Reply #4: It's the same old story

[Inuca]

the media will cover accidents, car chases, any kind of "catastrophe" big and small. Important things that do not have a metaphorical resemblance to that accident of the highway that you just MUST turn your head to have a peak at are not covered or barely mentioned. Similar idea for "stars" vs. "regular folks". The "regular folk" I have in mind right now is Jim Webb. I did not watch any news, just saw the info on Google that managed to free the journalist jailed in Myanmar. I am willing to bet anything that the coverage of this will be one hundredth of the coverage for BC and the two girls freed from NK.

And of course all this completely changes the perception people have of what is happening and what is important. You mention MSNBC running clips of the McCaskill "townhall disaster". I was there. It was rather bad, but definitely not a disaster. There were loud boos and than the Rosa Parks poster incident. I did not realize what it was all about until I read about it! I was seated far from where it happened, but pretty high in the bleachers (is that what they are called? The seats in a sports auditorium) so I had a good view. I saw that a black woman was taken out by what I thought were the campus security but they may have been the police, and then heard McCaskill comments that I am sure you heard (repeatedly) on TV, and it was over in a couple of minutes. The way it was presented in the news was like it was the core of the whole meeting, which most definitely it was NOT. Right after it was over, McCaskill commented something along the lines that she is sure that in spite of the rather good discussion that took place, this will be what the media reports will focus on. She was obviously correct (and did you notice how the media showed her comments right after the incident, but never the quote that I just mentioned? At least I never heard it). As I said, it was not a disastrous meeting, like some others that I had seen/heard/read snippets of, though of course given my experience with this one meeting I wonder how terrible the others were overall. As I said, the one that I attended was definitely not supportive of the reform (my very rough guess is approx. 2/3 or more against), loud boos (but it was a large crowd, probably around 1500 or so), but the questions themselves were relatively reasonable ones. One last thing about this, again related to how the way media presents things tends to distort: I heard at least a couple of times comments critical of McCaskill because at one point she said "You do not trust me?". The talking heads commented that this is the wrong thing to say, you do not ask something like this because under the circumstances the reply will be a loud NO (which it was). The thing is that she did not really ask this, she was repeating what somebody in the audience said, sounded almost like she was not sure she heard it right and wanted to make sure. Overall, I was quite impressed with how she conducted herself. In control both of the issues and, to the extent possible, of the crowd. She brought along her 80+ year old mother, small and frail, (saying that she INSISTED to come) who said a few words at the very beginning, presenting herself as the poster case for the need for health care reform, listing her many ailments, etc. At some point toward the end, the mother left the podium, leaning on the arm of a big guy from McCaskil's entourage (she came back later, probably she just had to go to the bathroom or something), and as she was leaving she said "Give them hell, Claire!". Not in the microphone, but she was close enough that it was clearly audible and resulted in a big round of applause.

Anyway... I started to write meaning to comment on the media thing, and it turned into something else. But I wanted to tell you guys about the meeting in any case, just did not get the chance/time until now, so here it is :-)