ABC and CBS's morning shows on Monday hyped Chelsea Clinton's wedding as happy reminder of the '90s. Daily Beast editor Tina Brown appeared on Good Morning America and enthused, "Well, I really felt that this wedding came in for the real rosy glow, Clinton, sort of back-lit feeling, because people are really very depressed right now." [MP3 audio here.]
Co-host Robin Roberts prompted the former editor of the New Yorker, "You said that we needed, that America needed this wedding." The nostalgic Brown reminisced that the "Clinton-era was all about surpluses and prosperity and pre-9/11."
Speaking of the decade, she oddly asserted, "And, suddenly, we think, 'How safe we were in those days and we didn't even realize it.'"
Brown wrote a similar-sounding column for The Daily Beast.
The fact that the '90s also included the USS Cole bombing, the first attack on the World Trade Center, and that 9/11 followed soon after, apparently escaped Brown.
Over on CBS's Early Show, Harry Smith talked to the editor of HollywoodLife.com and gushed, "Why are we so entranced by [the wedding], do you think?"
Fuller echoed Brown: "It's a huge romance, it's a love story. And you know what, we have not had good news like this, an incredible distraction like this, in so long. I mean, we've just had a barrage of negative [news]."
Smith could barely hold back his enthusiasm. He fawned, "The pictures, when you look at these pictures, they look like they came – come out of Town & Country or out of, you know, Bride Magazine or something."
A transcript of the Good Morning America segment, which aired at 8:10am EDT on August 2, follows:
ROBIN ROBERTS: You wrote so brilliantly in your column at The Daily Beast- You said that we needed, America needed this wedding. What did you mean- Explain what you meant by that.
TINA BROWN: Well, I really felt that this wedding came in for the real rosy glow, Clinton, sort of, back-lit feeling, because people are really very depressed right now. It's a terribly depressing time in America with the huge unemployment and jobs lost and two wars that have just beaten us all down.
And somehow, people were able to kind of remember, actually, that that Clinton-era was all about surpluses and prosperity and pre-9/11. And, suddenly, we think, "How safe we were in those days and we didn't even realize it."
So, it was like a way that we, almost, could, sort of, erase the ten years since and just kind of think ourselves back to that moment when we were all kind of better off. And the only wars were the Baltic wars, which, of course, were actually went okay.
ROBERTS: That's true.
BROWN: As a reminder of that, you had Madame Albright-
ROBERTS: Who did look lovely, too.
BROWN: -who did look lovely, too, kicking up her heels.
