The Breakfast Meeting: Debate Prep on \'S.N.L.\' and The F.T.\'s True Colors

By THE EDITORS

What's so funny about marginal tax rates? That was the question facing the writers and performers of “Saturday Night Live” who had to turn last week's presidential debate into comedy in just five days. The usually secretive Lorne Michaels let Bill Carter watch the whole process.

Tucker Carlson, once the bright young intellectual of the conservative movement, is now best known for rehashing a five-year-old Obama video last week and for supporting one of the reporters from his Daily Caller Web site who yelled at the president. A still-young Mr. Carlson tells Brian Stelter what happened and, yep, it involves the media.

While President Obama and Mitt Romney try to make front-page news, their spouses are fighting a proxy battle in women's magazines in an effort to make their husbands more relatable. And, yes, there still is the traditional cookie bake-off, and the results look closer than Wisconsin's.

On social medi a, campaigns are betting that Tumblr pages and shared playlists on Spotify will be able to capture voters' attention and, just maybe, actual votes. It shouldn't surprise you to hear that Big Bird has made an appearance. But is Lindsay Lohan really that interested in the presidential debates?

And while the Obama campaign may be slightly more engaged on social media, Mitt Romney is catching up where it counts: money. The Republican candidate has made inroads in Silicon Valley, where investors like Marc Andreessen are shifting allegiances after supporting Mr. Obama in 2008.

Google has announced that YouTube will add more than 50 channels of original programming, expanding its push into professionally produced content that is turning the video service into something more resembling television.

Lex Fenwick, a longtime official at Bloomberg, is remaking Dow Jones in his own image, which includes combativeness, open offices and, according to a report from Reuters, large amounts of profanity.

Reports of the demise of Clive James, the British novelist and memoirist, are, well, not greatly exaggerated: he is sick but still alive and still kicking in an interview with Sarah Lyall in which he describes his complicated life and his latest novel, “Nefertiti in the Flak Tower.”

And finally, an answer to one of the great mysteries of journalism: just what color is The Financial Times? Is it salmon, rose or pink? Color experts finally settle the issue.