Matt Yglesias

Meeting Mike O’Hanlon

Thursday evening I had the opportunity to appear on Al-Hurra, America’s government-funded Arabic-language television network (and, no, I don’t speak Arabic and, yes, the network might be more popular if it didn’t feature so many Americans-who-need-to-be-translated) to do some commentary on the Democratic Convention before Barack Obama’s big speech. To my surprise, my fellow guest was none other than Michael O’Hanlon (the photo’s not very good, my seat was pretty far from his):

Showing off his savvy TV veteran skills, O’Hanlon brought a pair of sunglasses to the studio that he could wear between our on-camera moments in order to avoid being blinded by prolonged exposure to TV lighting. I’d never met him before, and we only chatted extremely briefly once we were done because I wanted to hurry home and see Obama.