The Many Reasons To Love Bob Schieffer

Our very fine Fox Business Network Reporter Dagen McDowell had suggested that Bob Schieffer's five favorite songs — all honky-tonk country tunes — were an attempt to suck up to the I-Man. Luckily, the host of CBS's Face The Nation is a forgiving soul.

"She doesn't know what we know, Imus," said the Texas-born and bred Schieffer.

TIME Magazine named Ben Bernanke its Person of the Year, which Imus likened, in its emptiness, to President Obama having won the Nobel Peace Prize. Asked for his opinion on the matter, Schieffer quoted legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow.

"He used to get letters from people who took umbrage or disagreed with what he said," Schieffer explained. "He'd answer them by saying, 'You may be right.'"

On to health care, Imus supposed the question is not whether a health care bill will be passed before Christmas, but if a health care bill would pass before the apocalypse.

Schieffer, god bless him, was hopeful that something would happen at some point. The Senate seemed to be coming together, removing Medicare expansion and a public option from their version of the bill, which would still expand health care and ban insurance companies from denying people coverage for preexisting conditions.

"But it's still got to go back to the House," he cautioned. "And you've got a large number of liberals in the House who say they won't vote for anything unless it does have the public option in it."

Sick of talking about health care (pun intended), Imus brought u the always enjoyable closing comment portion of Face The Nation each week, where Schieffer offers his own thoughts on a current event.

A few weeks back, addressing Tiger Woods's complaints that he lacked privacy, Schieffer had suggested Woods could have "just played golf on Saturdays like the rest of us," and then only his wife would have cared about his indiscretions.

"If they don't want the public's attention, then they should give up this job that depends on public attention," he said about so-called celebrities.

The story just keeps on going, as Woods's various "adventures" come forward to tell their tales, leading Schieffer to an altogether different conclusion about the human race.

"Freud thought that sex was the driving force in human nature," he said. "But I've come to believe that getting on television has replaced sex as the driving and motivating force."

Case in point: the crazy parents who claimed their kid was flying in a weather balloon over Colorado, just so they could get some face time on the boob tube. While watching that strange ordeal, Imus had naturally hoped the kid was actually in the balloon, but that he would land safely. Had Schieffer, an upstanding gentleman by all accounts, secretly been wishing for the same outcome?

"Of course I was!" he replied, proving why Imus loves him to death.

-Julie Kanfer