When former Pres. Barack Obama showed up for jury duty earlier this week in Chicago he couldn’t escape the media.
Not the TV cameras and flashbulbs of local news reporters, but through the instructional video all prospective jurors watch. That’s because in Cook County, IL, former WBBM anchor, now NBC Nightly News anchor, Lester Holt hosts that video.
Holt anchored at the Chicago CBS station from 1986 to 2000, and the mustachioed newsman has been playing on a loop, in the Loop, at the Daley Center since.
Obama was quickly dismissed from his civic duty.
This is not the only time Holt has had a Windy City moment away from the WBBM studio. He appeared in the 1993 film The Fugitive, playing a TV reporter, delivering the now-classic line, “C’mon how many one-armed men are there around here?”
By the way, if you live in Manhattan and find yourself on jury duty here (like I did a few years ago), you’ll watch a Primetime Live-era Diane Sawyer video on the importance of jury duty.
Cook County Court photo via DNAInfo Chicago (RIP)