No, it wasn't just an aside in reference to the book, tsuwm...
Exhibit 1: The title of Ellis's book is Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Exhibit 2: The host said, "The Founding Fathers, or as they're calling them today, The Founding Brothers," which directly associates the term brothers specifically to The Founding Fathers. Therefore, the host is changing the historical label here, and not just alluding to the book as an inside literary clache reference. And even if she had alluded to the book in that context, "The Founding Fathers, or The Founding Brothers, as Joseph J. Ellis calls them in his brilliant new brook," it is still an out-of-context labeling since Ellis's book refers to the "brothers" as the entire generation, not just the leaders and shapers of the new republic. Any way you look at it, she took the liberty and opportunity to nudge forward the nomenclature of Founding Fathers as Founding Brothers in the traditional historic sense...so that's her agenda (however-so-subtle), not Ellis's book.
