![]() ![]() It’s not me I’m worried about, it’s Joe Sixpack who just watches TV that I’m worried about. It’s up to you find good information.Ī: Oh, sure, I do all that. It goes like this imagined conversation:Ī: Hey, TV is stupid, all sound-bites, no substance.ī: Yes, well, you know you can read about the candidate on the Internet, go to meet-ups, read some great stuff in print magazines, and so on. I think I detect a subtext that bothers me. (Exception: once it comes to the general election, Fox News will be clearly in favor of Bush.) If they smell blood, there’s a feeding frenzy. The media will (or should be) tough on the President too, and these candidates want to be President.Īnd it looks to me as if TV reporters are equal opportunity sharks. I want to know how the candidate handles pressure. But there’s a point to this: I want TV to be tough on the candidates. The talk about the “Dean scream” for instance seemed to go on and on. One of the knocks against TV is that it’s tough on candidates in seemingly bizarre ways. Since I don’t get the chance to talk to the candidates every day, journalists have to stand in for me. I love to watch the debates especially, but I also like to see them talk to Judy Woodruff, Tim Russert, Charlie Rose, and others. The candidates are not actually in Washington state, so the only way I can see them is on TV. Some of the reasons to watch TV are obvious. I enjoy reading weblogs for every candidate and point of view. I enjoy reading magazines (the New Yorker ran a profile on Dean a couple weeks ago which was quite good). The first thing is, I register campaign coverage, no matter what the medium, as pure pleasure. I love it.īut today I’m going to do something perhaps unexpected: I’m going to defend TV. You might imagine how much it excites me to see candidates use weblogs and RSS and so on in their campaigns. Looking months into the future, I can imagine where in a close election the whole thing may turn on the answer to this question. ![]() You can’t express elation or disgust, anger or joy, but you have to express something. It’s not as black-and-white as the question Dukakis answered. But this is about you and your family, and people want an answer they can relate to. How could you possibly answer this question? You support civil unions. I imagine Bush or a moderator asking a similar question of the Democratic nominee, but this time it’s “What would you do if your son married another man?” It made him seem not exactly human, and it played right into the stereotype of clinical liberals from the northeast. Instead he gave a dry, dispassionate answer about why he’s against the death penalty. His answer should have reflected some emotion that people could relate to. He was asked what he would do were his wife murdered. During a debate he was asked about his stand on the death penalty-but he was asked in a very personal way. Lots of people have suggested that this general election will be about one of the first two, national security or the economy.īut I have a feeling that it may be about values. That’s three things, national security, economy, and values. ![]() Which candidate will prevent homosexuals from destroying marriage as we know it? Which candidate will keep the IRS from grabbing all your hard-earned money?ģ. Which candidate will continue to take the war on terror to where the terrorists live?Ģ. (They’re supposed to do that.) The Republicans will talk about three things, I think:ġ. I’m thinking ahead to the general election.īoth parties will try to set the agenda, of course. But blaming TV for reporting on Dean’s anger seems surreal to me. That’s probably the right move to make right now. Maybe Dean wants to appeal to a broader set of people by appearing more Presidential and less angry. if you think all that, I don’t see how you can avoid being angry. ![]() If the war isn’t just, if people died for no good cause if our liberties are being taken away for cynical and mean reasons if the environment and the economy are being destroyed to line the pockets of friends of Bush. Why not? Maybe people thought they had really good reasons to be angry at Bush. He was an angry person leading angry people. It worked-he tapped into an already-existing anger. Some people say that TV inaccurately portrays Dean as angry.ĭean built his campaign on the idea that you can use the Internet to build a grass-roots movement of people who are angry at Bush over the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, unemployment, and the environment. ![]()
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