Yesterday, I watched one episode of "The Daily Show" and one episode of "The Colbert Report," and immediately afterwards bought the new books of the 2 authors I'd seen interviewed.

That was weird, although I see the connection to my long-time habit of feeling the need to buy 2 things if I'm going to buy 1 thing. I don't have a problem buying nothing, but 1 seems to require 2.

Here's the video of Matt Bai on "The Daily Show," pushing "All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid."

Here's the video of Walter Isaacson on "The Colbert Report," pushing "The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution."

I chose both on audiobook because there are 2 things audiobooks help me with: 1. Getting some exercise. (I like to walk and will walk, when walking alone, much farther if it's a process of "reading" a book.) 2. Sleeping. (I've used audiobooks for decades to crowd out the thoughts of my own that would — or at least used to — keep me awake.)

A problem with audiobooks is that if I encounter something I want to blog, I need to buy the book over again in Kindle form. Last night, almost entirely while asleep, I listened to "All the Truth Is Out" for 9 hours, 8 minutes, and 40 seconds — I've still got 30 minutes and 20 seconds left — and I woke up listening to some great material about the difference between the John McCain 2000 and John McCain 2008, and I wanted to share some of that and so now I own the Kindle version too and can show you this (boldface and hyperlink added):

What Palin brought to the ticket was stagecraft and stardom. Her candidacy was captivating in the way that American Idol or The Biggest Loser kept you lingering on the channel even as you fingered the remote control and told yourself you were going to watch something more redeeming. She was just like the rest us, or at least like people we knew — insecure and ambitious and beset by family problems, but also beautiful and impassioned — and somehow the spotlight had found her, and every moment she stood in its glow teetered dangerously between greatness and humiliation. It was as if, rather than having chosen an actual running mate, McCain had tried to reinvigorate his flagging campaign by holding a televised contest for the role, and Palin had made it through all the challenges and battle rounds in which you were locked away in a room full of tarantulas or whatever it was, and here she was, learning her lines in front of us. What [Neil] Postman called the “supra-ideology” of entertainment — that’s what Palin’s candidacy was all about, and McCain’s embarrassed aides would later admit as much.

By then, of course, Palin was more of a superstar than McCain had ever been, and she embodied a new phenomenon in national politics — power as a path to celebrity, rather than the other way around. Once, at the dawn of the satellite age and for a long time after, entertainers like Sonny Bono and Fred Grandy (“Gopher” from The Love Boat) had leveraged their Hollywood cachet into political careers. Now, though, a politician was increasingly likely to seek office as a catapult to broader, more lucrative fame — as a TV host or professional speaker, the subject of tabloid covers and Hollywood treatments. You didn’t have to win an election to achieve this kind of celebrity, or even campaign. You simply had to be telegenic and provocative. A little shamelessness didn’t hurt.

Most of the book, by the way, is about Gary Hart. That subtitle — "The Week Politics Went Tabloid" — refers to a week in 1987, which I kind of remember, but not from the book, that being a part I slept through.