NEWSWEEK's new cultural critic Jeremy McCarter--late of New York magazine--posts a must-read essay on the insanity of cable TV convention coverage. This is exactly what I'd say on the subject if I were as smart as Mr. McCarter:
DID DEMOCRATS WASTE FIRST DAY? blared a graphic beneath Larry King's
chin. The Monday-night program of the Democratic National Convention
had ended a couple of hours earlier, and King wanted the assembled
pundits to tell him whether the party has mishandled its big event. The
question is rich with irony. Precisely because of the pundits, who can
even tell what the Democrats did on their first day, much less decide
how well or badly they did it?
Time after time last
evening, I flipped from the wall-to-wall coverage on C-Span—which is
viewed, I imagine, largely by shut-ins and political completists—to see
how CNN or MSNBC or Fox News broadcast a speech or performance. Time
and again, they weren't broadcasting it at all. Instead, talking heads
were talking to other talking heads about Hillary's dead-enders, or
some other overblown story, at self-parodying length. The resulting
coverage had about as much connection to what happened onstage last
night as NBC's Olympics coverage would have had if Bob Costas had spent
two full weeks asking other sportscasters how they feel about the shot
put.
Consider the early conventional wisdom about last night: that the
Democrats didn't spend much time hitting the Republicans. That's true,
insofar as organizers didn't think it would be dignified to have two
history-making speakers share the stage with a McCain piñata. But just
because nobody got to hear the whacking doesn't mean no whacking
occurred. Multiple members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and
Sen. Amy Klobuchar blasted McCain before prime time. Later, America
caught a glimpse of Nancy Pelosi getting off a good line, saying that
McCain does indeed have experience—"experience in being wrong."
It's like the old koan about a tree falling in a deserted forest, except this time, there are a bunch of witnesses swearing that it didn't make a sound. Welcome to the team, sir.
READ THE REST HERE.
