At Least We Have the Facts Now
First order of business: no, turtle_07 has not gone off the deep end with that last entry. He's been there for quite a while, but he thanks you for your concern. There will indeed be a part two, if not more, but not today. Today it's my turn to address the people. The people being you. Once again there has been a debate; the one in question happens to have been the third one between the two major candidates for the presidency of the Unite States of America.

If you want to chant "U-S-A" now is the least inappropriate time. You're still going to look like a fool, but you're not going to get a better chance. This way you won't be distracted later on, hopefully.

Now that we've gotten beyond that barbarism, let's look at what Bush and John Kerry's bloggers had to say about the debate. If you remember the responses to the Vice-Presidential debate, you'll remember that the Bush-Cheney crowd were confident that they had won, but had nothing to support that assertion other than the feelings of a room of already-rabid supporters. This time around they have pictures of those supporters. Not much of an improvement. Meanwhile the first Kerry piece presents the not only the impressions of the pundits, but also statistics on viewer response. GeorgeWBush.com had neither. However an actual examination of the quotations reveals a somewhat unenthusiastic response.

Pat Buchanan: “Kerry was, I thought, very much at the top of his game and I thought toward the end, when you saw Kerry, you saw more of the humanity of the man in some of those questions, which was very helpful to them; talking about the daughters and things. I thought he had some excellent moments.” [MSNBC, 10/13/04]

Notice that we don't see what Buchanan thought of Bush. We have no indication of how Kerry did in relation to his opponent, and that's the part that matters. Doesn't matter if you outran the world record if somehow else outran you. Once again we see the things are never as clear as the partisan camps would have you believe.

Those aren't the only two blogs on the internet with something to say about the campaign for the White House. Mother Jones is one of the most repsected journals out there, but they're not above setting up a blog. And here we have MSNBC's "HARDBLOGGER." What you should take away from these is that these are blogs supplied by relatively mainstream new providers. Mainstream news providers do their best not to show a subjective bias; they use selective reporting to give possibly misleading impressions, but they will not come out and say things like "Lynne Cheney overreacted to the comment in last night's debate and morally condemned Kerry for not being 'good.'" There is a clear value judgement here. Now in a regular Mother Jones article you will not see words like "overreact" that imply censure.

Mother Jones is a decidedly liberal publication though, and an article on this subject will leave readers with the same impression, but it will allow quotations to do the insulting and keep the author's own comments entirely objective. The MSNBC blog also shows a certain zest for the zinger that one will not find on MSNBC's regular programming. The point is that although blogs are obviously slanted they are no more slanted than the six o'clock news, just less subtle about it.


And remember the guiding light, lest we forget the glory that be Lemon Party.
Because your blog sucks.
- posted by Odovaucer @ 1:38 PM