July 29, 2004

Convention Notes, Day 3

- I liked the Edwards speech a lot; this is why I wanted him to be the VP. My favorite parts of all were when he put the lie to that canard about how the Democrats don’t think we’re really at war- like, for instance, when he said “we are at war.” And later, “we will destroy you.” That, weaved in with all the optimism stuff, is what Kerry/Edwards needs to win. That said, I've never been a big fan of the "Two Americas" bit, and hope tonight will mark its retirement.

- On the other hand, it was enough of an embarrassment that Al Sharpton was even allowed in the building, much less on the podium. Sharpton’s entire reason for running for president was so that he could give a prime-time convention address, and of course the party (fearing the sort of sabotage that’s been the reverend’s forte in New York politics for 20 years) summarily rolled over. Sharpton responded with an overlong, self-serving rant that not only jumped off the party’s message, but continued for about 15 minutes after he first said “I conclude with…”

Howard Dean had an exponentially greater impact on the presidential race this year than Sharpton, yet the reverend spoke for about three times longer at the convention than Dean did. And I never understood why everyone says Sharpton’s such a great speaker/debater- he speaks almost exclusively in clichés, and makes jokes and one-liners instead of arguments.

Matthews and Co. had it exactly right- the media gave him way too much attention during the primaries, because they were mistakenly treating the debates as entertainment.

- I had to log onto the DNC website for work reasons today, but it appeared to be down for most of the morning. Was it off for maintenance? Due to too much traffic? Or was it hacked? Hmm.

- Speaking of unlikely Democratic convention speakers, Ron Reagan addressed the DNC last night, leading to a sticky situation, as he drifted from journalist to participant and back to journalist all in one night, at least according to the blogger formerly known as CableNewser. The 'newser has jumped to MediaBistro, which used to be a site to look forward to not reading whenever I wasn’t looking for a job, but now that’ll change.

Meanwhile, the former president’s other son, Michael, was invited onto “Hannity & Colmes” in order to throw his own brother under the bus, which he dutifully did. The first question was “have you gotten to speak to Ron about his decision to speak at the DNC,” and Michael gave a mealy-mouthed version of the correct answer (“no, because we don’t speak”), before leveling the charge that there’s no way Ron would’ve been invited to speak if his last name wasn’t “Reagan.” Yes, and I’m sure the Michael Reagan radio show, and Michael’s FNC appearance that night, have nothing whatsoever to do with his last name.

Besides, isn’t this a particularly inopportune time in American political history for Republicans to start complaining about nepotism?

- Speaking of which, Hannity was bumped from “Nightline” tonight due to breaking news; however, both Jon Stewart and Ana Marie Cox appeared with Ted Koppel as scheduled.

Posted by Stephen Silver at July 29, 2004 12:09 AM
Comments

Interesting.

Posted by: James at November 3, 2004 05:27 PM
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