Back to the conventions, at least for a night. All times Pacific Standard.
[5:08 p.m.] Wolf Blitzer, Judy Woodruff and someone SC doesn't recognize are interviewing Andrew Card (White House Chief of Staff) on CNN. Judy Woodruff is asking Card about back-and-forth between the campaigns over what Kerry did when he got back from Vietnam. Card offers the standard talking points about free speech, but Judy Woodruff insists he take a stand specifically on the question of what he [Card] thinks of Kerry's behavior. Blitzer and Woodruff were reasonably good about not letting talking points be the only answers given last time around; this doesn't strike me as excessive.
[5:10 p.m.] MSNBC, CNN and Fox News are all doing fluffy things to cover the official nomination of Bush and Cheney; panning around the crowds, doing interviews with delegates on the floor, etc.
[5:13 p.m.] Bill O'Reilly just finished sucking up to Rudy Giuliani and telling him how great he is. Being an opinion journalist, O'Reilly's less vulnerable to criticism on this point than Shepard Smith would be, but O'Reilly doesn't seem to get why Larry King is boring. Watching interviewers turn into quivering groupies is not interesting.
[5:15 p.m.] CNN just did a brief backgrounder on the controversy within the Democratic Party about Zell Miller's presence at the Republican convention. Now they've got a report on the supposed controversy over whether or not Cheney should have been dumped for a younger running mate. So far as your host can tell, this has been a months-long meme of bored reporters. But hey, they seem to enjoy it.
[5:20 p.m.] Wolf Blitzer is interviewing the reporter who did the Cheney piece, John King, about Cheney's health. The man apparently owns -- and even rides -- a bike. This puts him one up on SC, who hasn't ridden his road bike in several years.
[5:22 p.m.] CNN's Carlos Watson is being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, just made an outrageously biased statement when questioned about the distribution of hurricane aid to Florida. Referring to the expected sending of FEMA relief in response to Frances, he says "some would call it largesse". Should aid be withheld from Floridians in order to avoid the appearance of vote buying? How cheap. This suddenly reminds SC that he hasn't seen Keith Olbermann on MSNBC yet.
[5:28 p.m.] Chris Matthews is on MSNBC now, with a panel consisting of J.C. Watts, Joe Scarborough, Andrea Mitchell, and someone else your host doesn't recognize. Matthews tosses Watts a softball praising Arnold Schwarzenegger. Matthews then tells a story about watching a little kid run up to touch Schwarzenegger's bus during a campaign stop in Modesto, and how this illustrates his star power. Meanwhile, Bill O'Reilly has turned to sucking up to Bono, the U2 rocker. Unlike many celebrities, Bono recognizes humanity in his opponents. It's refreshing. But he's still a celebrity, and O'Reilly is still acting starstruck.
[5:34 p.m.] Wolf Blitzer, Aaron Brown and Bill Schneider are discussing the appropriateness of having George Bush meet with NYC firefighters. Brown seems to think it's not OK anywhere, even though the firefighers endorsed Bush; Schneider argues that it's OK so long as it doesn't happen at Ground Zero.
[5:39 p.m.] O'Reilly has Monica Crowley on to discuss a photo shoot she arranged for New York Magazine of Republicans; apparently, the magazine told her they wanted to cover the Republican convention, and then ran only the most unflattering pictures they could take. Looking at the pictures, it's not hard to think it was a setup, but this is small potatoes.
[5:42 p.m.] Humorously, CNN is running an interview with Georgette Mosbacher while she's on live on O'Reilly with Monica Crowley. In fairness, CNN isn't claiming their "delegate diary" is live, but canned stuff could be run anytime, and it's surprising to learn that they're not watching other channels for the purposes of sequencing these things.
[5:45 p.m.] At least the mysterious fourth member of Chris Matthews' panel finally has a name; Joe Meacham, an assistant editor at Newsweek. Joe Scarborough is telling war stories -- literally -- about the disagreement between Bushes Sr. and Jr. over going to Baghdad in 1991 (when Scarborough was in Congress).
[5:48 p.m.] O'Reilly is interviewing two reporters from the New York Sun about the protesters outside the convention. Showing footage of a policeman being beaten by a protester -- and a National Lawyers' Guild "observer" holding back a policeman trying to stop it -- O'Reilly is asking whether or not violence is a goal of the protest. It's a question with a complicated answer -- it certainly isn't true that all of the protesters want violence to occur, but it's not true that none of them want such a scene on TV -- but asking that question over such a video surely is an attempt to suggest an answer regardless of what the reporters actually have to say.
[5:53 p.m.] CNN's Carlos Watson is complaining about blogs taking away audience from the responsible TV media (hahaha), but I missed the bulk of it. Candy Crowley (no relation to Monica) is interviewing members of the Florida delegation about the hurricanes. They're a story to be sure, but not a convention-specific story.
[5:56 p.m.] Chris Matthews: "I'm trying to get this onto a more serious basis of judgment: who's got the cutest wife?" Obviously, I'm watching TV way too early.
Flipping over to CBS, Mark Hurlbert is holding a press conference announcing the dropping of charges against Kobe Bryant. It's hard not to suspect the cable news channels wouldn't rather be covering this story instead.
Comments