Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Thank Goodness For C-SPAN


Being the political nerd and junkie that I am, I naturally tuned in to watch the beginning of the Democratic National Convention at 4:00pm yesterday. In fact, I've taken the whole week off -- I'm not going to let something as mundane as work interfere with my politics. But, I made a mistake right off the bat.

I must have experienced a moment of insanity, because I actually tuned in to MSNBC and then CNN. For some reason, I thought they would be showing the convention. But they weren't showing the convention -- they were "covering" the convention, and those are two vastly different things.

It quickly became apparent they were far more interested in talking about the convention than they were in showing the convention to viewers. Even worse, they seemed to delight in bringing Republicans on to bad-mouth the Democrats. When they put on right-wing nutjob Glen Beck, I had to bail out. It became obvious that "fairness" was not going to be a part of their coverage.

Fortunately, I remembered I have cable, and that means I have C-SPAN. I switched over, and that's where my TV will stay until the convention is over. No talking heads -- just the convention from gavel to gavel. The money allocated to C-SPAN is some of the best spending our government has ever done.

For those of us denied a place at the convention, C-SPAN is definitely the next best thing.

UPDATE - I just finished listening to Michelle Obama's speech. It was wonderful. This is one very special lady. She would make a great First Lady.

4 comments:

  1. Hi there, Leslie here working with C-SPAN for the conventions. Appreciate the kind words and wanted to make sure you knew about their Convention Hub sites:

    http://dnc08.c-span.org
    http://rnc08.c-span.org

    Also, one last note... C-SPAN is actually "Created by Cable. Offered as a Public Service." (not government funded) Just thought you might want to know!

    Best Regards,
    Leslie

    Community Manager
    New Media Strategies

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  2. Michelle's speech was nice- she didn't "knock it out of the park" but she came across as likable and looked great. I thought her Mom's introduction was much more inspiring.

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  3. Sorry Leslie, I should have known that.

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  4. I also rated CSPAN by far the highest for convention coverage. Even on PBS you are more watching pundits talk. Bottom of the list is FAUX NEWS, bad pundits talking the most.

    http://elemming2.blogspot.com/2008/08/dnc-convention-day-1.html

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