This weekend I’m going to be featuring some of the analysis and interviews from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report related to the Republican National Convention.
You may think it’s odd that an old greezer like me (and at 120, I’m much older than Clint Eastwood) gets his news online from a basic cable comedy show. Well let me tell you Emily and Richard are so old that they got their news from the Post Office Gazette.
In colonial times overland communications was just beginning to get established and even before Ben Franklin an enterprising man named John Campbell had set up a delivery service from Boston to New York. Local Postmasters, who were frequently Innkeepers too, would scan the letters before passing them on and print up the juicy bits which they would sell as newspapers.
The sudden popularity of sealing wax led to more formal arrangements for obtaining content, but the tradition was well established. Indeed one of the onerous (and intended) effects of the Stamp Act was to penalize the publication of information and restrict communication as well as raise revenue. Fortunately the alternative press had not been forgotten and soon ‘British’ Postmasters were under a serious commercial threat.
Oh and sometimes the boys at the bar would get all liquored up on Sam Adams and bust the place up a bit just for fun. Our founders were Revolutionaries, dont forget that.
So yeah, I consider it as newsy as anything else on basic cable.
The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.
Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits — a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.
There are 3 basic divisions in content- Interviews, Commentary, and Correspondant Reports. I’m going to try and highlight some of the web-exclusive material, but I’ll not attempt to be comprehensive. Visit their sites for complete episodes.
Ayn Rand in 10 pretty painless minutes
I have always believed that a man can fairly be judged by the standards and taste of his choices in matters of high-level plagiarism.- Stockton
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