produced by the Chinese government and starting this Sunday night. By the way, fifty million yen comes out to around 7 million bucks, and as Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times notes, the running time of this series offers 1.5 hours of documentary for each year of Lee's life. So maybe the first 5 episodes or so are skippable?