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Tom Brokaw is a liar. He told the New York Times on Saturday that he was not intimidated by the Republican attacks on the media last week.

Mr. Brokaw said he was subjected to some “good natured ribbing, friendly fist-shaking,” in the hall, but “nothing out of the ordinary,” or, for that matter, nothing that would impede him from discharging his normal celebrity duties.

Stephanopoulos mouthed the same cliches last week that he was not part of any “media elite”. But this morning on Meet The Press and This Week Brokaw and Stephanopoulos might have just as well have been reading a script written by John McCain’s campaign staff as they interviewed Biden and Obama.

MR. BROKAW: I want to move on in a moment, but there’s another headline that appeared in the New York Post. Oprah Winfrey decided not to have Sarah Palin on the show before the election. “No-Prah!” That’s the New York Post headline. “TV first lady’s Palin insult,” as they called it. Oprah did come out for Barack Obama, did have him on the show. Do you think that some people will see that as an elitist position, that in some ways Democrats may be afraid of her, Sarah Palin?

Stephanopoulous asked an equally “Drudge” question early in the Obama interview about the Saddleback Forum and abortion.

ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos Reports: Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., admitted this weekend that his response on the definition of human life at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Forum was “probably” too flip.

When asked at what point a baby gains human rights, Obama said last month “that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”

But in an exclusive “This Week” interview airing this morning, Obama told Stephanopoulos “what I intended to say is that, as a Christian, I have a lot of humility…all I meant to communicate was that I don’t presume to be able to answer these kinds of theological questions.”

It’s very clear. Republican intimidation of the media works. We saw it leading up to the invasion of Iraq, when every one of the networks was afraid to question Bush on the reasons for war. Guys like Brokaw and Stephanopoulos talk a good game, but they are total pussies when the party in power calls them out. Although both Obama and Biden handled the hostile questions well, it was clear that NBC and ABC were trying to placate the Republicans. Later this week Sarah Palin will be interviewed by “Softball Charlie” Gibson. He’s even more easily cowed than Tom and George. Once that’s done, they can say that Sarah has been vetted by the media and she won’t have to have a press conference.

U.S. Olympic Women

When trying to put down my thoughts about the meaning of the Beijing Olympics, I keep getting drawn back to this picture of Cappie Pondexter jumping on teammate Diana Taurasi in celebration of the U.S. Womens Gold Medal victory in Basketball–”She ain’t heavy, she’s my sister”–as the old song almost went. The Olympics show off the wonderful potpourri of races and ethnicities that is 21st Century America. Part of our joy that kept us transfixed to the screen for the past two weeks is a celebration of our diversity. What ever the talk from the pundit class about the incipient racism that may be impeding Obama’s campaign, I’m not buying it.

Media Effects

NBC won the lottery as far as the last two weeks went. Dick Ebersol, Pres. of NBC Sports explains.

As the Games neared, ad sales picked up — and, after the Games started off so well, they exploded. Mr. Ebersol said that in the end it may have been NBC’s good fortune that the country was going through some tough times.

“The economy was so dark,” Mr. Ebersol said. “But with $4 a gallon gas, more people were staying home. Many fewer were taking vacations.”

That made people both more available and more susceptible to the pull of the Olympics.

“When these Games came along, it was really at a point where the country was just ready for something they could really get crazy about,” he said.

Equally important for those of us that study digital technology, NBC put up 2200 hours of online video and had 72 million videos streamed in the U.S.

China

Despite what the China naysayers will tell you, I think the Olympics was a big win for China. As Nick Kristoff reported yesterday, Chinese Internet censorship is loosening and I don’t think this process will stop after the games. Chinese pride at no longer being regarded as “the sick man of Asia”, will allow this opening to continue. This is not to say that China is not going to be encountering economic headwinds as I wrote yesterday. The Wall Street Journal outlined three big problems for China in the next few years.

“Americans who worry that China might overtake the United States are worrying about the wrong thing,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wrote in an article published last week. “Serious troubles in China’s economy could threaten the stability of the U.S. and global economies.”

Three challenges especially stand out for the Chinese: The nation’s changing work force, a widening in the gap between rich and poor and severely constrained supplies of energy and environmental resources.