Saturday, September 13, 2008


Local boy does good
(Just realized the clip starts by itself -- very annoying. Worth posting, but not worth embedding, since it would start up with every visit until it rotated off the blog into the archives. But do click on the link above.)

I'm fast to mock the competition when they do something foolish. The other night, I spoke to a class at the University of Maine about media and said that TV news people tend to be well-spoken, telegenic and vacuous. But I went out of my way to compliment Rob Caldwell's interview with John McCain, which I almost didn't watch because I assumed it would be a collection of star-struck fluffball questions.

Granted, he didn't get any scoops. But he didn't let McCain walk away from his questions and this is a good interview. Very good.

Meanwhile, what alerted me to the availability of this clip was a factcheck.org piece on the energy issue and the absurdity of the Palin/McCain claim that Alaska produces 20 percent of America's energy supply. It's not close. It's not even sensible. As Obama has said, "Do they think you're stupid?" Evidently they do.


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5 comments:

  1. Vt Teacher5:36 PM

    It's great to see journalists rising up to the ranks of The Daily Show and, recently, the View. I didn't know the news still did that....

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  2. Mike10:33 PM

    This interview is going viral -- it's been on Daily Kos and many others, but it was the comment on Wonkette that cracked me up:

    Oh here this will cheer you up or bore you: John McCain does an interview with Maine reporter Rob Caldwell and basically does not answer any questions. Here is a direct quote from the 4:24 mark in the video (which we did not embed because the HTML was such utter garbage with an autoplay feature that could not be killed): “What experience does [Sarah Palin] have in the field of national security?” Answer: “Energy.” [WCSH6.com]

    Yes, well, I felt the same way about the HTML!

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  3. Anonymous9:37 AM

    Which goes to show why folks shouldn't rely on Wonkette for political advice. These days energy policy and national security issues are quite closely tied.

    Regards,
    Dann

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  4. Mike9:50 AM

    Ah, Dann, but the point wasn't any comment on McCain's not answering direct questions, or the idea that he would only give one answer despite being asked to comment on other aspects of the question. The point was that she put aside the politics to comment on the fact that the clip was so hosed that she wasn't going to imbed it either, despite recommending it.

    I don't have much patience with Wonkette and haven't seen the site in over a year. Just thought her trashing the TV station was funny.

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  5. Anonymous7:23 AM

    Ahh....caught it, but blew right by it. [sigh]

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