Can you feel the love already? Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News magazine reports that the flagrantly liberal Bryant Gumbel will have a chance to celebrate the life and times of president-in-waiting Barack Obama, specifically his Hoop Dreams era:
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) will talk hoops on the upcoming edition of Home Box Office's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.
In the Emmy award-winning show’s 133rd edition, Obama, in a segment called for “The Love of the Game” discusses how basketball helped shape his identity. During his interview with Gumbel talks about childhood, his high-school years on the Punahou School basketball team in Honolulu, and the pickup games he’s played since then, as important connections to his life today.
The program bows April 15 on HBO at 10 p.m. (ET/PT).
Will Gumbel be able to resist painting Obama as a political Dr. J? Perhaps the last time we noticed Bryant opining on sports and the news, it was this little gem from the Gumbel file:
"Two weeks after his acquittal, we’ll see how O.J. Simpson is still being treated as if he were guilty." – October 16, 1995 Today.
Or:
"I said to somebody that if O.J. killed his first wife, Marguerite [who is black], and her friend, then do I think George Will and William F. Buckley would have written about it? No way. Not on God’s green earth. They wouldn’t have even noticed." – In a Los Angeles Times Magazine profile, January 12, 1997. (Brackets theirs.)