It's an election year

A faux tweet noted Chuck Woolery's appearance at CPAC, now running in Washington. Media reporters have long spotted the trend toward the political right among game show hosts. Which is something of an oddity in the definitely left-leaning media business.

It's easy to overstate the "trend." The syndie hosts, for instance, split pretty much down the middle. Pat Sajak and Alex Trebek lean right, while Steve Harvey and Meredith Vieira tend to the port side. Harvey even got upset with a couple of black pundits who dared to criticize Obama.

Politics and game shows may have collided most directly when The Price is Right's producers reportedly vetted Rosie O'Donnell as the successor to Bob Barker. After a gale of jokes about The Price is Left, they settled on the much less divisive Drew Carey. Rumor is that Drew tends Libertarian. But he doesn't lecture people about it...at least, not very often or very loudly.

Hey, it's a free country and game show hosts can get as political as they want. Except when they're actually hosting their game shows. I don't care for politics injected directly into what should be just fun. There's an old saying about Western Union and sending a message. (Once upon a time, Western Union really did send messages.)