THE HOT TOPICS round-table segment on "The View" -- a show usually devoted to such burning issues as which B-list celeb got voted off "Dancing With the Stars" -- has lately resembled the vortex of a road-rage incident. Shepherd got into a screaming match earlier this month with cohost Elisabeth Hasselbeck -- the show's token pro-John McCain foil -- over Barack Obama's ties to former Weatherman Bill Ayers and McCain's divorce from his first wife.
"Saturday Night Live" has seized the spotlight with Tina Fey's goofs on Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, so much so that Palin may reportedly make a campaign stop on NBC's sketch show later this month. And of course, Winfrey, our age's most powerful broadcasting personality, has been a virtual endorsement machine for Obama.
And yet for all this, entertainment programs still seem guided by irrational double standards when it comes to direct political expression. (As for sublimated political expression, sometimes it glides by with relatively little scrutiny, such as on Fox's terrorism thriller "24," while other times it explodes into controversy, as on the ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11").