This’ll just be a quick one, since the first of the two panels was about CNN’s coverage of the 2008 Presidential race (this is Premium Hollywood, after all, not Premium Washington), but I wanted to at least briefly touch on Soledad O’Brien’s upcoming two-part special, “Black America,” which explores the milestones and progress made since the assassination of Martin Luther King. In effect, it’s picking up where “Eyewitness to Murder: The King Assassination” left off in April, and O’Brien discusses potential solutions for the issues and challenges that remain for African-Americans today.

Now, for the most part, I’m planning to save my one-on-one interviews for my return, just because I don’t really have the time to transcribe them while I’m trying to cover all these panels, but I only talked to Ms. O’Brien very briefly, anyway, so I thought I’d go ahead and share it with you right now.

In the middle of the panel, as the topic of a possible Barack Obama presidency came up, Soledad was talking about the reactions of the various black men and and women to how well Obama was doing in the polls, but my ears suddenly pricked up when she casually mentioned how she’d done “a fairly remarkable interview with Bootsy Collins, who said, ‘I
can’t believe the brother is going to do it.'”

Soledad O’Brien and Bootsy Collins? The mind reels…and when I saw her at the Turner Networks party later in the evening, I couldn’t resist asking her about it.

Me: You mentioned Bootsy Collins during the panel…
Soledad: (Grinning) Ah, I love Bootsy Collins!
Me: Well, who doesn’t? But how did he play into the documentary?
Soledad: Well, he’s not in the documentary, but he’s in one of the side pieces that we did in conjunction with the documentary, where we asked him to come in and, really, just talk about his experiences. I mean, Bootsy Collins is an amazing, interesting guy. So he’s not in the documentary, but he’s one of maybe ten different side pieces that I did that’ll appear online about black men over the course of the last 40 years.
Me: Were you a fan of his before? Or at least aware of him before?
Soledad: Yeah! Definitely aware of him before, but a huge fan of him now, because he’s just so…he’s great! And thoughtful, and interesting. Y’know, we had to edit out a lot of… (Starts giggling)
Me: (Laughs) Sorry…? A lot of what?
Soledad: …um, things he was saying that cannot be said online. (Laughs) But he’s really smart and thoughtful. He was great.