Bill Clinton Goes to TV Land

As Hillary Clinton tells Hollywood how she'd choose to solve the country's problems, Bill Clinton is on the speaking circuit dramatizing just how bad those problems are.

The former president made an appearance at a Viacom event in Gotham on Friday in which he laid out a surprisingly bleak view of the modern world as "unequal, unstable and unsustainable."

Event, an upfront for the TV Land cable net, scheduled Clinton because he reps the net's core baby-boomer demo. But in front of hundreds of Madison Avenue buyers, Clinton mostly shrugged off the boomer themes and focused on subjects like disease in the developing world, global warming, peak oil and health-care inequity.

With his usual mix of beguiling eloquence and relentless statistics, Clinton documented just how bad a state he feels the world is in. Clinton even drew a comparison between fundamentalist terrorism and those who perpetrate global warming. "Those who believe (in the idea of a shared identity and future) would not explode bombs on buses, and would not knowingly burn the planet up."

While Clinton has been careful to avoid overt campaigning for his wife, he made several references to efforts she was making to address these problems, including a trip she and John McCain took to Scandinavia to convince a "group of skeptical Republican senators" of urgency of global warming.

Hillary has been courting Hollywood in the interest of winning over its hearts (and coin). Bill's speech in front of advertisers at a television upfront could have its own consequences on the media landscape: he urged Madison Avenue to push for more disclosure in political attack ads, an issue on which ad buyers have some clout.

Like the pols cruising Hollywood, Clinton carefully positioned himself as attuned to the entertainment zeitgeist. Clinton described his favorite shows as "Grey's Anatomy," "Boston Legal" and "24," the last of which he said he likes "apparently even though an uber-right-wing guy writes it." He was referring to series exec producer Joel Surnow.

---By Steven Zeitchik in New York.