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A Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving Gets Re-Dubbed With Fiery GOP Debate Dialogue

Colby Hall — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:04:46 +0000

Thanksgiving Day is among the most challenging days for Mediaite editors to find subjects to cover. The site’s “bread and butter” are topics that come from the intersection of media and politics, but on this day we also like to join the rest of the nation by taking pause, and giving thanks to how fortunate we all are. So finding a clip that simultaneously hits notes of spirited political discourse and Thanksgiving cheer (basted with a healthy dose of pastiche nostalgia) is something of a holiday miracle.

Thank you, Jimmy Kimmel, for airing the following mash-up.

(H/T Philip Bump)

Your Thanksgiving Viewing Guide (Or, ‘Which Charlie Brown Special Do I Watch At 8:30?’)

Nando Di Fino — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:52:00 +0000

You might flip through your cable guide tomorrow and come upon what you think is a turkey-and-wine-induced hallucination: ABC is showing Charlie Brown Thanksgiving from 8-9 p.m, while FOX will broadcast Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown from 8:30 to 9:30. Why would two channels program two Charlie Brown specials against one another? Who knows. It’s a harsh, sad thing to do on an otherwise happy, sleepy day. Those of us with DVRs can enjoy both. For everyone else, well…

The Charlie Brown specials aren’t, obviously, the only programming choices on Thanksgiving. Below is a quick, handy guide to some interesting holiday programming from around the dial (all times Eastern):

12:00 p.m. & 1:00 p.m. The Oprah Winfrey Show, “Oprah’s Favorite Giveaway Ever!” (OWN)
Love or hate Oprah, her “giveaway” shows are always kind of fun and sweet. In 2006, she gave her audience $1,000 and challenged them to get creative in helping others. That episode is on at noon. Right after it is the “results” show, in which she caught up with the audience and showcased some of the more creative givers.

12:30 p.m., Green Bay Packers at Detroit Lions (Fox)

Chances are you’re going to have some football on at some point in the day. Just for the sake of tradition, it should be a Detroit Lions game, but here’s a fun bonus: this season, the Lions are one of the best teams in the NFL. And they’re playing the Super Bowl champs and only undefeated team in the league. Need more reasons to make this your NFL game for the day? The Packers and Lions are two of the league’s three highest-scoring teams.

2:45 p.m., The Great Outdoors (Encore)
For no other reason than watching John Candy take down the Ol’ 96er, and getting yourself fired up for Thanksgiving dinner.

3:55 p.m., Just Friends (Comedy Central)
Fine, it’s more a Christmas movie than a Thanksgiving one, but this Ryan Reynolds/Anna Faris comedy is the perfect holiday fare: you can put it on, doze off for 20 minutes, and wake up not having to really know what happened while you were sleeping in order to follow along. Plus, it’s one of the more underrated comedies of the last decade.

4:30 p.m., Cheers, “Thanksgiving Orphans” (WGN)
If you happen to have WGN, you’re in luck. This Cheers episode is the gold standard of Thanksgiving specials. And all of you WKRP apologists just have to deal with it. For those without WGN, some of the best scenes from the episode can conveniently be found on YouTube here, here, and here.

6:30 p.m., South Park, “Helen Keller! The Musical” (Comedy Central)
It’s not as classic as the original Starvin’ Marvin Thanksgiving episode, where genetically-altered turkeys threaten to take over the town, but the introduction of Gobbles, Timmy’s little turkey that could, made for a surprisingly sweet episode of South Park.

A Retrospective: 28 Media Leaders Who Died This Decade

Danny Groner — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:52:50 +0000

As the face of media evolves, it’s important to honor the figures who helped define, shape and set the standards in their industries. These are some of the most prominent members of the media who passed away over the past 10 years. Take a look back with some snippets from their respective New York Times obituaries.

2000

Who: Charles Schultz
Major Accomplishment: His ‘Peanuts” strip reached readers in 75 countries, 2,600 papers and 21 languages every day. Schulz drew more than 18,250 strips in nearly 50 years.
Legacy: His saga of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy and Linus ”is arguably the longest story ever told by one human being,” Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, observed.

Who: Steve Allen
Major Accomplishment: In more than 50 years in show business, Allen demonstrated his talents in many areas. An accomplished pianist who never learned to read music, he composed more than 5,000 songs, some of them hits.
Legacy: Allen was keenly interested in social justice and wrote pamphlets on a variety of issues, including the problems facing migrant workers, as well as capital punishment and nuclear proliferation.

Editor’s Note: Mediaite has been rightly called out for a big, glaring error: On our list of 28 media leaders we’ve lost this decade there was not a single person of color. Not a one. Read Mediaite editor-at-large Rachel Sklar‘s entire mea culpa here and on page 11, we’ve added 5 of the deceased black media leaders that should have been mentioned initially.

>>>NEXT: In 2001 we lost William Hanna and Katharine Graham…

How Obama Stole Christmas From Charlie Brown

Glynnis MacNicol — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:38:48 +0000

There are certain rites (and arguably rights!) of holiday passage that no person grows out of (try though they might!). Stockings, Christmas carols, the Grinch, and Charlie Brown. I don’t even like Charlie Brown, never have, and yet every year I watch it. It sort of marks the unofficial opening of the holiday season. Not this year!

According to TVNewser, the president’s address on Afghanistan tonight that is being broadcast on all the networks is pushing the regular airing of A Charlie Brown Christmas to…next week. Phew. Of course, now that we have the Internet I’m not entirely sure the timing of anything matters anymore because I can just paste the entire thing in this post (part one below). Though sometimes it’s nice to be old school and watch things at the scheduled times, on actual TV.