I’ll never know why Palin didn’t just answer the question. No, she wasn’t a big reader, but why couldn’t she just wing it, like she did so brilliantly with the pit-bull joke? At the very least, she could have said the New York Times, although maybe Palin thought it would anger her conservative base. Or maybe she was just over it. And me.
It’s funny—of all the serious things we discussed, this off-the-cuff exchange was the one that played on a national loop, marking a turning point in the campaign. Almost immediately, McCain’s poll numbers started to sink.
The interview was a turning point for me too. Finally good press, and lots of it. And the people at CBS were visibly surprised by how well it went. Brian, such a great and loyal friend, was basically like, Duh—have you seen Katie before? This is what she does.
Then there was Saturday Night Live. A friend called at around 10:00 p.m. to say, “Make sure you watch tonight!”
Oh, boy, I thought. This could go either way.
I got in my flannel pj’s and sat on the couch with Ellie in the Red Room. Sure enough, we were the cold open.
There’s letter-perfect Tina Fey as Palin in the pink jacket and rectangle-lens eyewear—an American flag in the background, just like in our interview. And there’s Amy Poehler playing me.
It’s a hilarious bit, with Fey nailing Palin’s impenetrable gosh-golly syntax and Poehler-as-me staring back and rapid-blinking incredulously. At one point she asks, “What lessons have you learned from Iraq and how specifically would you spread democracy abroad?”
After a long and comical pause, Fey/Palin cites the mayday option for contestants on the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire:
“Katie, I’d like to use one of my lifelines.”
Which pretty much summed up the state of the McCain/Palin campaign.
Choosing Palin wasn’t John McCain’s finest moment. But when I watched him give his classy concession speech, I was reminded of what an incredibly decent guy he was. I’d always enjoyed being in his presence; he’d invited us to stay for a barbecue at his ranch in Sedona when I was there to interview him （unfortunately, we had to hit the road）。 He loved to goof around with reporters and really respected what we did. Those were the days.
Sarah Palin may have crashed and burned, but she launched a new era in American politics. Her plainspoken mean-spiritedness and her ability to tap into populist grievances planted the seeds of Trumpism that would grow and spread like kudzu across the land.
The interview won a coveted duPont-Columbia Award. And while it didn’t provide much of an uptick in the ratings, rumors that I was about to get fired would never be whispered again.
73
Over Un-Easy
KATIE BOYLE WAS a senior producer at CBS and, for me, a rare bright spot—diligent and serious-minded, but I could make her laugh with a funny aside or an eye-roll when no one was looking. I called her Katie B.; she called me Katie C. In February of 2011, she asked if I would be willing to meet with a woman named Abra Potkin, who worked in the syndication department of CBS, the folks who brought you daytime staples like Judge Judy and Dr. Phil.
“You will love her,” Katie told me like she was describing one of the cool kids.
We arranged to have lunch at the Greek Kitchen, my go-to in the restaurant dead zone surrounding the CBS Broadcast Center. Abra had straight raven hair and lively brown eyes that widened conspiratorially as she leaned in, gesturing broadly. She was one of the most enthusiastic people I’d ever met and won me over instantly. Abra wanted to feel me out about hosting a syndicated daytime talk show.
Syndication. The very word rang with lucrative possibilities. In a nutshell, a syndicated show is brought to market, and local stations have the option to pay a licensing fee to air it; if the show is considered hot, that can mean big money. The downside is syndicated shows aren’t protected the way they might be if wholly owned and operated by a network. To a large extent, they’re on their own.
I was raised on syndicated shows. I had my after-school snack of vanilla wafers in front of The Dinah Shore Show as she gently chatted with guests in her soft white blouse and even softer blond hair. Then there was the affable Mike Douglas （24-year-old Roger Ailes was a production assistant） and the equally affable Merv Griffin. Merv went on to create syndicated game shows like Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. When he died in 2007, his net worth was a billion dollars.
But history was made in 1986 when Oprah arrived on the national stage. Her show quickly achieved mythic status, the pinnacle of what syndication could do—provide a platform for feel-good conversation while folding in hugely important topics like racism, domestic violence, and AIDS, minting money in the process.