She ventured a guess as to why people have tried to paint her as “angry” or even, perhaps stereotypically and overly broadly, as “a strong woman.”

“I guess it’s more interesting,” she said, “to imagine this conflicted situation here and a strong woman and a, you know… But that’s been an image that people have tried to paint of me since, you know, the day Barack announced; that I’m some angry black woman.”

She deals with that, she added, by simply trying to be herself and holding out hope that people will take the time to know her before jumping to conclusions.

Obama, who told King she hadn’t read The Obamas, also took a moment to address allegations that White House adviser Robert Gibbs had “cursed her:”

That was one of the things from the book that I heard. Robert Gibbs is a trusted adviser. He’s been a good friend and remains so. And I’m sure that we can go day to day and find things people wish they they didn’t do to one another other or said. [...]

That’s why I don’t read these books. Because it’s, you know, it’s a game in so many ways that doesn’t really get, you know… I mean, who can write about how I feel? Who? What third person can tell me how I feel? Or anybody, for that matter.

RELATED: Matt Lauer Grills Controversial Obama Book Author Over White House Pushback

Have a look at what the First Lady had to say, via CBS:

(Ed. note: We tweaked the original headline and language in the story, after some readers pointed out that the Michelle Obama quote implied that her husband had announced she’s “an angry black woman.” Listening to the interview again, we added a semicolon to better show the true intent — that after her husband had announced he was running for President, people started seeing her as an angry black woman. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.)

Report: Charlie Rose And Gayle King Set To Join CBS’ Early Show

The new ensemble cast of Charlie Rose, Gayle King, and Erica Hill performed ably together, but the tagline “the news is back in morning news” felt a little insincere, as lengthy segments were done on Princess Kate Middleton‘s 30th birthday and Beyonce‘s baby. It was surreal, for instance, to hear Rose refer to the pop star and Jay-Z as “American Royalty.”

To his credit, earlier in the program, the anchor had a stellar interview with Newt Gingrich, in which the Republican candidate flattered the morning host by saying he was running “almost a Charlie Rose-style campaign.”

However, as the show wore on, viewers began to notice his eyes were beginning to look a little irritated. “Someone hand Charlie Rose some Visine!” one Twitter critic chirped.

Rose’s serious, workman-like newsreading and King’s bubbly persona made for an odd pairing, with one person in the Twitter peanut gallery comparing their combination to Elton John and Eminem.

When the three gave a round-table interview of The Good Wife‘s Julianna Margulies, it offered a foreboding window into the future. Will Rose be able to mesh with King’s more pop-culturally savvy stylings, and will Hill be boxed out?

With their first show in the history books, I’m not quite sure how the three anchors will ultimately pull it off; they obviously have the talent, but whether that will be enough for successful morning news chemistry is another question.

Watch the three interview Julianna Margulies below via CBS:

The show is being given a complete makeover, with a brand-new set and a focus on hard news rather than the fluffier fare normally associated with morning talk shows. In addition, as The New York Times reports, the show will be “employing a conversational approach like Morning Joe on MSNBC and The View on ABC.”

RELATED: Cynics Beware: OWN Works As A Concept and Network

The two will make their debuts with the show early next year, joining current co-hosts Erica Hill and Jeff Glor.

The plan, according to the NYT, is to have the show forge its own way rather than repeatedly attempt, and fail, to replicate the success of its early morning rivals:

Privately, executives say that because the network has forever failed to beat NBC’s “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” by imitating those shows, it is instead going to try something wholly different.

The plan is already the talk of the tight-knit, gossipy New York television news industry. But will it be talked about anywhere else?

Some speculate that Rose will appeal mostly to an older crowd, while King — whose name has been closely linked to that of best friend Oprah Winfrey — may do well with female viewers. While neither name is a proven ratings draw, their contributions to the show and it’s new, newsier format are sure to at least draw in some initial viewers curious to see whether such a formula and format will translate into ratings.

h/t NYT

After playing the clip in the opening “Talking Points” segment, O’Reilly took exception to Rep. Nancy Pelosi‘s critique of this specific part of the interview, saying “to hear this used in the presence of the President of the United States, I think we all have to recognize that while we may disagree with people and while we may think they are wrong,” later adding “we shouldn’t think that they are bad and we shouldn’t ever use the word hate in context of people.” He then followed by playing an edited clip of Morning Joe‘s Mika Brzezinski, who openly wondered “if that would have ever been asked about George W. Bush?”

Aha! That’s where O’Reilly was ready to pounce at the seeming double standard of the left, as he quickly wondered aloud “if anyone would have dared to ask President Bush that kind of question?” Cut to O’Reilly recently asking the former President Bush: “the people in the press hated you, a lot of them. Why?” A smiling and self-satisfied O’Reilly was clearly pleased by what he surely saw as a clean debate victory.

Only, he shouldn’t be.

There is clearly a very big difference between telling a sitting U.S. president that people hate him, and asking a former president why some in the press hated him. To draw some sort of reasonable comparison is an unfair and false equivalency. Further, suggesting to a sitting president that he his hated by “the people” is poor form, especially for a self-described “traditionalist” like O’Reilly. To be fair, his questioning did not seem specifically designed to undermine Obama in any way. It was simply poor etiquette.

The entirety of the Obama and O’Reilly interview (an additional ten minutes of which aired last night) was extremely compelling and a win-win-win for everyone involved: Obama was able to reasonably demonstrate that he’s not a rabid socialist to some hard core fans of “The Factor”; O’Reilly deftly demonstrated an effective balance of tough questions and a (mostly) respectful and convivial tone; and the viewers were able to watch two sides of an ideological divide communicate, and find at least some common ground.

We’ve long believed that the smartest thing that Obama could ever do was to engage with O’Reilly (in a post written over a year ago that’s appropriately titled “Why the Smartest Thing President Obama Can Do is Go on The Factor.”

Lets hope that, in the coming 2012 campaign season, Obama and O’Reilly have more discussions like this. For the good of the country.

Watch the clip below from Fox News:

The details are still mostly under wraps, with only tiny tidbits being hinted at in the 72-second teaser video. Oprah says “this is it,” and Sarah, Duchess of York says “it’s great… it’s exciting to be part of OWN.”

Oprah best friend forever Gayle King offers nothing more when she agrees that “we’ve got something really great on our hands.”

The video, posted on the OWN Blog, says only this:

Watch our stunning and heart-pounding new video featuring so many stars and so much energy that it will leave you breathless.

New shows. New faces. New possibilities.

What will you be watching on January 1st?

So there you have it. Now you know all we know about OWN.

Watch the video here, from OWN:

In an excerpt from her upcoming A Barbara Walters Special: Oprah, The Next Chapter, which airs Thursday night on ABC, Walters asked about the unusual bond between Oprah and best friend Gayle King. “She is … the mother I never had. She is … the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don’t know a better person. I don’t know a better person,” said Oprah, who frustrated herself by crying when she apparently had decided ahead of the interview she would not.

Following up, Walters asked about “those…dumb rumors” that Winfrey and King are gay:

“I’m not a lesbian … I’m not even kind of a lesbian,” Winfrey said. “And the reason why it irritates me is because it means that somebody must think I’m lying. That’s number one. Number two … why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life.”

Oprah also revealed she had some doubts about her soon-to-launch network, OWN:

“At first, I thought, ‘Great, a network. Oh, gee, this is the dream I had.’ And … as that started to settle in with me, I thought, ‘Whoa! What is this I’ve gotten myself into? This is a lot more work than I ever imagined,’” Winfrey told Walters.

Winfrey said that taking on a whole new network is frightening.

“I was very scared … I would wake up in the middle of the night literally like clutching my chest, like, ‘What have I done? What have I done?’” she recalled.

Watch the interview here, from ABC:

The guest list got more attention after sniping among the White House press corps that Univision got the only question at a press conference with Obama and Calderon.  The Hill’s Sam Youngman tweeted and Politico’s Patrick Gavin whined that U.S. press were shut out of the questions.  White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was more than happy to point out, via a tweet, that Univision was actually an American network.

The guest list includes Univision anchors María Elena Salinas and Jorge Ramos, as well as their rival on Telemundo, José Díaz-Balart. Also on the guest list is Monica Lozano, publisher of Los Angeles daily newspaper La Opinion and Victor Pérez of Chicago’s Hoy. Former network anchor and reporter Giselle Fernandez also made the cut.

While the regular networks were shut out of the event–save ABC’s Bianna Golodryga who is the fiancee of Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag–there are other television celebrities including Whoopi Goldberg, Eva Longoria-Parker and George Lopez. Oprah’s BFF Gayle King is attending as the guest of Newark, N.J., mayor Cory Booker.

After the first state dinner, which became famous for being crashed by reality-show wannabes Tareq and Michaele Salahi, security has been tight for the event and the guest list didn’t become public until late in the day. The dinner is being planned and prepared by celebrity chef and friend-of-the-Obamas Rick Bayless, who started the day feuding with Chicago Sun-Times writer Lynn Sweet, who said Bayless was tweeting against protocol.

As usual, the panel was good fun (and kudos to Musto for that Bat Boy joke) — but my favorite part was when we somehow got around to Thomas Jefferson and his relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings, and Fuller argued that what was whispered gossip back in the day of Monticello was important historical fact now, and I made the leap that Kitty Kelley was a national treasure. Or something. Please note that we are two Canadians. Then we discussed whether the National Enquirer ought to have gotten the Pulitzer Prize for breaking the John Edwards scandal. It was a very fun segment, probably a lot more fun than listening to the music of John Tesh.

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This, at least, according to the judgment of a panel comprised of the following people: Rudy Giuliani, Barbara Walters, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Gayle King, Tom Colicchio and the Honorable Luke Ravenstahl. (I’d heard of five of those people, though Ravenstahl only made the cut because my sister lives in Pittsburgh.) This distinguished crew’s final vote: three votes for Twitter, three for the economy. (Hey sis! Your Mayor thinks Twitter is a person!)

For fifty-five years from 1927 to 1982, Time (which originally conceived of the “Man of the Year” during a slow news week) managed to bestow the honor on actual people. But everything went haywire after the magazine named Ayatollah Khomeini the honoree in 1979. It’s hard to deny that Khomeini had enormous impact on the world that year, but people weren’t thrilled with the bestowing of a putative honor on someone whose minions were holding Americans hostage. Time got cautious – so, after two years with obvious winners (Ronald Reagan and Lech Walesa) they copped out. In 1982, they declared The Computer “Machine of the Year;” Alan Turing likely rolled over in his grave.

In following years, the trend continued. In 1984, the winner was Peter Ueberroth, in recognition of the awesome job he did with the 1984 Olympics. (Americans won every single event including “Machine of the Year.”) In 1988, Time declared the winner to be the Earth, though our home planet won only because the Moon and its allies boycotted.

Let’s say, then, just for the sake of argument, that Time actually declares a human being to be the winner of its 2009 competition. I crunched the numbers to figure out how likely that was and if we might be able to make any predictions of who will win based on past awardees. Below, they’re categorized by gender, nationality, reason for winning and personhood. Spoiler! Predictions can be made.

Gender

Time has five times (five) named women as stand-alone honorees. Those five were: Wallis Simpson, who was able to marry the King of England once he abdicated his throne; Queen Elizabeth II; Corazon Aquino; a group of corporate whistleblowers all of whom happened to be women; and, in 1975, Women. Women, as in every single American woman. (So if you’re an American woman who was alive in 1975, you’ve won the award twice: as a woman, and as You, in 2006. Congrats.)

There have been slightly more times when a pairing or group including both genders won (including some groupings like “The American Soldier”) – but on the whole, this is an old boy’s club.

Nationality

The color in that map is scaled from light to dark orange; the more winners from a country, the darker the orange. See where we’re going with this?

Time is an American magazine, of course, so it’s not terribly surprising that the vast majority of award winners hail from here. And don’t be upset that you’re not recognized, Canadians – for the past fourteen years you’ve had your own award. (Which has gone to ten different people, no women, and, two years ago, to the Canadian dollar.)

Reason for Winning

This is a bit more subjective – but it’s unarguably the case that most of the winners have been politicians or political newsmakers. Please, feel free to debate my categorizations (derived, I should note, from Wikipedia’s index of winners). “Change,” for example refers to winners chosen for the social change they represent. Think MLK or Gandhi. Or Kissinger.

Person?

Most of the time, the Person of the Year is a person, or, at the very least, a group of people. The odds that we end up with a Twitter or economy victor? 1 in 50. I’ll take those odds.

So. Any predictions?

Actually, that majority combination – an American male who operates in the political world – has only won about a third of the time. Since Obama won last year, it seems unlikely that he’ll win again (Nobel not withstanding) – and it’s hard to think of what politician has had a bigger impact than him. So who else might it be?

Time‘s goal, of course, is to sell magazines, so they may go for something controversial. Probably not Hitler (1938), Stalin (1939, 1942) or Khomeini (1979) controversial. But maybe Johnson (1933) controversial.

Hugh Johnson was pretty much exactly what the radical right thinks Obama is: a head of the National Recovery Administration in FDR’s New Deal who was also reported to be a fascist. In fact, Time itself helped to out him, noting that, during a Recovery Administration parade, Johnson raised his hand in a “continuous Fascist salute.” Oddly, though, that article came out the same year as Johnson’s award. Public perception of fascism changed a lot between 1933 and 1945, for whatever reason.

Who fits the mold of being “Johnson controversial”? Someone who would be considered unacceptable by half of America. Think of former Governors you know.

A safe bet is that Time, no matter who it chooses, hopes to avoid what happened with their 1931 choice, Pierre Laval. Laval, the first European to be picked, was named while the world struggled to emerge from the Great Depression. Newly elected as Premier of the Republic, Laval’s optimism in the face of increasing international and economic tensions and a then-famous tete-a-tete with Herbert Hoover made him a media darling.

However. Following the outbreak of World War Two, and the accession of a large part of France by Germany, Laval, though historically antagonistic to the Germans, became the head of the Vichy (German-controlled) state. In that role, he collaborated with Nazi Germany, including facilitating the deportation of non-French Jews to concentration camps. After the war, Laval was tried for treason by the French Government and executed, with some good reason.

Man of the Year!

Time‘s accolade, while always tainted by marketing needs, has been through a particularly rough stretch. (Case in point: one-third of the past nine winners have been George W. Bush or Rudy Giuliani.) There are three options for the magazine this year: name a deserving person and sell fewer magazines, name an undeserving person and be mocked, or name a thing and be mocked. Not an envious position for a stumbling business.

So I offer a solution: me. I’m American, male, and have worked in politics. I use Twitter and participate (however modestly) in the economy. Am I deserving of the award? No. But I promise – I swear on my future children – I will not commit treason, resulting in my execution. Which must count for something.

Of course, I also just won in 2006. This deciding thing is harder than it looks.

The National Enquirer

From the piece:

No sign of Stedman as Oprah and BFF Gayle enjoy a bounty of erotica on the very high seas!

Some of Oprah Winfrey‘s staffers behaved like they were on The Jerry Springer Show when their bighearted boss treated them to a $10 million Mediterranean cruise!

Two couples were caught in “compromising situations” on deck …one guy celebrated too much on shore and missed the boat back…and another guy was found passed out near the ship’s nightclub at 5 a.m. – stark naked!

There was also the no-show mystery of Oprah’s long-time beau Stedman Graham – and back at work, the scandals had staffers buzzing.

“There’s a lot of gossip about the wild behavior,” an insider told The ENQUIRER.

Oprah, 55, generously paid to fly nearly 2,000 people – her employees plus their guests – to Barcelona, Spain, where they boarded the luxury liner Norwegian Gem for a 10-day “Trip of a Lifetime.”