June 23, 2013
Chelsea Clinton talks to Geico's gecko

Good riddance to NBC's Rock Center. I watched it a few times and it was mostly awful. Early on they had in-studio interviews with Jon Stewart and Tina Fey and it was striking how awkward Brian Williams can be when he's the interviewer and not the interviewee.

Other things I remember:

  • An alarmist story about how sitting is bad for you. It was like a Mirkin-era Simpsons joke come to life.
  • A folksy Ted Koppel piece bemoaning how cable news channels have grown so partisan and gee isn't that a shame. No new insights or anything, just a big waste of time. They played clips of Lawrence O'Donnell "yelling," which has nowhere near the same effect as Keith Olbermann.
  • A story about Apple where Williams kept going on about latest dopey Samsung commercial that made fun of Apple (because no company has ever done that before) and how devastating it was and speculated whether this means Apple is no longer "cool." He even asked CEO Tim Cook about it, as if he gives a damn.
  • A really obnoxious promo-masquerading-as-story about the hot new NBC sitcom 1600 Penn, which premiered earlier that night, featuring the Not Jonah Hill guy talking with senior nepotism correspondent Jenna Bush.