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David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
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30 September 2004 - 11:08 pm
If anyone has the right to call themselves "fair and balanced" it's PBS. And the consensus opinion from their post-debate coverage was either a draw (from those who lean to the right) or a slight victory for Kerry (from those who lean more to the left). Even a draw looks good for Kerry when you consider that Bush likes to think of himself as a "war president."
The Daily Show seemed to believe that Kerry had scored victory as well. Jon had a decent interview with Wesley Clark and he lit into Rudy Giuliani during the interview with the former New York City mayor. They also had a segment where Bush was referred to as a "retard" who was "almost killed by a pretzel."
The right-wing bloggers seem to have started picking apart ever statement Kerry made in the debates looking for inconsistencies and misstatements. To them, I would argue that they should be very careful where they tread. Kerry and Bush were speaking without notes, and should be judged by the larger points they were trying to make and not by the minutia of their comments. And Bush backers should remember that Bush blatantly lied during a State of the Union speech that he read of a teleprompter. Thish strikes me as worse because it looks provably premeditated.
Also of interest on the topic of debate coverage is the NY Times's decision not to send their lead campaign reporter to Florida to watch the debate in person and then deal with campaign staff in the "spin room" where reporters are told that the candidates didn't really mean what they said. This is good news for those of you who want to get some decent post-debate coverage of what the candidates actually said in the debate.
The early consensus seems to have settled on this debate being more substance than style. We'll just have to see if that holds up in the face of the late-night spin and the eager-beaver fact checkers. Four years ago Gore was thought to have the early debates until it was discovered that he had made some misstatements during his debate remarks, so the spin that goes on tonight is very important.
Oh, and one more thing about PBS and their election coverage. Gwen Ifill is awesome. Here's an old interview of her from Salon that I like.
Posted by on 30 September 2004 at 11:09 PM
Comments
I agree PBS is pretty fair. I thought the debate was well run and I hope the one at Wash U is as frank about issues as the one in Florida. Although I don't support Bush, I know he doesn't speak well on his feet, so I dont' hold that much against him in terms of the debate.
The fact he can't admit he made a mistake to invade Iraq is the really, really irritating part, and it has certainly cost him my vote.
Posted by rkc on 2 October 2004 - 8:41 PM