White House Correspondents Insider

Behind the scenes of the most powerful city in the world — Washington, D.C. — and those who cover it.

Diane Sawyer Names Miss Montana as ABC's Person of the Week

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Miss Montana on stage, Thursday January 10th, at preliminaries at Planet Hollwood, Las Vegas.

Miss Montana Alexis Wineman will be Diane Sawyer’s Person of the Week tonight on ABC’s World News. The 18-year old Miss America hopeful appeared earlier today on Good Morning America discussing how she’s the youngest contestant in the 92-year history of the pageant and growing up with autism.

As the days lead up to the competition airing on the ABC network Saturday, January 12 at 9 p.m. there are already a few winners among the women. Miss North Dakota (Rosie Sauvageau) and Miss Washington (Mandy Schendel) received the awards for Talent and Lifestyle & Fitness, respectively, on Thursday night. Of course, its up to the judges to make the tough decision. This year, the Miss America All-Star judging panel includes “Dancing with the Stars'” Cheryl Burke, Mary Hart, Daymond John, GMA’s Sam Champion, designer Bradley Bayou and Olympian McKayla Maroney.

Here are all the Judges on Thursday being taught how to not betray their favorites with a little help from Maroney being “not impressed“:

The judges will get to show the rest of the world how impressed they are tomorrow night during the live broadcast from Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas.

From Vince Vaughn and The Producers of Singled Out and Jon Stewart Show Comes…Glenn Beck?

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The Pursuit of Truth Teaser

File this under the weirder announcement of an otherwise exciting humpday.

TV Newser has the press release that Glenn Beck‘s TheBlaze [sic] will be venturing into the realm of documentary programming, much like MSNBC and CNN before him.

Whereas the major cable networks skewed toward franchise series (Lockup, or any of Anderson Cooper’s reports), Beck is going a different route: he’s making a reality show first, producing a documentary second.

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GQ's Least Influential Skirts The White House

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First Family

Can we really claim Michelle Obama is the seventh least influential person in the world? Does that mean she’s more or less influential than pop earworms like Gotye or the constant influence of Madonna on the world stage? If Mitt Romney is first is that because he lost the 2012 election or because he’s barely recognized while at a CVS?

These are the sorts of questions that plague us as we go through all 25 choices on GQ’s list of The Least Influential People of 2012. The list’s a mix of pop culture mainstays, but the additions of the political choices seem to sting a bit much. Especially when going after the First Lady:

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How Classified Is Zero Dark Thirty Anyway?

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Just how talkative are the secret special ops squad behind Seal Team Six? They were profiled and consulted for Medal of Honor: Warfighter, a video game released last month; “No Easy Day” wasn’t vetted by the Pentagon and the author claims it wasn’t a political book. And now the first reviews of Kathryn Bigelow, celebrating her 61st birthday today, and her upcoming film Zero Dark Thirty are hitting the trades.

When the film was put into production earlier this year and when the infamous “4 to 5 inch stack” of documents from the CIA were uncovered that could’ve possibly influenced the script and revealed classified operations according to Politico.

But what about the White House hitting back with the claim she used classified information in her latest film?  Scripted by Mark Boal, who also wrote her previous film The Hurt Locker and the story for In The Valley of Elah, the semi-accurate story follows the days leading up to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden as told through intelligence agencies and the Seal Team. Speaking last night on Nightline, via Deadline, Boal said about the attention his script received:

“I certainly did a lot of homework, but I never asked for classified materials; to my knowledge, I never received any. And I think as far as the controversy goes, you know, how can I put this — it was an election year. It was surreal and bizarre to have … I mean there were major players in the Republican Party characterizing the script and the movie before I had written a word, and I found that just really baffling.”

Criticwire collected the early reviews and they all sound promising for the film coming out later this month. But we’ll know if the film has an Argo effect on the Beltway on December 19th.

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Obama Pardons Cobbler and Gobbler In Historic First

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Ready Set Go!

Come tomorrow, Gobbler and Cobbler can rest easy knowing their necks aren’t on the line for Thanksgiving dinner. The two presidential birds were both pardoned minutes ago by President Obama at a ceremony outside the White House’s Rose Garden.

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Petraeus Makes A Black Ops Cameo, Too

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David Petraeus' cameo in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
If the comparisons to the Coen Brothers‘ Burn After Reading weren’t enough for the ongoing Petraeus scandal, how about we get to see his face as a soulless digital avatar as well? Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 ,a sequel to the 2010 spin-off in the Call of Duty franchise focusing on the cold war, came out earlier in the week. In traditional Beltway culture, players assume the role of the same character twice (both father in the 1980s and son in the 2025) while blowing up drug lords, piloting drones and doing everything possible to keep firing a gun from point A to point B.

Except (SPOILER) toward the end of the campaign in 2025, we get a surprise cameo from (fictional) General Petraeus as he oversees the joint-adventure between Chinese and American militaries in lieu of any upcoming cyber-attacks with a motion-captured (and D.C. native) Tony Todd.

As for what’s exactly happening in the video, it really could matter less since we all know Petraeus won’t be in this role in the next 13 years. If he had, Petraeus would’ve seen the end to “The Second Cold War,” a female president and all sorts of impossible battlefield decisions made by a group of 12-year olds hopped up on Mountain Dew and candy that probably assume he’s just a made-up character for the Call of Duty franchise.

However, he is the first “living” government figure to be used in the series, disregarding the first Black Ops that featured a painfully awkward Jack Kennedy impersonator. But it did involve a mode where certain world leaders banded together inside the Pentagon to take down zombies: