Thursday, September 30, 2004
The Firehose
It's been said that finding information on the Internet is like trying to take a drink out of a firehose. In my experience, that's rarely been more true than it is today. There are so many worthwhile bits of commentary about tonight's presidential debate that nobody could possibly read them all, and if you're counting on me to winnow some of them out, I'm going to let you down. There's just too much, because this event is to politics what the World Series is to baseball. Too bad I'm going to miss it. I will be teaching a class tonight and will be fortunate to catch the last 15 minutes of it, so here's hoping for a C-SPAN rerun while I'm still awake.
The firehose will be going full blast again tomorrow with post-debate analysis--but would anyone like to lay odds on how the administration will manipulate the news to push the debate off the front burner? They do it all the time, swamping news that makes them look bad with Fear of Insensate Evil by running Ashcroft or Ridge out with another terror alert. Been there, done that, however, and people are starting to catch on to the tactic. So what else might they try? Your surmises on what to expect are welcome below, as well as anything else you'd care to throw in. Posts are going to be exceedingly thin here, if not nonexistent, until Monday or Tuesday of next week, so talk amongst yourselves.
(You know, it's possible that all this debate stuff and politics just might not matter anymore. We've got bigger problems: They're reducing the alcohol content in Jack Daniel's, and the Cubs are collapsing again.)
It's been said that finding information on the Internet is like trying to take a drink out of a firehose. In my experience, that's rarely been more true than it is today. There are so many worthwhile bits of commentary about tonight's presidential debate that nobody could possibly read them all, and if you're counting on me to winnow some of them out, I'm going to let you down. There's just too much, because this event is to politics what the World Series is to baseball. Too bad I'm going to miss it. I will be teaching a class tonight and will be fortunate to catch the last 15 minutes of it, so here's hoping for a C-SPAN rerun while I'm still awake.
The firehose will be going full blast again tomorrow with post-debate analysis--but would anyone like to lay odds on how the administration will manipulate the news to push the debate off the front burner? They do it all the time, swamping news that makes them look bad with Fear of Insensate Evil by running Ashcroft or Ridge out with another terror alert. Been there, done that, however, and people are starting to catch on to the tactic. So what else might they try? Your surmises on what to expect are welcome below, as well as anything else you'd care to throw in. Posts are going to be exceedingly thin here, if not nonexistent, until Monday or Tuesday of next week, so talk amongst yourselves.
(You know, it's possible that all this debate stuff and politics just might not matter anymore. We've got bigger problems: They're reducing the alcohol content in Jack Daniel's, and the Cubs are collapsing again.)
