The Feed: Obama's victory offers new perspective

This message is directed to the person who sent the letter, arriving on Election Day, titled "Congrats all the (n-words) of the world."

I wish you had been sitting next to me Tuesday night, when the nation elected its first president of color. Not for I-told-you-so purposes — although that might have been fun — but because the power of seeing Barack Obama transcend so much was bound to loosen even your hard heart.

For hours I perused the discussion across TV and the Internet, and a few thoughts emerged:

If white folks can be too naive about race, perhaps black folks can be too cynical — A constant theme I heard from my black friends is that it took many of us a while to believe Obama had a snowball's chance. One friend described relatives hesitating to vote for Obama for fear of assassination — after all, in their generation, that's what happened to so-called uppity black folks.

Obama succeeded by refusing to be a spokesman on race — I first heard this on the radio last week and it made a lot of sense; new school black leaders facing subtler culture issues must find subtler solutions. But it also means that Americans must reach their own conclusions about race without much help from their first black chief executive.

Journalists may yet tussle with an Obama administration — The campaign's sometimes standoff-ishness is legend (a writer for Slate noted Michelle Obama refused an interview while telling TV cameras how accessible she was). I wonder how our new president — who once misdirected a planeful of journalists to meet secretly with Hillary Clinton — will negotiate this, once the media honeymoon fades.

My pen pal probably overlooked this while crafting a letter full of slurs and stereotypes. But this election made us all reconsider what we thought we knew about each other — which may be Obama's greatest achievement yet.

TiVo

Top Chef New York, 10 p.m. Tuesday, Bravo: Cable's top food show returns with plenty of angst, whining and competition among 17 aspiring cooks brought to New York City for the show's fifth cycle. Marvel as a roomful of Type A food nerds try to create dishes based on different neighborhoods in Gotham.

ER, 10 p.m. Thursday, WFLA-Ch. 8: Yeah, this is a show that only diehard sucker fans like me are still watching. But TiVo Life on Mars this week and switch over for a moving episode in which Angela Bassett's ER chief, above, recalls the day she met Anthony Edwards' Mark Greene, in a flashback to the moment when her son needed treatment and Greene hadn't yet died of brain cancer (there are other cameo appearances, too!).

Ricky Gervais: Out of England — The Stand Up Special, 9 p.m. Saturday, HBO: Because his onstage persona is so offhand, it's easy to forget that the star of Britain's smash version of The Office is actually an amazingly talented stand-up comic. But spend five minutes watching him dissect the phrase "going commando" and how his charity work should allow him to cut in line for any needed cancer treatments, and you'll see where the cluelessly egocentric David Brent character really came from.

the list

It should be no surprise in an election

year when cable TV dominated news

coverage, but CNN scored the second-highest ratings on election night, topping two of the three broadcast networks as more than

71-million people watched some TV outlet

for results.

Here's the list of top TV outlets and their

audiences from 8 to 11 p.m. on election

night, according to Nielsen Media Research.

ABC, 13.1-million viewers.

CNN, 12.3-million.

NBC, 12-million.

Fox News Channel, 9-million.

CBS, 7.829-million.

MSNBC, 5.8-million.

Fox broadcast, 5.1-million.

Univision, 4-million.

the site

Kenny Mayne brings the dry wit that made him a favorite for more than 13 years at ESPN to a new Web-only series offered by the channel dubbed Mayne Street. Starting on Tuesday, the show's 15 webisodes offer a fictionalized look at life behind the scenes at the Bristol, Conn., sports TV powerhouse, featuring a clueless 20-something boss, Type A producer and eccentric cameraman. Look on ESPN.com Tuesday for the results.