For Tough Election Coverage, Tune In During the Day

The days when politicians could take refuge on daytime TV, hiding behind softball interviews and happy talk about favorite recipes, are over, Rebecca Traister writes for Salon. Tracing the trend from soaps through Phil Donohue to Oprah and Ellen to the unrivaled supremacy of The View, she observes, "It has recently become more common to see politicians, especially John McCain, made uncomfortable by the directness of the conversation on daytime television."

Cindy McCain famously complained that the cast of The View "picked our bones clean"—surprising only in that it surprised her, given the way Ellen DeGeneres treed John McCain on the subject of gay marriage—but co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck hasn't let up on Barack Obama. "These ladies are a regular McNeil-Lehrer News Hour for the late-morning set," Traister writes, "with Hasselbeck as the benighted Republican bugaboo."
(More The View stories.)