September
10 Etheridge: Political, but No Pundit

A month after the Logo/HRC presidential forum, the woman who actually caused the greatest stir hasn't had any offers to come onto "Meet the Press," or any other of the usual political stops.

"The way our media is set up, I don't know if I'll be invited," singer Melissa Ethridge told the New York Times.

Etheridge, who came under a bit of criticism for landing a spot on the panel of questioners, actually ended up putting Hillary Clinton on the spot, challenging John Edwards and sending Bill Richardson into a momentary tailspin. All of this from a neophyte to the art of grilling candidates.

She tells the Times, “Maybe I didn’t know the decorum. I didn’t know the ‘shoulds’ of what you should do. I did try to be personable and did try to ask simple questions, and maybe that’s what we’ve moved away from in our political discourse.”

Bill O'Reilly, of all people, called Etheridge "a tougher interviewer than most network news guys."

Nevertheless, that she was on the panel at all still stirs some debate, particularly among the candidates' campaigns, some of which would have preferred a group made up of journalists.

According to the Times, Etheridge also is leaning toward Dennis Kucinich, to whom she gave some very-unjournalistic gushing praise during the forum.