Photograph of Obama, Clinton and Edwards at an event in Columbia, S.C. by Elise Amendola/AP With the South Carolina's Democratic primary on this coming Saturday, the three leading Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards gathered together at a Martin Luther King Day Jr. debate in Columbia, S.C. When Clinton addressed the crowd, she said, "We have come so far together. Barack Obama, an extraordinary, young African-American man with so much to......

Today we wrote a post on one-time Long Island Lolita Amy Fisher's contention that she was not appearing publicly to celebrate the release of her sex tape, but simply that she got paid a lump sum of money for the video of her having sex with her husband and that she agreed to talk about it publicly as part of her deal with the porno verite's distributor. She also didn't appreciate the editing that made......

Yesterday we mentioned Amy Fisher would be at Retox last night deejaying for her sex tape party. She hit the club with a statement she claimed to have written herself, after tossing aside the one her publicist wrote. She did this after, she says, she was edited to look bad on her Good Morning America appearance...despite her plastic surgery and leopard-print fur vest, shocking! Firmly holding the statement, prior to taking the decks, the former......

...and a thousand Photoshop files were launched! Diane Sawyer may be a veteran journalist and may seem totally unflappable, but even she has totally embarrassing moments. This morning, during a segment unveiling Good Morning America's new holiday windows from the New York Botanical Gardens, she called Mayor Bloomberg a "munchkin." Really: “As a little munchkin, did you come to New York?” To be fair, she was asking Bloomberg whether he visited New York during......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: Lincoln Center Tree Lighting 2007 (Monday, 5:30 p.m, WABC 7) Good Morning America’s Sam Champion and WABC’s Sade Baderinwa host the first televised tree lighting of the season. There will be some performances by Lincoln Center’s resident companies and some guest’s from channel 7’s owner Disney on hand for entertainment for the 8th annual Lincoln Center Holiday Tree lighting. America at a Crossroads (Monday, 9:00 p.m &......

The story had all the makings of a Hollywood romantic comedy from the get-go, so it's not surprising that Patrick Moberg is shopping around the rights to his real-life subway sweetheart story. It is, however, just a little disheartening that everything really is a commodity. Despite what he declared on his site after finding "the girl of his dreams" (telling us voyeurs we'll have to write our own ending to their story as they figured......

Sometime before 8 this morning, Patrick Moberg and Camille Hayton introduced themselves to Good Morning America viewers, Diane Sawyer and hopeless romantics everywhere. The Subway Cyrano met up with his mystery lady last night for dinner, where they said they "clicked." Hayton suggests the subway moment was serendipitous because she wouldn't have been on it (going to a friend's place) if her house hadn't just burned down. Moberg is compared to a Hollywood leading man,......

After making a big, illustrated statement on his website yesterday about not speaking another word about his underground love, too precious for the press -- Patrick Moberg talked to the New York Post. People read that newspaper Patrick! And word is the Blackbook employee who found her is going to be on Good Morning America tomorrow. Could Patraussie be next up to hit the small screen? (UPDATE: both are confirmed to be on GMA tomorrow!)......

The professor at Columbia University's Teacher College whose office door was found with a noose on it spoke out for the first time yesterday. Madonna Constantine told students that gathered for a rally, "This is a heinous and highly upsetting incident. I am upset that our community has been exposed to a blatantly vile incident like this. It is an act of cowardice. I would like the perpetrator to know that I will not be......

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is visiting Columbia University today to give a speech for the World Leaders Forum. And he continued to get a big New York-style welcome: The Daily News has its "The Evil Has Landed" cover while Assemblyman Dov Hikind told protesters outside Columbia's gates yesterday, “He should be arrested when he comes to Columbia University, not speak at the university, for God’s sake. I call on New Yorkers to make the......

Stormy Weather As we were away from televisions most of Wednesday, we can’t give a blow by blow account of the storm coverage. However, we can give you a brief summary of some of the major things. CBS’ “The Early Show" faced a deluge in their Fifth Avenue studios, forcing them to retreat to the CBS Broadcast Center across town on 57th Street only forty minutes before the broadcast. After a frantic scramble, the......

There's nothing like an endorsement from Gray's Papaya to show that NYC generally likes Mike. But it seems that to hinge upon his subway straphanger credentials - will the hot dog eatery reconsider, given that he is chauffeured to a subway station 22 blocks away (when there's one four blocks away), only likes to take the express and that his spokesman thinks people who like riding the subway need a shrink (hello, universal health......

Joel Siegel, perhaps best known as Good Morning America's film critic (a program he was on weekly since 1981), died yesterday in New York at the age of 63. Siegel had been battling colon cancer, though many didn't even know he was sick as he stayed positive until the end and kept working until just two weeks ago. In addition to his weekly appearances on GMA he was also seen frequently on ABC News, and......

We can't listen to Criss Angel (pictured..."levitating") speak for more than two seconds without thinking of the Human Giant sketch, Illusionators, so it will be hard to take his latest stunt very seriously. Angel, who is currently romantically linked to Cameron Diaz, will perform a death-defying stunt on on June 4th in Times Square. At this time, a shackled Angel will encase himself in a glass cube and be lifted 40 feet in the air,......

Yesterday, NBC News revealed that Virginia Tech shooting gunman Cho Seung-Hiu sent them a package of photographs, writings, and video - a "multimedia manifesto." The network turned over the materials to the authorities but also shared the package's contents during the evening news last night and on its website. Quickly, the images of Cho holding guns in both hands, pointing a gun at his head, pointing a gun at the camera, and more, started......

A new wrinkle to the Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign that doesn't involve the words "anti-" (like anti-gun, anti-abortion, and anti-straight-only marriage) or "marrying his cousin." Yesterday, the NY Times revealed that Andrew Giuliani had been estranged from Rudy Giuliani, because of problems with his dad's new wife. The 21-year-old Duke student told the Times, "There’s obviously a little problem that exists between me and his wife. And we’re trying to figure that out. But as......

There is nothing like a little snow to make the local television stations go nuts. The madness really started yesterday evening with reporters sent out to find snow, special winter weather graphics and crawls with school closings along with other notes about the snowstorm on the bottom of the screen. This morning the madness continued with most of the stations starting their morning newscasts an hour early at 4 a.m. However, we missed the......

Sam Champion Leaves WABC Longtime channel 7 weather presenter Sam Champion left the station last week to work full time for ABC News where he has been the morning weather presenter for Good Morning America since September. Champion, who is not a meteorologist, originally joined WABC to be an anchor, but was quickly shuffled into weather presenting. After taking the Good Morning America weather presenter spot, Champion’s duties were reduced to the 5 p.m. newscast......

This year, the Today Show's tradition of testing its hosts' fortitude by giving them nutty Halloween costumes did not disappoint. Matt Lauer and Al Roker were Jack Sparrow and Captain Davy Jones from the Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes, that is Al as Captain Davy Jones - he is squidalicious! In years past, Matt and Al have dressed as famous pairs, like Siegfried and Roy, Batman and Robin, and J.Lo and Puffy. We're surprised......

If you tuned into Good Morning America this morning, you may have noticed Diane Sawyer extracting something from a safe. And, yes, that red and furry object was the new Tickle Me Elmo T.M.X. - T.M.X. for Tickle Me eXtreme. Not only the the doll talk in the third person and giggle, Elmo basically has a crazy laughing fit - slapping his knee, falling on his back and convulsing, getting back up, falling on......

Sam Champion, the WABC 7 meteorologist weathercaster (thanks for correcting, Toby) (not the band), will be the new Good Morning America weathercaster. Crain's reports that since Champion has been at WABC for 18 years, "his imminent departure could hurt the station as it competes with WNBC and WCBS." Gothamist would have to agree - Sam Champion is a cornerstone of the local NYC weather. The only current city weathercasters we know off the top of......

Not sure if we've mentioned this before, but we are pretty much in love with Kanye West. In October, Hennessy will bring together Kanye, The Strokes and Goldfrapp for an exclusive concert (the venue isn't being announced yet, though it will be in the Bowery area, we've heard). Leave it to a fine congnac to have such great musical tastes (and to get a band who's frontman used to be a bit of a......

- Tonight at Shea Stadium (assuming these apocalyptic thunderstorms stop), Good Morning America Weekend Edition anchor Kate Snow will be selling cotton candy to the masses as the Mets face the Astros. Her stint as a vendor is part of GMA's Summer Dream Jobs segment (or something like that) where anchors do various jobs unrelated to reading stuff off a teleprompter. Could they not give her a slightly harder job? When you sell cotton......

- Last night on ESPN's Outside the Lines, the topic was the golf fans of New York and how different they are from your typical librarian-like fans. Some professional golfers ESPN interviewed found the loud, rash, in-your-face New Yorkers to be over the top, while others players said that it's something that doesn't bother them at all and shouldn't either (as they're paid pretty well). How the New York crowd behaves itself will be......

New York lost yet another of our great newscasters yesterday when Bill Beutel, host of WABC's nightly newscast for more than 30 years, passed away in his Pinehurst, N.C., house. He was 75. A winner of several Emmy awards and a Peabody, Beutel worked his magic in radio and television, even hosting "AM America" the show which became "Good Morning America." After a stint as ABC's London bureau chief he took over the local anchor......

Those cognitive dissonance-inducing multiple rider bicyles that you see tourists on in Midtown have a sworn enemy: A 50-something year old pianist who is woken up by raucous PartyBikers (the company that runs them is PartyBike) is waging a campaign to get them off Eighth Avenue. Sammy G. (last name withheld) tells the Post that PartyBikes have barreled into pedestrians because they are out of control and that other PartyBikes will race each other down......

We couldn't help but notice the abundance of talented white male rockers invading NYC this week. New and old and originating from various corners of the Earth, the white boys of rock n' roll are invading. Let us be your guide. Last time they were here, they rocked NYC under the Brooklyn Bridge. The Irish international living rock n' roll legends, U2, are coming to a stadium near you. Tuesday and Wednesday at Continental Airlines......

There's a hilarious item in Ben Widdicombe's Gatecrasher about Mariah Carey turning down the chance to perform on the Today show, opting instead to promote her upcoming album, The Emancipation of Mimi, on Good Morning America. Widdicombe writes, "The source laughs, 'They think the album will be so huge that the 3,000 people Rockefeller Plaza holds won't be enough. Times Square can hold 10,000.'" Gothamist is laughing also, unless Carey's record label is hiring 7,000......

John Stossel, 20/20 correspondent, author of Give Me a Break...

Since last week, Brian Berg has been building a replica New York City skyline at ABC's Good Morning America set using 178,000 playing cards, no glue and no tape. Gothamist went to check out the installation last night in Times Square (yeah, we're not happy about going to Times Square). Thankfully, no Naked Cowboy in sight. While it's difficult to make out the buildings from the street, we could see that there was a......