Possumblog

That was just all confusing.

I hate it when parlimentary procedure breaks down and everyone starts having their own little sidebar discussion and then six months later when something gets built and they don't understand why it looks that way and you try to tell them that the people were up in front talking about it and when it came time to vote that everyone approved it and if the complainer-person didn't hear it then maybe if they'd shut up their yapping for about five seconds they would have heard the architect say it was going have a giant gilded turd on top.

Focus, people. Focus. And shut up.

I have a feeling their are going to be several puzzled people in about six months.

Oh well.

Hey, did anyone know the President was going to give a speech last night!?

I did. And I actually thought it was really pretty good, although I have my doubts as to the actual consequences of it. Sure, you might like to think none of them voted for defeat, but I have to say in the back of my mind I think there probably are more than a handful who'd like nothing better than to see America perpetually on her knees. Hey, a little self-deprecation is good to keep you humble, but self-loathing is a dangerous thing for a person or a country.

Oddest thing? Well, I was on the computer getting some stuff for Rebecca for a class, and decided to see who all was live-blogging the speech. Quite a few. But you silly bloggers, with your supposed superiority of timeliness, YOU think live-blogging something is just the bee's knees, DON'T YOU!?! Sure you do. But you have NOTHING when it comes to our beloved overlords of the Fourth Estate, who not only are smarter and wiser than you, they can also SEE INTO THE FUTURE!!

I noticed at about 8:35 Central time an odd past-tense headline on the Yahoo! main page. Clicking on it, I found a column by AP writer Terence Hunt, which told me in exacting detail what was going to happen in the speech, AND in the Democratic response, BEFORE IT EVEN HAPPENED!!

Who could ever hope to compete against such omniscience!?

Now that Yahoo! News link has been used by a different story, but I did find that several other news outlets had that original version, such as this Fox station out in Denver. Note that the time stamp says it was created Tuesday, 23 Jan 2007, at 7:24 PM MST, which would be about 8:24 Central, 9:24 Eastern. About halfway through the speech. Now from this highly prescient article, while the speech was still being speeched, we find out that "Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, also took issue with Bush," and that he even supplied a handy quote for our future-seeing reporter. We later on find out that, "Bush said his approach had the best chance to succeed, but clearly many lawmakers -- and overwhelming majority of Americans -- disagreed." Amazing how the writer can know that an overwhelming majority disagreed, even before the speech was over!

Now, I know, and you know, and every other person in the world knows, that reporters have a copy of the speech beforehand. They have a copy of the opposing response beforehand. There's nothing wrong with writing a story that mentions those things and gives a broad outline of what's contained in both texts.

But it sorta seems silly to sit there, and hit the "Send" button on a story that YOU KNOW you wrote far ahead of time, with your editorial slant already preprogrammed in, and pretend that you're writing after the fact. Yes, I know it happens, that it's common newsroom practice, but that still doesn't explain the necessity of the pretense.

Please, Associated Press and all the rest of you goomers, just go ahead and admit your viewpoint is already made up, and that you invent whatever you have to in order to make it fit your framing of the story.

Iraqi police captain Jamil Hussein would want it to be that way.

Anyway, I don't guess I should be too concerned. I mean, who believes what you read online anyway, right?

Right.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at January 24, 2007 10:58 AM