“Crossfire,” CNN’s signature and much reviled back-and-forth political argument show, had the bad luck to be revived after a eight years lapse in a week when actual news was breaking on the 24-hour cable network.
Wolf Blitzer was still quite giddy over his late afternoon interview with President Obama that was responding to Syria’s President Assad but he had to sign off anyway on Monday to make way for the first new “Crossfire” since 2005.
It’s been advertised on Jeff Zucker’s new CNN as having four hosts: Newt Gingrich, S E Cupp, Stephanie Cutter and Van Jones. But Monday’s debut only had two, Gingrich and Cutter, spending their half hour discussing Syria with Sens. Rand Paul and Robert Menendez.
Gingrich, perhaps more used to being asked questions than asking them all these years, surprisingly hung back, letting Cutter, a former deputy senior adviser for Obama, be de facto host of the show. She seemed coached into interrupting people, a technique to make what would be a talking head show seem more lively.
By Tuesday, Syria was still the issue and the two other hosts were in charge, conservative commentator Cupp and Van Jones, an activist who was whisked out of a White House job in a witch hunt. Their guests seemed a sad demonstration of what may serve as the political spectrum for the show — from the right of center to extreme right — with their guests, the two former senators and presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Joe Lieberman, a onetime Democrat turned Independent and best friend and almost running mate of John McCain.
Shot at the DC CNN studio, the episode was broadcast into the former Carnegie Library at Mt. Vernon Square in D.C. that was decked out to serve as the “Crossfire” opening party Tuesday, and everybody kept saying “good show” as the cast came in.
Jeff Zucker, his face contorted by a bout with Bell’s palsy, took the stage and said he had two goals when he became president of CNN: “Get James Earl Jones back” — the actor had recorded his introduction in Darth Vader voice — “and bring back ‘Crossfire.'”
“I remember it as my favorite show that covered news when I was growing up,” he said, though when it started in 1982 he was 17. It figures that a guy who started his work in broadcasting in sports that he’d pick the one news show designed as a competition.
Gingrich, the most famous one on the panel, was taking the bombastic conservative role once held by Pat Buchanan amid his many stints running for president (there’s a plan in place for Gingrich, too, to get him off the air should he throw his hat in the ring for anything).
Despite his politics, people sidled up to him for a picture like he was chief bear at the circus. Nearby Calista Gingrich was sought out as well; her hair, which looks as hard as a hood ornament in pictures, seemed softer in its Gehry-like swirls, but still an architectural marvel nonetheless.
Washington folk don’t drink as much as L.A. crowds so it wasn’t hard to get to the bar.
Faces came in and out of focus in the crowd. Gloria Borges talked with Sen. Mark Sanford, maybe about their favorite sections of the Appalacian Trail. Jake Tapper talked with a woman who might have been wearing those Google glasses affixed with tiny computers (or they were just odd glasses). And teeny Dana Bash was squirting out of the teeming mass, saying she had to go back to work (Obama was, after all, going to deliver an address that Blitzer was typically hyping as his most important ever at 9 p.m.).
Faded former “Crossfire” hosts were in the crowd, such as Bill Press, most recently doing a morning talk show for the old Current TV. Other former hosts flashed on a screen, Geraldine Ferraro and John Sununu among them.
Santorum extended his day back in the spotlight with an appearance at the party as well. And there were about as many black faces in the jazz band hired for the event as there were among the invited crowd.
But one was Jones, who said his appointment to the show “is a big deal for me.”
“I grew up watching ‘Crossfire,'” Jones said. But he added that when he got out of law school in 1993, it was about the time Gingrich was leading a charge on Congress with its first Republican majority in 40 years. “I’ve been debating this guy in my mind for 20 years,” Jones said.
Cutter, perhaps the only political analyst on TV wearing a leather dress and glittery heels, chewed gum as she made a crack about being able to live in a city where she can drink an oversized Big Gulp freely. “I plan to gorge on trans fats.”
All four were asked to pose for pictures, something they’ve done quite a bit for publicity since their team was announced. They seem to have some affection for each other, or at least the realization that as part of the same infotainment business, they all rely on one another.
Despite the addition of a new segment of the show at its end called “Ceasefire,” in which they try to state some common ground, they still seem to continue to float the fantasy that each issue has two sides (and only two) and that volume of voice and number of interruptions will help solidify your argument.
The return of “Crossfire” flies in the face of the criticism of the show most famously given to them by Jon Stewart months before the network pulled the plug: “It’s hurting America. Here is what I wanted to tell you guys: Stop… You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.”
But that’s when Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala were the hosts. Now look: There are four new people, and one of them believes in moon colonies.