This year has already seen my favorite live TV surprise of all time, when that Alaskan news anchor said fuck-all and quit her job on the air. But this video from a recent C-SPAN panel might possibly take top honors. Check it out.
C-SPAN’s call-in segments are arguably the only time that the network regularly proves it has a pulse, but the people calling in are usually irate strangers. This episode of Washington Journal featured brothers Brad and Dallas Woodhouse talking about their new documentary Woodhouse Divided, which takes a closer look at the two siblings’ lives at different ends of the political party system. (Brad is the liberal and Dallas is the conservative.) But instead of a call about the Affordable Health Care Act, they heard from someone who knows them better than anyone in the world. And this reaction was priceless.
Oh my God, it’s Mom.”
It takes a second for the host to even realize this is real, as crank calls to C-SPAN aren’t unheard of. Nobody likes to have their dirty laundry aired out on live TV, but that’s kind of what happens here, as their mother takes a second to lovingly berate them.
I’m your mother, and I disagree that all families are like ours. I don’t know many families that are fighting at Thanksgiving...And I’m hoping you’ll have some of this out of your system when you come here for Christmas. I would really like a peaceful Christmas.”
Haha! I’m trying to think of the most embarrassing thing that my own mom ever did to me, and while I can remember some pretty crappy things, nothing tops getting outed with C-SPAN’s admittedly limited audience watching.
Though from my point of view, she doesn’t come off sounding half-bad, saying that she’s a one-issue woman, rather than someone who exclusively follows one party or another. That’s probably not the best thing for strict party politicians to hear, but anything to not have her blindly hope that they’ll work out ALL of their differences by the time Christmas rolls around. Mothers have a way of being blissfully naïve like that.
While we all have C-SPAN on the brain for probably the first time in 2014, check out some of the network’s more memorable crank calls from over the years.
What’s the most embarrassing thing your mom ever did?
