First impressions of the Samsung Galaxy 5

The Samsung Galaxy S5 probably isn't the reinvention of the smartphone. But unlike last year's Galaxy S4, there's a good chance some of the new features announced could be of actual use to normal human beings.

Of course, a few minutes with the Galaxy S5 wasn't enough time to reach a full verdict on the phone, but it was enough to get a basic feel for what Samsung's (SSNLF) latest offering can and can't do.

Display
The 5.1 inch display has the same 1080p resolution as last year's 5-inch screen, but due to some new technology, it's definitely brighter, which at the very least, makes everything look nicer. And according to Samsung, the special technology which makes that screen brighter also improves performance in direct sunlight. At the expense of your battery, of course.

Fingerprint Scanner
Like the iPhone 5S, the fingerprint scanner is probably the most eye-catching of the new features, which adds an extra level of security and/or convenience to the device. While it does require you to swipe your whole finger pad over the sensor (unlike the iPhone, which simply lets you place it on the sensor), it worked smoothly the few times I was able to use it.

Power Saver
Battery life matters! Samsung put a slightly bigger battery in the Galaxy S5, but the more important thing was to offer up a useful power saver feature which lets you know what parts of the phone to turn off, and how much battery life that will gain you. It's most extreme mode will actually shut down LTE, cut you off from the vast majority of your apps, and turn the screen grey scale, apparently allowing it to last for days without a charge

Related: 5 ways to fix the Samsung Galaxy S

Camera
Samsung's new phase detection auto-focus means that the camera is now capable of a nice blur effect in the background when you photograph an object up close. The shutter was reasonably fast with bright indoor light, though it did seem to have trouble handling a couple of weird lighting situations and slowed down considerably. How much the image quality has or hasn't improved over the S4 is still to be determined, however.

Weatherproofing
There was no way to really test how worthy the water and dust-resistant features were (save for dumping a bottle of water on it?), but if the weatherproofing is half as good as Samsung claims it is, everyone wins.

Hardware Design
The hardware design of the phone isn't much better, or even different, than it has been in years' past. If you like it, you like it. (I don't.) The texture and material used on the back is much improved and makes the phone feel less cheap when you're holding it, but the colors to choose from are mildly depressing. And when it comes to size and pocketability, at this point, everyone should already know what they're getting into when they buy a 5-inch phone. The Galaxy S5 is big, but it's not completely unwieldy.

Software Design
Samsung's TouchWiz UI is back in its same fundamental form, but it does look better, visually speaking. Fonts and icons generally look cleaner, but everything is still organized in the same manner as past TouchWiz iterations. That said, it doesn't seem like a huge improvement over anything offered up by the likes of Google (GOOG, Fortune 500),Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Nokia (NOK), or even HTC. And Samsung still hasn't done much to improve the experience running two apps side-by-side.

Heart Rate Monitor
I mean, I guess it's cool Samsung put this on the phone? It doesn't detract from anything at all, but this sensor definitely seems more useful in its new Gear Fit wearable.

At the very least, many of the features included in the Galaxy S5 have more potential than the new features included in last year's model. To what extent that potential is realized will take a little more hands-on time however. 

'Piers Morgan Live' coming to an end, CNN says : Media Social Gossip

LOS ANGELES –  CNN's prime-time talk show "Piers Morgan Live" is coming to an end, the news channel said Sunday.

Morgan, who succeeded Larry King in the 9 p.m. EST time slot three years ago, was drawing lackluster ratings. In contrast, King had a 25-year run on CNN.

The airdate for Morgan's last show has yet to be determined, CNN said in a statement.

Morgan is a former U.K. tabloid editor who reinvented himself as a TV personality with stints as a judge on "Britain's Got Talent" and its U.S. spinoff, NBC's "America's Got Talent," and as a contestant on "Celebrity Apprentice."

He hosted BBC's "You Can't Fire Me, I'm Famous," and did interview shows and documentaries for ITV.

Morgan told The New York Times that his show lately has "taken a bath in the ratings" but that he and CNN President Jeff Zucker were discussing a new role for him at the channel. CNN's audience has tired of hearing a Brit weigh in American cultural issues, Morgan said in a story posted online Sunday.

CNN did not comment on Morgan's future with the channel.

Last fall, the already struggling "Piers Morgan Live" faced increased competition from a revised Fox News Channel lineup that included a strong new performer at 9 p.m. EST with Megyn Kelly's "The Kelly File."

Morgan served as editor of The Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004. He has been questioned in connection with Britain's long-running phone hacking scandal, which has led to numerous arrests, resignations and the closure of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid.

Earlier this month, Morgan confirmed that he was interviewed in December by British police investigating the illegal interception of telephone voicemails. Morgan, who said he had given a previous witness statement, has consistently denied wrongdoing.

UFC 170: Ronda Rousey stops Sara McMann in 66 seconds : Media Social Gossip

LAS VEGAS — Ronda Rousey made some more history on Saturday.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship women's bantamweight champ notched the fastest knockout in UFC women's history, and she also finally won a fight by something other than her trademark armbar. Rousey stopped Sara McMann just 66 seconds into their fight with a TKO stemming from a knee to the liver.

The women's bantamweight title bout was the main event of UFC 170 event at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.

REACTION: Rousey's win at MMAjunkie.com

CO-MAIN EVENT: Cormier dominates Cummins

Both fighters came out swinging right away, and after the dust settled, Rousey pushed the challenger to the fence and landed knees on her. Rousey looked for an opportunity for her trademark judo throw. But McMann defended it.

But soon after, Rousey hit McMann with a knee to the body. She followed it with an elbow, another knee, another elbow — and then a final knee that put McMann on the canvas.

Once there, Rousey was quick to pile on with three strikes before referee Herb Dean jumped in to stop the fight. McMann wasn't covering up.

The crowd booed what it deemed was an early stoppage. But for the first time in her career, Rousey had a non-armbar finish. The TKO win came just 66 seconds into the fight.

"We studied her videos and knew it was the best thing to concentrate on the liver shot for this camp," Rousey said. "The knee has been working for me the most throughout sparring in this camp."

McMann stayed gracious in defeat and wouldn't say Dean's stoppage was early.

"I thought it was a good fight. I got hit in the liver, and no matter how hard you train, you can't get your liver stronger," McMann said. "I hope to get a rematch and come back here and put on a better fight. I was trying to get back up, but it's my own fault. I should've gotten back to my feet quicker."

Rousey (9-0 mixed martial arts, 3-0 UFC) stayed unbeaten and notched another first-round win, the eighth of her career. McMann (7-1, 1-1) suffered the first loss of her MMA career.

Full UFC 170 results:

Ronda Rousey def. Sara McMann via TKO (strikes) — Round 1 (1:06)
Daniel Cormier def. Patrick Cummins via TKO (punches) — Round 1 (1:19)
Rory MacDonald def. Demain Maia via unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)
Mike Pyle def. T.J. Waldburger via TKO (strikes) — Round 3 (4:03)
Stephen Thompson def. Robert Whittaker via TKO (strikes) — Round 1 (3:43)
Alexis Davis def. Jessica Eye via split decision (28-29, 29-28, 29-28)
Raphael Assuncao def. Pedro Munhoz via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)
Aljamain Sterling def. Cody Gibson via unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)
Zach Makovsky def. Josh Sampo via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 29-28)
Erik Koch def. Rafaello Oliveira via TKO (punches) — Round 1 (1:24)
Ernest Chavez def. Yosdenis Cedeno via split decision (28-29, 29-28, 30-27)

Matt Erickson writes for MMAjunkie.com, part of the USA TODAY Sports Media Group.

After years on run, Sinaloa cartel chief 'El Chapo' Guzman arrested : Media Social Gossip

(CNN) -- After eluding capture for more than a dozen years, the legendary boss of one of the world's most powerful and deadly drug trafficking operations was nabbed in a surprise raid on a seaside hotel-condominium tower in a bustling Mexican beach resort, authorities said.

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who infamously escaped in 2001 from a high-security prison in a laundry cart, was arrested early Saturday in Mazatlan without a single shot being fired, authorities said.

A U.S. law enforcement official told CNN that Guzman, accompanied by a female, was captured in a joint operation of Mexican marines and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents that was in the works for four or five weeks.

The pressure on Guzman's organization, the Sinaloa cartel, had been mounting for months, with Mexican authorities killing or capturing several of its most brutal lieutenants, a U.S. law enforcement official said.

The 'El Chapo' myth: Robin Hood or just hood?

Those operations yielded information, including cell phone and other data, that helped Mexican authorities and U.S. drug enforcement agents track Guzman down.

At a Mexico City news conference, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said authorities came close to capturing Guzman, believed to be in his mid-50s, earlier this month.

Guzman apparently moved around several homes in Culiacan, Sinaloa, connected by an elaborate network of tunnels also linked to the city's sewer system, Murillo Karam said. The doors of the seven homes were reinforced with steel, he said, which enabled Guzman to escape via tunnel before marines could break down the doors.

On other occasions, authorities decided against attempting to apprehend Guzman in public places.

Murillo Karam said forensic experts had "100%" confirmation of Guzman's identity. Authorities also seized a weapons cache that included 97 large guns, 36 handguns, two grenade launchers and a rocket launcher.

Mexican government footage showed a handcuffed Guzman, with a dark mustache, being escorted by masked marines in Mexico City.

A U.S. Homeland Security official said key intelligence in the capture came from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation.

John Torres, a former ranking ICE official, told CNN that information leading to Guzman's capture actually started to develop about five years ago after the Arizona arrests of several people connected to the drug cartel. ICE and Homeland Security were the lead agencies in that investigation.

The drug war: What you need to know

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, via Twitter, recognized the work of Mexican security forces in the historic arrest.

Phil Jordan, who spent three decades with the DEA and headed the agency's El Paso Intelligence Center, said the arrest represents a huge blow to the Sinaloa cartel.

"It is a significant arrest, provided he gets extradited immediately to the United States," Jordan told CNN. "If he does not get extradited, then he will be allowed to escape within a period of time.

"When you arrest the most powerful man in the Americas and in Mexico, if you talk to any cartel member, they'll say that he's more powerful than Mexican President Peña Nieto. This would be a significant blow to the overall operations not only in the Americas, but Chapo Guzman had expanded to Europe. He was all over the place. If he is, in fact, incarcerated, until he gets extradited to the United States, it will be business as usual."

In Washington, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the arrest "a landmark achievement, and a victory for the citizens of both Mexico and the United States."

"Guzman was one of the world's most wanted men and the alleged head of a drug-running empire that spans continents," Holder said in a statement. "The criminal activity Guzman allegedly directed contributed to the death and destruction of millions of lives across the globe through drug addiction, violence, and corruption."

A senior administration official described the arrest as "huge" and said it was "a Mexican-led operation, but one with very strong U.S. government support."

"This has been a long time coming, and hopefully puts a rest to the nonsense that this Mexican government isn't focusing on security and that the U.S. and Mexico aren't working well together," the official told CNN. "They are, and we do."

In Chicago, where the city's crime commission last year named Guzman its Public Enemy No. 1 -- a designation originally crafted for Al Capone -- authorities praised the arrest. Chicago is among the major destinations of the cartel's drug flow.

"The arrest of Chapo Guzman is significant," police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said in a statement. "This is a victory, but we know the tentacles of his cartel still exist and much more work remains to be done. Demand for narcotics will still remain, so we will continue to partner with the DEA as they fight international drug trade, and we will remain focused on our efforts to eliminate the factors that drive violence in our city."

From New York to Chicago, Texas to San Diego, Guzman and his lieutenants are named in indictments for marijuana, cocaine and heroin trafficking, as well as racketeering, money laundering, kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder.

In Mexico, the diminutive Guzman became a larger-than-life figure as he eluded authorities while expanding a drug empire that spanned the world. His life story became the topic of best-selling books and the subject of adoring songs known as narcocorridos.

In the United States, he is wanted on multiple federal drug trafficking and organized crime charges.

His nickname, which means "Shorty," matches his 5-foot-6-inch frame.

Guzman escaped from a high-security Mexican prison in 2001, reportedly hiding in a laundry basket. Throughout the years, he avoided being caught because of his enormous power to bribe corrupt local, state and federal Mexican officials.

"When you arrest Chapo Guzman you're arresting the leader of all the cartels," Jordan said. "This guy had a hand in everything, and he owned every politician."

Guzman has been included in Forbes' World's Most Powerful People list since 2009. Forbes estimated his fortune at more than $1 billion.

Guzman is wanted on numerous drug trafficking and organized crime charges in Mexico and the United States, which had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest and had sought his extradition in the past. His drug enterprise stretches throughout North America and reaches as far away as Europe and Australia.

The Sinaloa cartel has been blamed for its role in the bloody drug war that has plagued Mexico in recent years and lefts tens of thousands of people dead.

Guzman was born in Badiraguato, Sinaloa, at a time when the drug trade was evolving, and began his career in the drug trade working for powerful drug lord Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, according to a biography by Time. He founded his own cartel in 1980, and quickly established outposts in a number of states, eventually inheriting some of his mentor's territory, according to Time.

Guzman's arrest caught Jordan and other observers by surprise.

"There is no way that I would have bet that they would have ever arrested him under this administration unless he double-crossed somebody or didn't make the full payments on bribes," Jordan said, citing Guzman's alleged ties to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. "Something went wrong."

Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake Perform ‘History of Rap’ on The Tonight Show : Media Social Gossip

WATCH HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0NO0rArJRR4


Last night on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the late-night host and Justin Timberlake brought down the house with a fifth installment of the duo’s immensely popular “History of Rap” series.

The fifth medley features LL Cool J, Run DMC, Outkast, Ludacris, Jay Z, and Kanye West. In the middle of the performance, Fallon gets a little carried away covering N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton,” so Timberlake actually stops him and asks “You’re straight out of Compton? Out of curiosity, how does one get straight out of Compton?”

Why does myth of US Presidents Day persist? : Media Social Gossip

When is Presidents Day 2014? The correct answer to that question is “never.” When it comes to federal holidays, there is no such thing as Presidents Day. We’ve been saying this for years, but shockingly, the charade continues.

The official name for the holiday celebrated Feb. 17, 2014, is Washington’s Birthday. If you don’t believe us, look at the Office of Personnel Management’s list of 2014 holidays for federal workers.

There it is, Washington’s Birthday, right between Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. and Memorial Day. There are an asterisk and a helpful note at the bottom of the page, which says that the holiday in question is specified as Washington’s Birthday under Section 6103(a) of Title 5 of the United States Code.

“Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is our policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in the law,” OPM states.

Long story short: Washington’s Birthday has been a US holiday since 1886. In the late 1960s, Congress scrambled around a bunch of federal holidays to make three-day weekends, and Washington’s Birthday got thrown into that mix. The Illinois congressional delegation thought it would be a great idea to honorAbe Lincoln by expanding the name to Presidents Day. But Virginia lawmakers blocked the move to protect the prerogatives of The Father of Our Country. That’s where things still stand today.

As we noted, we’ve written more fully about all this in the past, so we’re not going to dwell on that at this time. Instead, we’ll float theories as to why the myth of Presidents Day continues.

States’ rights. As OPM notes, states can do what they wish, and some do call it Presidents Day. (Many also follow the federal lead and don’t.) Perhaps they want to stretch the day to get a little recognition for their own native sons. New York’s Martin Van Buren, come on down!

Corporate conspiracy. Maybe advertisers believe that consumers are more likely to get out and spend on a holiday called Presidents Day, so that’s what they call it on all their fliers. For all his virtues, George Washington seems formal and chilly: Would he approve of you buying that mattress? Even if it’s on sale?

Richard Nixon. There’s an urban legend that Richard Nixon started Presidents Day in the early 1970s. He issued a holiday proclamation turning Washington’s Birthday into a more inclusive event honoring all US chief executives, including him, according to this rumor.

That’s not true: His proclamation clearly referred to Washington’s Birthday. The debunking siteSnopes.com has the full story. But what if Nixon started that rumor himself? He might have planted it knowing full well it would get repeated in the years ahead and he might get some Presidents Day recognition after all.

Yes, that’s kind of a back flip, but Nixon was a shrewd guy. And look at his own presidential library: This year it’s having a celebration of Presidents Day, not Washington’s Birthday, complete with actors playing Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt.

Not that we’re complaining. We’d go if we could: First 100 guests get a free slice of cherry pie.

Jimmy Fallon: More than Jay or Dave, he could be a new Johnny Carson : Media Social Gossip

Tonight, when Jimmy Fallon takes over The Tonight Show, it may sound woefully out-of-date to suggest that he in any way wants to be, or should be, or is going to be “the new Johnny Carson.” The very phrase reeks of Vegas mothballs. Over the last two decades, starting with the moment when Jay Leno launched his Attack Of The Nice Guy blandified makeover, The Tonight Show has effectively been de-Johnny-fied, and Fallon, who is 24 years younger than Leno (and would be 49 years younger than Carson if Carson were still alive), represents a brand new generation — or maybe I should say a new-brand generation — in the dominance of late night. The amazing freshness of Fallon’s appeal is that he’s looking forward, not back.

Yet moving fearlessly into the future can sometimes return you to what’s fantastic about the past. Fallon, who has cited Steve Allen as a key inspiration, will be working out of the same Mad Men-era New York NBC studio at 30 Rock where Carson first hosted The Tonight Show in 1962, and that’s a crucial symbolic move. (The show moved to Burbank, Calif., in 1972, and has been broadcast from there ever since.) We will never again see a world of three television networks, or an era when there are fewer than 47 competing late-night talk shows. Yet Jimmy Fallon, through his optimistic yet devious wit and ingeniously captivating temperament, now has the chance to unite a large swath of the American late-night audience in a way that it hasn’t been united since Carson’s heyday. I’m not just talking about ratings. I’m talking about late night as a shared space alive with possibility, a place that speaks to the audience instead of narcotizing it with the equivalent of cue-card-laugh NyQuil.

Everyone has a moment when they think The Decline Of America began. Conservatives tend to date it to the early ’60s and the rise of the social safety net; liberals often target 1980, which brought the dawn of Reaganism and what I would call the rise of Unreality Politics. Yet there’s a part of me that’s not being completely tongue-in-cheek when I say that The Decline Of America seemed to arrive, in some trivial yet revealing fashion, in the early 1990s, when the world of late-night talk was forcefully divided in two, like a split atom, and instead of Johnny Carson we suddenly had our choice of two RoboHosts: Jay and Dave, Mr. Nice and Mr. Sourpuss, Mr. Hey-I’m-A-Friendly-Mainstream-Guy and Mr. Hey-I-Diss-My-Own-Network-So-You-Can’t-Confuse-Me-With-The-Man.

The dichotomy was hardly an accident. Jay and Dave were competing in a brave new late-night landscape, and they therefore had to amp up their identities. So, in effect, they pushed each other to embrace superficially contrasting traits and shticks. Letterman, in 1982, had started out as the refreshing, postmodern, next-generation Johnny, bringing a dose of public-access anarchy to mainstream TV, and for years there was a ramshackle, what-the-heck joy to the way that he ran a talk show and deconstructed it at the same time. By the ’90s, though, when he began to convert his bitterness about being passed over for the Tonight Show gig into the cornerstone of his personality, the whole Cranky Dave routine became almost jarringly solipsistic. It was all about him, and really, who cared? He could still be a funny man, but what Letterman now seemed devoted to was portraying himself as a late-night host who was “rebelling” against his executive bosses. He became a programmed curmudgeon (with a victim complex that didn’t seem all that fake), and his shockingly one-note “I’m not a happy corporate entertainer, damn it! I’m a miserable guy and proud of it!” number hijacked most of what was spontaneous and lively and unserious about Letterman in the 1980s and fed it into an endlessly repetitive (not to mention completely corporate) tape loop of high-concept misanthropy.

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Meanwhile, over on The Tonight Show, Jay Leno never seemed to say a word that he didn’t think would be approved by his bosses. His eager-to-please, wagging-tail gratefulness for being handed the Tonight Show gig was so transparent, in the way that he acted out his monologue jokes so that every last person in the audience would be sure to get them (you could practically hear the meetings in which he was told, “Don’t come off as elitist, Jay!”), that his personality turned into an egregious form of middle-class bowing and scraping. The thing to take note of is: This wasn’t the real Jay. I interviewed Letterman back in the ’80s, and what I remember best, apart from what a good guy he was, is that when it came to comedy role models, he was fixated on Jay Leno — on Jay’s slicing observational skills as a stand-up comic. Jay, back then, didn’t miss a trick. But when Leno took over The Tonight Show, he underwent a Faustian transformation, trading in the natural edge of his personality for the glory of sitting in Carson’s chair. I think that in his mind he was trying to be “just like Johnny.” The irony is that he couldn’t have been less like Johnny. And that goes for Dave, too. Each of them conjured an aspect of Johnny Carson: the slightly befuddled Middle American decency (Jay), the cutting detachment (Dave). What both missed — and what Jimmy Fallon has — is the devil-may-care twinkle of debonair nonchalance that bridges those two qualities.

If you didn’t grow up with Johnny Carson, it may be hard to understand the place that he occupied in our culture. More than just a talk-show host, he was the late-night king of America — a party host, sleek court jester, and moral judge rolled into one. The Tonight Show monologue had more news value than Jon Stewart, Twitter, and cable news combined: It told you, in its jokes about celebrities and politicians and gossip and products and scandal, what the state of things really was — what was acceptable and what wasn’t acceptable. The strange thing for people like myself, who grew up as kids in the ’70s watching The Tonight Show, is that we were very comfortable with the idea that it wasn’t our show; it was our parents’ show. Johnny, in his silvery hair and checked jackets, was a pre-counterculture guy, a square. But that’s what gave him his skeptical authority, and the beauty of Carson is that he never came off as a pretender. We now know, of course, that he was a very different man in real life — a cold fish, a bit of an assassin — but that just makes me appreciate all the more who Carson was as a TV artist. He could speak to younger viewers because, with his winking intelligence and WASP quizzicality, he was endlessly curious, and he was also the Fred Astaire of one-liners. That’s why The Tonight Show was a pleasure to watch even when it was corny and featured guests like Mitzi Gaynor and Orson Bean and Dr. Joyce Brothers and Charles Nelson Reilly. You relaxed with Johnny, because in his impish suburban way he was cool.

For two decades now, Jay and Dave, both trying to live up to the Carson mantle, have been trying way too hard. But Jimmy Fallon has a lot more hard-wired confidence than they do. It’s telling that Fallon is such a genius of an impressionist, because the impersonator’s art — at least, when you’re as great at it as Fallon is — is really the skill of a master psychologist: You drink in other people’s traits, you understand how their brains and mannerisms work, and you mirror it all back — effortlessly. Would you want to watch Jimmy Fallon do an impersonation of you? I, for one, would not; I’m sure he’d reveal something teasingly perceptive that I didn’t want to see. My point is that Fallon, without in any way parading the idea that he has an “edge” to his personality, has the sharp observational daring — the thing that Jay Leno had doing standup, before he became Goofy Jay — that we crave in contemporary comedians. Fallon has got major antennae; that’s why those doe eyes of his gleam with cunning. He doesn’t have to package himself as an Alienated Smart Guy to be the smartest (and funniest) guy in the room.

At the same time, Jimmy Fallon is nice as pie without being fake about it. His personality is never innocuous, but he has an easy, laughing way of communicating how much he likes people, which is why the occasional awkwardness of his interviewing skills doesn’t matter all that much; as with Johnny, what you’re enjoying is Jimmy’s enjoyment of the moment. If you were to generalize about the generations (and who doesn’t like to?), Gen-X is scrupulously cynical, and Gen-Y — to the faintly jealous horror of Gen-X — is much more open and optimistic. Fallon, born in 1974, falls on the cusp. Technically, he’s an X-er, but he’s really one of those in-betweeners who absorbed the best of both worlds into his spiritual and comic DNA. He’s got all the aesthetic advantages of Gen-X cynicism — the razor-sharp eye, the ability to see the bulls—t factor in almost anything — yet he merges those with the uncynical heart of Gen-Y. That makes him a double threat: a wickedly on-target acerbic optimist. He’s Jay and Dave in one body. And just as he unites those qualities, he now has the chance to unite the audience.

The way that late night has evolved, viewers now cleave to the host they love — they’re a Dave person, or a Kimmel person, or a Craig Ferguson person, or an Arsenio person — and that diverse spectrum of fandom is just one reflection of the way that America has become a nation of niches, individualized and often obsessive. Most of the mushrooming panopoly of late-night hosts, from Conan O’Brien onward, have been cut from the tattered cloth of David Letterman. They’re cynical ironic barb-tossers, and most of them are undeniably good at what they do. Yet there’s a reason why none of them has come close to wearing Johnny Carson’s crown. Johnny wasn’t a niche entertainer. He was America’s Friend, and he had a singular ability, no matter who you were, to make you feel like he was your representative. Niches may now be a way of life, but you can’t unite the audience if you speak only to people who think they’re just like you. Jimmy Fallon is an exuberantly witty late-night party host who radiates a love for what he’s doing that can’t be matched. He’s not trying too hard, the way that Jay did, to invite everyone to the party (or reveling in his cheeky self-pity, the way that Dave did, over the fact that not everyone’s attending). But Fallon, on The Tonight Show, now has the chance to throw the best party around — a party, perhaps, that no one will want to be left out of.