It's like making sausage, but with more pig intestines
Wherein I don't know what that means either but I typed myself into a corner and just blurted
Sometimes I wonder why politicians don't just skip all the false pageantry and release a booklet with the speech, the opposition response, and a counter-response. Publish on the web and quit mucking up our TV shows. Reader_iam writes about the preactionary punditry and Callimachus reports on how prepackaged the news can be:
I wonder if the speech was available for the general public. What's the point of giving the actual speech if everyone has already read it and responded to it? What I think would be fun would be if a politician prereleased a speech, then gave a completely different speech. Sure would catch a few people off-guard.
Sometimes I wonder why politicians don't just skip all the false pageantry and release a booklet with the speech, the opposition response, and a counter-response. Publish on the web and quit mucking up our TV shows. Reader_iam writes about the preactionary punditry and Callimachus reports on how prepackaged the news can be:
I'm sitting here at the newsdesk at 10 minutes before 8 tonight, and reading plenty of "analysis" and "reaction" stories to Bush's speech, written in the past tense, full of quotes. The speech hasn't been delivered yet.
...a Hearst Newspapers "Immigration Analysis" piece by Jennifer A. Dlouhy (is that a typo?) that moved across the transom at 18:02 today -- a little under two hours before the speech...
AP's first story about the speech, in past tense and with quotes and reactions, moved shortly after 5:30 p.m. Eastern.
Molly Ivins column in reaction to the speech already is on the wire, though embargoed.
I wonder if the speech was available for the general public. What's the point of giving the actual speech if everyone has already read it and responded to it? What I think would be fun would be if a politician prereleased a speech, then gave a completely different speech. Sure would catch a few people off-guard.
posted by bill at 9:04 AM
4 Comments:
Not only should a politician give a speech other than the one that had been pre-released, s/he should give the speech in a foreign language. Imagine Bush's immigration speech last night really being about Iraq, and given in Esperanto.
I think only Captain Kirk could give a speech in Esperanto.
Forgot to mention that I rarely listen to the speeches--I'll read them instead. Mainly because I stand to listen to their lying, weasley voices.
Bush the younger is just painful to listen to. Clinton gets points for presentation, but you could tell he didn't care. Honestly, I can't remember what Bush the elder sounded like, but I hated him. And Reagan caused me to scream "He's Lying" on more than one occasion.
When you take a step back, does it become obvious that the practice of politics is simply bizarre in a literal sense?
I miss the days when you actually had to see a speech, or read about it afterwards....
I like the "bait and switch" idea (kind of a staple of political drama, actually), but I'd really prefer to see a speech given that was actually a surprise: no pre-release, no leaks, no "run-up" events.... just say what needs to be said and move on.
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