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I wrote an entry about the suckitude of NBC covering the Olympics back in 2006.  NBCs coverage certainly fell off 10 years previous, but since Sydney, it’s increasingly painful to watch.  It’s not the just the fluff pieces on the athletes where a knee scrape at the age of 6 is told with overwrought music and fraught with drama.  It’s not just the insufferable focus on American athletes, many of whom don’t stand a chance to win a medal, let along a gold one.  It’s not even the fact that if you do not have cable, you’ll miss 95% of the coverage.  The worst part of NBCs coverage, at least for me here on the west coast is the utter lie that is that taunting “LIVE” icon in the top right corner of my screen.

Opening Ceremonies carried that “LIVE” tag, even though earlier in the day I heard about all the technological feats from European friends a good 9 hours before I even had a chance to watch it.  Yesterday, people were talking about swimmer Michael Phelps wondering if he’d win his gold medal.  3 hours before it was shown here on the west coast, I already knew that he did.

I had this rant ready to go, but I just reread what I wrote in ‘06 and it still stands today.  The 2 points I made then, I wanted to make today:

Not to knock on my fellow countrymen, but the best part about the Olympics is the internationality of it all. I love seeing people excel in sports that they shouldn’t have or surpass all kinds of odds just to get to the Olympics, but I have a feeling that Americans don’t have a corner on hardship*

AND…

Now let’s get to programming. Remember the days when the Olympics were carried live? Remember when you had to set your VCR to tape figure skating at 2:45pm? Well now, we’re subjected to 3.5 hours of highlights. By the time the Olympics air here on the West Coast, I already know who won. Hell, Comcast On-Demand has the winners up before NBC plays their stinkin’ highlight reel. And that’s exactly what it is: a flippin’ highlight reel. I have no idea what’s edited out until I see who’s competed. On the computer. Where it’s already tomorrows in Torino. You’d think that there are really only 6 people competing in any given sport. Those other names? They’re just ghosts of Olympics past.

I think that if I want to watch soccer and avoid gymnastics, I shouldn’t have to use a chart to determine when it will actually run and on what channel.  I should be able to watch an entire competition all the way through.  Instead, last night we got a chunk of gymnastics (US, China and Japan only, even though 5 other countries also competed), some swim races, a volleyball game, interviews with the US Women’s fencing team and highlights of other sports that weren’t televised at all.

How do they think  that is watchable?  That was just on the Universal HD (where it is so not HD) channel.  I popped over to USA Spain vs. Greece basketball and the commentators were calling color from a studio in New York!  I haven’t caught anything on MSNBC, Oxygen, Telemundo or CNBC mostly because I find it ridiculous I have to flip that much to watch old news. But I wish I knew the reason why content couldn’t be aired live across all timezones at the same time.  NBA finals, Super Bowl, World Series, Wimbledon, US Open, etc. are all aired at the same time in the US.  Why not the Olympics?

I really, really, really detest NBCs coverage and you can let them know at nbcolympicsfeedback@nbcuni.com

That’s right, I won the Easy Green Living book by Renée Loux that was being given away on Seesmic. Want to watch the whole thing? Below is the video of the when Ms. Loux took our questions on what we viewed as important in living “green”:

Yes, that’s not Renée, but if you click on it, you’ll see here (yes, I’m laughing at a pretty frantic email I received).

About a week and some days later, the winner was announced:

I laughed. I cried. I want to thank the Academy…

Then today…the book arrived:

I’m kinda busy with work, but I’ve had a chance to flip through the book and it’s pretty interesting. There are a lot of items in the book that I already own/buy not because of any greenness on my part, but because of price, locality and prettiness/smells. The book is more a shopping guide than a lifestyle guide, IMO, but even flipping through it, it was struck by how many items in the book are things you don’t really need in life. Or the lack of actual greenness of them, i.e. paper towels/napkins. It’s much more green to use cloth towels, and thankfully, the author does point that out. Which brings me to the second cool thing about the book.

Everything is pretty accessible to anyone who can read and shows that you don’t have to drop big $$$ to be green which is stunning to me considering Loux hosts a show on Fine Living. The best part is that Loux does explain why certain things are better than others. Unlike other “green” books, there doesn’t seem to be those not-so-unsubtle judgment calls on your purchases. Take the section on cookware. It’s extremely detailed explaining why Teflon or non-stick cookware isn’t in your best interest vs. stainless steel or cast iron cookware.

Check out the book at your local library or you can find at Powell’s.

I’m not usually big on Olbermann’s Special Comments, but sometimes there are really brilliant ones. This is a really brilliant one. The subject is Sen. Clinton’s remarks then half-assed sorta apology for invoking RFKs assassination (for the 2nd time) as a reason to take it to June. This time, unlike her remarks from March which very few people seemed to have noticed, she got caught out, making them to the editorial board of the Argus Leader in South Dakota. An interview that was streamed live.

I don’t have anything to add. I’ve been saying Clinton should have dropped out of the race since the end of Feb. This is the cherry on top, that proves what I’ve been saying for the past 3 months, this woman is not fit for the job of President of the United States.

MSNBC is disgusting.  They just spent the last 3 hours eulogizing Sen. Ed Kennedy and he ain’t even dead yet.

Gross.

Terry implies that Tim’s dad is dead. He isn’t.

Well, SNL did their once-a-decade funny sketch. I have to hand it to the players, they did a great job parodying the people from Match Game.

WaPo is reporting that the Clinton’s campaign is $20M in debt.

$20M.

And they want back in to the WH?

There’s nothing in the article that says anything beyond Wolfson’s confirmation of the number. We have no idea if that includes the $12M the Clinton’s loaned themselves. Terry McAuliffe was on Meet the Press this morning and said:

A top Clinton adviser this morning said that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is open to the possibility of loaning her campaign more money to continue in the race.

Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton campaign chairman, told Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” that he spoke to Clinton about the possibility of contributing more money and “she said that she would be willing to do it.” However, McAuliffe insists, “We haven’t needed it.”

Russert pressed the issue, asking McAuliffe if the Clintons will be able to repay all debts after the campaign is over. “We plan on it,” he replied.

Must be nice to have that kind of change. Let’s put this in perspective: With their first loan, the Clinton’s could have paid off my house, bills and bought me a new car and it would still have been well under 10% of what they loaned themselves.

What a working class family.

One of the biggest jokes of the past week has been how Sen. Clinton tosses off “San Francisco” as if it’s a dirty word. We shouldn’t expect much from one half of a couple who spent an inordinate amount of time running away from the “liberal” tag just because the scary old Republicans tried to turn it into a playground taunt. Still, Clinton does have her supporters in San Francisco, so the way she’s been denigrating the Obama supporters who heard his truthful remarks and comparing them to “real” people, is so much GOP bullshit.

The out of touch media dorks were oh-so-quick to give a shout out to their blue-collar upbringings…well, that is the blue collar cities where they were born (near), though many of them are trustafarians who were raised in a different area. Their experiences with blue collar workers has either been ordering them around or getting their asses beat by them. The way they condescend bears this out. Keep in mind that these were people who were telling us that blue collar workers have no idea what arugla is.

Insulting.

So while the small town voter in Pennsylvania who was not being insulted by Sen. Obama’s remarks, is being puffed up by Sen. Moneybags and the Fourth Estate, the poor souls in San Francisco have to deal, yet again, with being treated like they’re so far out of the mainstream. In all these years where “San Francisco liberal” has become a Pavlovian buzzword to half-witted Republicans and even some “D”emocrats. I’ve never once heard any media pundit come to the defense of the San Francisco voter. I’ve never heard any Democrat stand up and say, “This is where we draw the line, the voters of San Francisco are people, tax-paying Americans who also deserve to be treated with respect.” Maybe we could even go all Godwin’s law or something. The fact is, that words taken of out context and/or distorted could be insulting to anyone anywhere. You know who the media largely caters to when they’re more concerned about blue collar workers, gun owners and the crazed Bible-thumping faction of religion being insulted than if black, Latino, rich, gay, or just regular religious folks (UCC anyone?) are insulted.

Let’s take the Muslim thing for example. For almost 14 months during this campaign, Muslims have been smeared. In that, I mean that some Democrats <coughHillaryClintoncough>, the media and certainly the unintelligent Republicans feel that it’s alright to “slime” Sen. Obama by implying that he’s a Muslim. Sen. Obama is the only elected official during this entire campaign to say that what these people were doing was insulting to Americans who are Muslim. The only one. That tells me more about their character than anyone Sen. Obama may have sat next to on a board eons ago.

That Clinton thinks that’s it’s totally okay to denigrate one group while ginning up false outrage over a distorted remark not aimed at another group, say even more about her character. On one hand I should be surprised, but then I remember that this is a person who has told us that black voters, activists, caucus-goers, young people, and states that she didn’t win aren’t important. This is a person who wrote off the endorsement of a friend for her opponent as “insignificant”, then spent two weeks publicly attacking the friend.

So, while she’s reminiscing over a duck hunt with dad that probably happened as often as sniper fire in Tuzla, we’ll do well to remember that even though she’s been a hanger-on in the upper echelons of the political class for over 30 years, she can still pretend to the a voice of the American people, while mildly insulting those San Francisco liberals who went to listen to Sen. Obama. Though, I’m sure the San Francisco liberals who are dumping nearly $500K (that’s 10% of what Clinton loaned her campaign!) in Pennsylvania this week on her behalf are the right kind of San Francisco liberals.

This morning, I woke up still pissed at the farce that happened in Philadelphia last night. As I mentioned in my previous post, there was nothing of substance touched on in the two hour commercial laden gang up on Sen. Obama last night. I see Clinton supporters who whined when Obama and Edwards “ganged” up on Clinton in New Hampshire, actually say that last night’s debates were fair and refreshing. Yeah…for the GOP. The comments on ABCNews website has reached over 14000 and most of them were negative. The blogosphere is abuzz with the Disaster in Philadelphia and even the MSM is collectively shaking its head.

Over at Booman Tribune, StevenD did the hard work I was just starting; going through the transcripts to summarize last night’s quesions:

1. Will you offer loser the VP - Gibson (G)
2. Obama’s “bitter” comment - G
3. Can Obama beat McCain (to Clinton) – Stephanopoulus (S)
4. Can Clinton win (to Obama) – S
5. Wright question (to Obama) – G
6. Wright question (to Clinton) – G
7. Several Wright questions (to Obama) – S
8. Why don’t people trust you/ Tuzla question (to Clinton) – S
9. Has Clinton been truthful (to Obama) – S
10. Flag question/patriotism (to Obama) – G
11. Flag question/patriotism/Ayers (to Obama) – S
12. Questions on Plan to get out of Iraq (to both) – G
13. Iran questions re attack on Israel (to both) – S
14. Economy questions (Will you raise taxes?) (to both) - S
15. Raise Capital Gains Tax questions (to both) – G
16. Soc. Sec. Taxes (to Obama) – G
17. Guns/2nd Amend. Questions (to both) – G
18. Affirmative Action question (to both) –S
19. Gas Prices/Energy policy questions (to both) – G
20. How would you use Dubya as advisor/other role (to both) – G
21. Undecided Superdelegate question (to both) – G

Do you see anything of any importance to the average American there? It wasn’t until about maybe 90 minutes into the 2 hour debate that George Stephanopolous said:

Let me turn to the economy. That is the No. 1 issue on Americans’ minds right now.

Then it was about taxes and we got to learn that Charles Gibson who proved his cluelessness on income levels of professors back in January, told us that people making $200K a year were middle class. We were also subjected to Gibson’s elitism that the average American cares or will be affected by captial gains tax. Gibson acts as if these debates were his personal interview with the candidates and screw the rest of us, he spent an inordinate amount of time debated Obama, while letting Clinton’s answers slide. He failed, once again, as a moderator.
Charles Gibson, also decided that editorializing was fair game. In a question regarding guns directed toward Sen. Clinton he said:

GIBSON: Well, with all due respect, I’m not sure I got an answer from Senator Obama, but do you still favor licensing and registration of handguns?

This was minutes after Obama had, in fact, answered the question and Clinton and Stephanopolous had a back and forth. It could be that Gibson’s inherent and obvious dislike of Obama denied him the ability to hear anything the Senator said. Maybe it’s the simple fact that when you keep interrupting a person when they’re trying to answer you, it proves that you’re not really listening.

I mentioned in my previous post that this debate was such a joke that it had me agreeing with Jonah Goldberg. No one makes me agree with Goldberg without reprecussions. Last night, Tom Shales posted on Washington Post an article titled: In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC. I recommend you read the entire article, but let me share you some snippets:

For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with.

snip

Obama was right on the money when he complained about the campaign being bogged down in media-driven inanities and obsessiveness over any misstatement a candidate might make along the way, whether in a speech or while being eavesdropped upon by the opposition. The tactic has been to “take one statement and beat it to death,” he said.

No sooner was that said than Gibson brought up, yet again, the controversial ravings of the pastor at a church attended by Obama. “Charlie, I’ve discussed this,” he said, and indeed he has, ad infinitum. If he tried to avoid repeating himself when clarifying his position, the networks would accuse him of changing his story, or changing his tune, or some other baloney.

snip

To this observer, ABC’s coverage seemed slanted against Obama. The director cut several times to reaction shots of such Clinton supporters as her daughter, Chelsea, who sat in the audience at the Kimmel Theater in Philly’s National Constitution Center. Obama supporters did not get equal screen time, giving the impression that there weren’t any in the hall. The director also clumsily chose to pan the audience at the very start of the debate, when the candidates made their opening statements, so Obama and Clinton were barely seen before the first commercial break.

Newsday writes:

The morning after the latest Democratic debate, the talk doesn’t seem to be about which candidate — New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton or Illinois Sen. Barack Obama — would make a more-formidable foe to run against Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.

The talk seems to be about which of the two ABC News moderators — Charles Gibson or George Stephanopoulos — did the worst job, which one was sillier in Philadelphia.

Will Bunch wrote an open letter to the two hosts of last night’s debacle:

With your performance tonight — your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane “issue” questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters — you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it’s even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to “export democracy,” and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, “no thank you.” Because that was no way to promote democracy.

And that’s just a small sampling. You know it’s bad when USAToday, the tabloid that seems to focus of the news of 8 months ago, has a current roundup of criticisms on their pages.

You’ll note the recurrent themes. The candidates themselves were mere props on the stage. To ask who won or lost last night’s “debates” is to ask the wrong question. Neither candidate shined, though the focus group said that Clinton one. Odd one that, since the only time they responded really postively toward her was when she told a joke that didn’t sound scripted. Naturally, the Clinton’s are using that clip as a promo piece. Otherwise, a simple scanning of the transcripts show that Obama’s answers to the most inane questions were intelligent and clear. The focus group responded overwhelming positive to his answers, so it was curious that only 5 of the 22 people thought he won the debate.

It has been estimated that over 10M watched last night’s debates, making it the most watched debate this season. 10 million Americans who care what the next President of the United States has to say and as StevenD mentioned, they didn’t touch on any of the important questions:

Global Warming, New Orleans Reconstruction, Health Care, Veterans Benefits (New GI Bill or Health Benefits), Defense Spending, National Debt, Trade Issues, Environmental issues (not about global warming), Regulatory Agency scandals and problems, Financial markets, Worldwide Food Crisis, Darfur, Pakistan, Somalia, North Korea, NATO, Russia, China, Nigeria, Venezuela, Drugs, Unemployment, Mortgage crisis, Bush administration Crimes and Scandals, Torture, Guantanamo Bay and other detention facilities, Loss of Civil Rights (Electronic surveillance, FISA, Habeas Corpus), Infrastructure issues, Gay Rights, Race (except as it came up re: Reverend Wright), Immigration

Last night’s debate forces us the understand how vested the powers that be are in keeping us uninformed. They say that Americans are turned off of politics, it was the disgusting behaviors of the two “moderators” that turn us off, not necessarily the candidates themselves. ABC, once again, put on a show for the corporate masters and the rest of us could only watch from the cheap seats.

There’s no recap. It sucked balls.

ABCNews needs to know how much they fucked up on this one. You can call (212) 456-7777 or email them.

It was, hands down, probably the worst excuse of a debate in all of debating history. It was through no fault of the candidates. It was purely Assclown Hijinks with Chuck Gibson and Georgie-boy. Absolutely NOTHING of substance was asked of the candidates. I came in late and was still subjected to 45 minutes of non-issue questions on Rev. Wright, bitterness and flag pins. Can you guess the bias? There was one guess on Clinton’s lying habits. She actually said something like, “People are just going to have get over my habitual lying.” Oh…that part may be an tiny exaggeration.

Okay…wanna know how bad it is? Jonah “Iraq is Going Great!” Goldberg thought it was bad. When you have me agreeing with something Goldberg writes you know it’s bad. (h/t to idredit)

I’m no leftwing blogger, but I can only imagine how furious they must be with the debate so far. Nothing on any issues. Just a lot of box-checking on how the candidates will respond to various Republican talking points come the fall. Now I think a lot of those Republican talking points are valid and legitimate. But if I were a “fighting Dem” who thinks all of these topics are despicable distractions from the “real issues,” I would find this debate to be nothing but Republican water-carrying.

The responses from viewers on ABCNews gives you a better idea of how bad it was:

Jesus Christ - are you kidding! This is the worst sham for an unbiased debate I have ever seen - FIRE STEPHANOPOLOUS and GIBSON… and by-the-way, NO multi-miliion dollar severance package - make them pay a fine for torturing americans with their insane questions

Posted by:
j50george 9:42 PM

Pathetic job, ABC. Very sad. You had a chance to cut through the crap, but you chose to wallow in it. Lapel pins? Wright? Bosnia? All that crap’s been hashed and rehashed. And millionaire Gibson whining about capital gains taxes. What a travesty.

Posted by:
Yucca333 10:15 PM

Whatever they paid them to gang up on obama i’ll double it.they should leave the debates to the REAL news networks!!!!!

Posted by:
walchrs 9:43 PM

What a terrible debate by ABC’s moderators. I guess this is why I never watch ABC News. About 30 minutes was spent on Rev. Wright, the bitter comment, and Hillary mis-speak(which was only about 5 of those 30 mins). We then had to sit through 30 minutes of commercials in a two hour program. That was pathetic ABC. PATHETIC.

Posted by:
mr_sj 10:12 PM