The Democratic Convention Televised

I watched mostly on PBS Thirteen, but switched over to C-Span a couple of times when I didn't feel like listening to analysts. Jim Lehrer (PBS) is by far the best anchor for this, and C-Span has the most comprehensive coverage of the actual convention itself.

The abbreviated network coverage was and is ridiculous-- no Al Gore or Jimmy Carter?

"No Al Gore or Jimmy Carter" - sounds like a conservative version of Lennon's "Imagine".

"No sandal-wearing unwashed fat chicks, too!"

great blog at convention: http://www.democrats.org/blog/

Oh, Rion.

Firstly, regarding Carter's peace prize - I stopped taking the Nobel seriously when they gave one to Arafat. Giving one to the worst US president in living memory, and the one who is more responsible than any other for what happened on 9/11, was just a slap in the face to the United States.

Secondly, on Kerry and issues - issues are the last thing Kerry wants to talk about. You can't get elected president in this country by admitting the values and beliefs that John Kerry has. The other day the obfuscating dumbass actually said he believed that life begins at conception BUT that he's pro-choice. On the other hand, Bush can get up there and say exactly what he thinks - widespread gun ownership is a right and socially useful, abortion should be vanishingly rare and require a court order in each case, going to church is good for you, the US has to beat the piss out of some shithole country every ten years or so just to keep everybody else on their best behavior, whatever, and it won't hurt him a bit.

But let Kerry get up there and start talking about the values that have made him the fourth most left-leaning senator (according to neutral National Journal), and he'll spend the next four years writing his memoirs on Beacon Hill.

There's a directory of all the DNC blogs at http://www.conventionbloggers.com/.

Larry -- watching PBS just means you are actually interested in what is going on in your country and not ready to sit back and have the networks shovel crap at you. same with C-Span.

Is anyone else looking forward to Barack Obama tonight or is it just me?

oh, wait so now carter is truly to blame for 9/11? that's great! forget about the shah being supported by 30 years of us presidents. or the fact that in covering up your own lies, you reach out to blame anyone but the real culprits. let's stop bitching for once sterling and try being contructive. oh wait, you cant because the morons who programmed you left out that part.

Larry, yes, it IS a convention, so i'd like to SEE the convention, not watch Ann Coulter talk OVER the convention (or Al Franken for that matter). On an average day, I woldn't be watching CSPAN, but if it's the only damn thing that's broadcasting straight-forward coverage, then fine. I'll be watching the Republican convention with the same expectations.

And on PBS: yikes, do you have some bone to pick with Elmo?

Now, Sterling... It's supercute to address me in a patronizing tone, but cut to the chase of what you're saying: the president and his administration primarily appeal to those people who choose not to 1. comprehend or 2. respect the complexities and diversity of the world around them, so yes, naturally all of the polarizing opinions you're describing wouldn't do anything to his campaign. That's his base. It's a war game... the current engine behind the republican party... and it lessens the party's own valid diversities in its wake. The more volume and repetition that he gives extremist messages, the more a lot of people can remember it and believe that they are safe behind it.

It's a much harder road to climb when you attempt to respect the people who are different from you, have different opinions from you, and deal with the vast range of options that we have as a country with not only action but with wisdom and long-term thinking, as well. i believe that both parties, all parties, can and should do that.

But hey, if what you wrote is George Bush's opinion on the issues then I want to hear that, too. My comment was not about the strategies of the Bush or Kerry campaigns, but about the coverage of them.

I was looking for NEWS coverage, not right OR left slants on that coverage. The role of the journalist is to provide a fair and comprehensive account of affairs and issues... And while that's a debatable effort, you've sighted a neutral party in the National Journal, so I would believe that you agree that it's possible to provide nonpartisan coverage and analysis. There still should be a mainstream venue on television that does this.

With whatever systemic problems there are with the media or the government, I still want to be informed about the serious issues that this country is facing.

And if anyone says that the government that we install and the choices that government will make isn't serious or that a citizens' endeavor to be informed and make their vote count isn't serious, then they've forgotten what this country is suppose to be based on and they've forgotten what happened to our city in recent history.

And btw, "beat the piss out of some shithole country???" nice way to represent the U.S.A. thx.

9/11 was a "faith based initiative"

Jimmy Fallon! Wow. You're actually one of my least favorite people on TV (and that's saying something). Why don't you invest $0.40 in a comb, jerkoff? Oh, and if you're really Jimmy Fallon (and not Andrew Krucoff, again) I wouldn't be throwing around accusations of other people being "dumb" - given that YOUR target audience is made up of 14-year-olds and adults with subnormal IQs.

Now, on to "I don't recall anyone asking for your opinion..." I hate to break it to you but this is a comment thread. It's all opinion.

Rion: I was not being patronizing - I bought a Canon S200 two years ago after seeing your site, purely on what you'd done with your Elph. So I actually think pretty highly of you. I was just disappointed.

But if you want to get into an argument about complexity, let's do it. Modern conservative thought is strongly influenced by the writing of the Austrian School of economics - and pre-eminent among them is Friedrich Hayek, who developed a field called "cattallactics". Cattallactics was Hayek's way of explaining that society is more complex than the human mind, which is to say that no person is capable of truly understanding it. Russell Kirk, another conservative heavyweight, revived G.K. Chesterton's explanation of conservatism as "The Democracy of the Dead" - the idea that the society we have today is the product of the distilled wisdom of hundreds of generations of our ancestors, and should not be experimented on recklessly. Conservatism is at its core a recognition that systems and insitutions are complex, and should be changed only slowly and with great care. Conservatives recognize "the law of unintended consequences" and worry about it quite a bit, i.e. the tsunami of out-of-wedlock births that followed the launch of LBJ's "Great Society". So I think that's a refutation of your argument that conservatism is a rejection of complexity.

Conservatives would argue that it's leftism that is simplistic, with its view of society and people as infinitely malleable, and lack of understanding that political systems are essentially fragile, and long-term political stability a rarity in human history. Conservatives are more historically literate: aware that most of human history is a litany of war, rape and pillage, we always worry about preserving the stability and prosperity that we have, for as long as we can. Many on the right have likened 9/11 to a barbarian raid - aggressive members of a lesser culture furtively challenging our boundaries to wreak havoc and then withdraw.

As for "beating the piss out of...etc", I was being kind of a smartass in the expression of the idea, but the gist of it is reasonable. I can phrase it nicely if you like: In order to maintain a sense of order in the world, the reigning hyperpuissance must every 10 to 15 years demonstrate its power on a rogue state, pour l'exemple des autres. I don't know if those are W.'s heartfelt opinions, btw, but I think they each fall within the realm of possible core beliefs for W., based on things he's said and done.

yikes.

does anyone know a good bar in New York where one can watch the convention?

Oh, SP - tradition is so appallingly oppressive, isn't it? Let's just toss the Constitution in the toilet and let MoveOn.org or International ANSWER write a new one for us. After all, it's just a stifling, musty document written by a bunch of dead white male plantation owners and merchants.

Or maybe we should have thrown it out in the 20s and gone Bolshevik, as so many of you progressives wanted. Or gone National Socia1ist in the 30s, as so many intellectuals suggested. (TIME Magazine didn't make Hitler "Man of the Year" because they liked the cut of his mustache, I assure you.) You are a sucker for FADS, SP. You don't represent the future, you represent a type of thinking advanced by those arrogant enough to believe they represent the future. It's been going on for over a hundred years, and your predecessor "progressives" are all dead, and their ideologies, nationalist utopias, workers' paradises etc. are all in the grave alongside them.

Doubtless you'll protest that you're not a Nazi, or that you're not a Communist, but I'm not accusing you of that. Of course you're not those things - you probably have no intellectual tradition that goes back more than 40 years. You people rarely do - you're perpetually the same old new thing, and you never have the sense to question your own arrogance until you're old. And then it's too late.

I don't claim to know what the future is going to be like. I just know that change is inevitable, and that it's important to hold on to my principles in the face of that change.

And just as an aside, one of the sayings that has guided me the most in my daily life the last 13 years has been this: "If the bartender knows your name, you're spending too much time there." The author was my great-grandfather, who was born on Perry Street in 1863, worked as a printer in Manhattan almost his whole life, and died broke in the Bronx in 1926. He never went to college, but he read, and he was generous enough to provide his descendants with several humble, concise nuggets of wisdom that have improved a number of lives. Nearly everything he said or thought in life is gone - though I know he had a hard life - but his children remembered some of the best things he said, and told their children and grandchildren. That's tradition - passing along the ideas that work, and having the sense to realize that your ancestors weren't dummies or thugs.

Another thing, you have a real shitty way of trying to discredit people discussing with you by immediately labeling them tas having a ridiculously extreme position. Where do you learn your debate skills, from Bill O'Reilly? I never said we shoud have abandoned the Constitution, gone Bolshevik or Nazi. No one ever suggested that. Further, you are a hypocrite, because the current administration has done more to erode the rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution than any other administration in recent years. This is the hypocrisy of conservatives who trumpet "tradition"; tradition is great when it works in your favor I suppose.