President Barack Obama celebrated the growing contribution of Hispanic culture and music to the United States with a "Fiesta Latina" at the White House, part of a musical series started by First Lady Michelle Obama.

Latin music "moves us and tends to make us want to move ourselves," the president declared.

Actors Eva Longoria Parker, George Lopez and Jimmy Smits began the show joking that Obama is Hispanic.

Gloria Estefan followed with her Billboard hit "No Llores," accompanied by Jose Feliciano and percussionist Sheila E.

While the celebration of Hispanic music brought other entertainment heavyweights as Marc Anthony and Jeninfer Lopez, Los Lobos, Thalia  and Pete Escovedo to the White House, the evening's standing ovation went to the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic member of the high court.

Bachata also came out of the dance clubs and onto the White House's South Lawn, with the Bronx-based group Aventura performing a style of music that has begun to dominate dance floors alongside Salsa and Merengue in clubs across the country.

The music was first heard at parties in the Dominican Republic in the 60s but, largely thanks to Aventura, it has recently taken hold in the United States.   The four-man music group debuted in 1999 and is known for combining the ballad-like music and its strumming guitars with r&b, hip-hop and Reggaeton.

In his remarks, Obama said  the roots of Latin music are threaded throughout the world, from the streets of New York to West Africa.   "Even though it is constantly evolving and changing, Latin music speaks to us in a language we all can understand," Obama said.

For everyone who didn't get an invite to the concert,  fret not -- the "In Performance at the White House: Fiesta Latina" will be broadcast on PBS Thursday night  and on the Spanish language network Telemundo on Sunday.

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Photo credit: Larry Downing (George Lopez, Eva Longoria Parker and Jimmy Smits; and Aventura at White House concert)

 So the rumors of a Madonna-orchestrated Britney and Justin reunion were true… kinda.  The former teen sweethearts both performed with the Material Girl during her Thursday night concert in L.A.’s Dodger Stadium, but not together.

In fact, there was at least an hour between their respective appearances, so it’s anybody’s guess whether they even ran into each other backstage.

Brit was first to emerge, joining Madonna early in the night to sing the the last few bars of “Human Nature.” The two women embraced at the end of the performance to wild screams from the crowd, at which point Britney promptly marched offstage. Truth be told, Britney’s performance was so short that if you had blinked you might have missed it.

JT, on the other hand, at least hung out for an entire song. He joined Madonna for “4 Minutes,” a song from her latest album that he co-wrote and produced.

Both Britney and Justin elicited big roars from the audience, but the biggest screams of the night came when the massive screens at the back of the stage flashed images of President-elect Barack Obama. Madonna told the audience that Obama’s victory was a big reason to celebrate, but she also expressed her disappointment that California voters, at the same time, had approved a ban on same-sex marriages.

“If we got an African American in the White House, then we can have gay marriages,” Madonna told the crowd.

Barack Obama’s first appointment as U.S. president-elect comes with an inside-Hollywood connection.  His newly chosen White House chief-of-staff-to-be, Illinois congressman Rahm Emanuel, is the older brother of Ari Emanuel, a founding partner of the A-list, Beverly Hills-based talent-management firm Endeavor.

So colorful and well-known a showbiz figure has he become that he inspired the character of the sly Hollywood agent Ari Gold, played by Jeremy Piven, on the HBO series “Entourage.” The role has earned Piven two Emmy Awards.

The younger Emanuel broke away from the talent agency ICM in 1995 to help start Endeavor, which has since grown into one of the leading deal-brokers in the entertainment industry with a client roster that includes Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jude Law, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Adam Sandler and Steve Carell. Among the stars he personally represents are Larry David, Michael Moore, Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Wahlberg.      

Having grown up in suburban Chicago, Ariel “Ari” Z. Emanuel is the youngest of three brothers — Ezekiel , an oncologist and bioethicist, and Rahm, a former aid to President Bill Clinton who later was elected to the House of Representatives from Illinois and became a confident of Obama. Ari Emanuel, too, has been active in Hollywood political circles, hosting fundraisers for Democratic candidates that included a $2,300-per-plate event for Obama during his presidential campaign.

Their father is a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who was active in the pre-independence Israeli underground, and their mother was a social activist and onetime Chicago-area nightclub proprietor.

In 2006 Ari Emanuel made headlines when he publicly condemned actor-director Mel Gibson for making anti-Semitic remarks at the time of his arrest for drunken driving. Emanuel called then on others in Hollywood to show their outrage by ”professionally shunning” Gibson.

(Reporting and writing by Alex Dobuzinskis)

When it comes to election day news, TV coverage is so 2004. The Internet will cover election day from every angle on Tuesday — from the left and right sides of the political spectrum and with plenty of opportunity for Web users to get involved.
    
CNN will allow users to make their own predictions about which candidate will capture the votes in each state at CNN.com/Map, and to compare scenarios for how Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama can get to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency. CNN is also giving Web users the latest information on voting problems at CNN.com/VoterHotline.
    
The cable channel Current is relying on the Internet to provide material for its broadcast, and it will air 12-second webcam commentaries on the election submitted to 12seconds.tv and Current.com.
    
From the liberal perspective, the Huffington Post will cover election day with live video feeds and with blogs from American and international writers. Also, thousands of the site’s “citizen journalists” will follow the election paying special attention to what occurs at polling places, said Mario Ruiz, a spokesman for the site.
    
The Web site TownHall.com will look at the election from a conservative viewpoint, which it has done on the Internet since 1995. In addition to having video and plenty of opportunity for Web users to comment on the day’s developments, it will also have audio from election day broadcasts by such conservative talk show hosts as Dennis Prager and Michael Medved.

It’s not new that Barbra Streisand is backing Sen. Barack Obama for president. But it is unusual when Streisand goes so far as to take to radio airwaves in battleground states to answer callers’ questions on live shows, which is what she is doing on Monday and Tuesday.

With Monday’s radio campaigning done, Streisand moved on to Florida and other states on Tuesday. She’ll be working the phones again from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. est in this order: WJNO in West Palm Beach, Florida; WEPM in Martinsburg, West Virginia; AURN in Pittsburgh; WXKC-FM in Erie, Pennsylvania; WZAZ in Jacksonville, Florida; and WCBQ in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

Streisand took calls on these five channels on Monday. They were KPRS in St. Louis, Missouri; WASN/WRBT/WGFT in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; KEZK in St. Louis Missouri; WIKY in Indiana; KPLV in Las Vegas, Nevada; and WYXB in Indianapolis, Indiana.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis)

Movie director Ron Howard has spent much of his adult life making a name for himself apart from the All-American boy named Opie he played on “The Andy Griffith Show” and the squeaky clean Richie Cunningham of “Happy Days.” 
    
But in a video posted on Thursday at the comedy Web site Funnyordie.com, Howard stepped away from the director’s chair and became both Opie and Richie, one more time, to promote Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
    
Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) joined Opie, and The Fonz (Henry Winkler), the greaser from the sitcom “Happy Days,” had his own chat with Richie. “Happy Days” and “The Andy Griffith Show” are among the most popular shows in TV history. The full video can be found here.

“I’ve never done this before and I hope never to do it again, but I guess you could say I’m feeling pretty desperate these days,” Howard said in the video. “So, as a demonstration of my sincerity, this is for you America.”
    
With that, Howard entered the black-and-white world of 1960s program “The Andy Griffith Show,” playing the 8-year-old Opie who is the son of small-town sheriff Andy Taylor. He tells his TV “dad” he wants to vote for Obama one day. Griffith told him he could do it, if he avoided the “butter-fly ballot.”
    
In another segment, Howard reappears dressed as teenager Richie Cunningham. He talks to the Fonz, the leather-clad greaser on ”Happy Days” who epitomized cool. The two talk about voting and double dating with someone who sounds a lot like Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
    
“Ron Howard’s Call to Action,” as the nearly four-minute video is called, is the latest in a string of political videos placed at Funny Or Die, a Web site created by comedian Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay.
    
The biggest hit for the Web site so far was posted in August, when celebrity heiress Paris Hilton mocked Republican presidential nominee John McCain over an attack ad he put out using an image of Hilton. In that video, Hilton played it relatively evenhanded between Obama and McCain, offering her own political ideas as she launched a fake presidential candidacy.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis)

In one more sign that the current presidential election campaign has drawn increased interest among pop culture watchers, Entertainment Weekly magazine released a survey on Thursday showing respondents, ages 18-24, estimated spending one-third of their TV time watching election coverage.

Of those surveyed, 1-in-5 Americans is watching more election coverage because they are dissatisfied with reality TV.

Fully half of all Americans said they are tuning-in to fewer primetime shows due to the election coverage they are watching, and 6-in-10 think the presidential face-off between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain is entertaining.

When asked if they prefer vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin or comedian Tina Fey’s impression of Palin on the NBC show “Saturday Night Live,” 37.4 percent of respondents said they prefer Fey’s version of Palin, but a nearly equal 37 percent said they prefer Palin herself.

As for celebrity endorsements, 53 percent of respondents said those have some influence on the candidates’ appeal.

The survey involved a national OmniTel telephone poll by GfK Custom Research North America among 1,004 adults ages 18 and up on Oct. 17-19. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percent.

Celebrities Leonardo DiCaprio, Forest Whitaker, Tobey Maguire and will.i.am are out to convince young people to vote — and they have made a series of public service announcements for the cause in partnership with Google, YouTube, Declare Yourself and MySpace.
     
While many of the celebrities have shown their support for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, the PSAs are meant to be non-partisan in tone and content, so don’t expect any digs at Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate.
    
In the first ad, stars including Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, and Ashton Kutcher, address viewers directly and urge them in a tongue-and-cheek way not to vote, before going on to not only call on the viewers to vote but to make sure they are registered and that their friends, too, are registered and are voting. You can watch it here.

The PSA was produced by DiCaprio’s company, Appian Way Productions. This past weekend, we interviewed DiCaprio and he talked about his desire to get young voters to the polls. “My big message on this next election is that, hopefully, the youth movement will come out in full force this time,” DiCaprio said. “Hopefully we will have a true representation of this country because enough young people who care about policies for the next 50 years will go out to the polls and vote for the candidate they think best represents the United States.”

Alot has been made about the youth vote in this year’s election, and Obama has had a great deal of success in engaging young Americans. He even listens to hip hop music. Yet, time and again in U.S. elections, young people have failed to turn out at the polls in the numbers that older citizens do. Maybe this will help; maybe not. But it can’t hurt. If you’re in your 20s, will you vote? The election is Nov. 4.

In another sign of strong interest in this year’s U.S. presidential election, Sunday’s “60 Minutes” featuring interviews with both candidates, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, drew 14.6 million viewers to the television news magazine for its highest viewership since January 2008.

That figure was up 21 percent in total U.S. households, 55 percent in adults 25- to 54-years-old and 50 percent in adults 18- to 49-years-old, compared to the same night last year, ”60 Minutes” said in a statement on Tuesday.

The current presidential election has been closely followed by voters with early primary season debates and recent conventions for both Republicans and Democrats drawing sizeable audiences. Roughly 38.4 million viewers turned on their TV sets to watch Obama accept his nomination in late August, and a week later McCain drew an audience of 38.9 million to see his Republican nomination acceptance speech.

The two candidates will debate this Friday, Sept. 26, from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., and that debate will be aired on television networks across the United States.

 You’ve heard them at the Obama campaign rallies and speeches for months, and now  all those Stevie Wonder, Sheryl Crow, John Mayer and Los Lonely Boys songs that warm up the Democratic Party crowds have been put together on one album.

 Billed as the first-ever presidential campaign compilation, the 18-song disc “Yes We Can: Voices of a Grassroots Movement” also includes excerpts from speeches given by Barack Obama and goes on sale exclusively on the campaign’s official Web site on Friday.

 All proceeds from digital downloads ($24.99) and the old-fashioned CD ($30) will go to the Obama-Biden campaign, said Hidden Beach Recordings, which is behind the project.

 Hidden Beach CEO Steve McKeever said the diverse artists contributing “underscores how deeply inspiring this campaign has been across boundaries.”

 The recording includes Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered”, Mayer’s “Waiting on the World To Change,” and Los Lonely Boys’ “Make It Better”, as well as new material by Lionel Richie and John Legend.

 Absent from the list however is Barbra Streisand, one of Obama’s biggest singing supporters.

  Presumably “The Way We Were” doesn’t have the right vibe for  “Change We  Can Believe In.”