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What I like about the “hologram” stuff is that it’s just an extension of the turning around and talking to James Talia on the weekend news (as noted by Alex Boxcutter a couple of episodes ago).

Regarding the CNN hologram stuff: from the company behind the technology, “…it’s not technically a hologram.” Well, duh.

And because it hasn’t already been posted AS PROMISED, here’s the McCain SNL skit:
Palin/McCain on QVC

Ari Gold’s brother is going to be chief of staff.

On to other more important matters. Much has been made of the spooky psychic abilities of The West Wing’s writers in its last two seasons. Earlier this year they admitted they’d based Matt Santos on Barack Obama after the latter’s 2004 covention speech.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/21/barackobama.uselections2008

Now, it gets even better! Obama has just announced his White House chief of staff will be Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel is a massively connected Democratic insider and congressman who was a senior political adviser in the Clinton White House.

AND… Emanuel was the inspiration for the character of Josh Lyman on The West Wing!

Josh Lyman is Obama’s chief of staff!

Stick that in your Golden Age of Television and smoke it!

As for the “hologram”, what a fricken crock. It’s NOT a hologram. The guy in the studio would have been looking at a blank space – in fact, probably a monitor right next to the camera that cut to him, with the shot going to air. I can only imagine the red spot on the floor was so that he’d have an idea where to look.

As for what it was, we’re talking about an image composite with her on a shockingly bad blue-screen. Rather than running 35 cameras on her in a ‘little tent’, getting computers to render the morphs on the fly to match the position of the cameras in the studio, they would have got a much better execution of it if they’d simply hooked the couple of cameras in the main studio to a couple of cameras at her location – the exact same information they had to send across as they already had – with a blue-screen background on one side.

It’s just hyperbolic bullshit to call any of what they did a hologram. The capitol building on the desk was much better executed – because they were generating all that in a computer and didn’t have to capture live-action – but the figures they were actually showing were difficult to read and only helped to retard clear communication.

Watching the “Best political team on television” go through their paces, somehow seeming a bit more edgy just because the head guy’s name is Wolf.

But this little bit of gimmicky nonsense is just a bridge too far. Beam me up:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=thOxW19vsTg&source=cmailer

So far I think the prison episode might have been the best. He has an unparalleled knack of getting people to open up. It’s definitely set to series record.

I need to see the neo-Nazi episode!