What shall we do, knowing what we know?
Elizabeth Edwards' has a piece up at the NY Times. Here's the link.
What if I didn't remember the Army McCarthy Hearings? What if no one did? What if the footage from day 30 of the hearings, when Welsh said Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? never made it to the network news? Senator Symington said to Senator McCarthy, Senator, the American people have had a look at you now for six weeks. You're not fooling anyone, either, but what if no one except those present throughout those six weeks had had a look at Joe McCarthy?
Edward R. Murrow wouldn't have had the material to use to make See It Now and Emile de Antonio wouldn't have had the material to use to make Point of Order and George Cluney wouldn't have made Good Night, and Good Luck.
But it wouldn't have been the lack of footage to recycle for content, it would be because the amount of content made available in the print and broadcast mediums as news would be equivalent to this cycle's content on Joe Biden's health care plan. Only those who were there would even know it existed, and the "American people" of Senator Symington's peculiar America would amount to some Senators and some staffers, the clerks and the a few members of the Capitol Police, and a few amazed children we call pages, and no one else in the world at all. There might be films by Murrow and de Antonio and Cluney, but they'd be art films about chewing gum or someone's colorful uncle.
In the last cycle I made a point of calling up Senator Bob Graham's campaign office as it was closing up, to request a copy of his jobs and economic stimulus plan, and I'm still impressed by his Workdays -- working many jobs his constituents work. It was a good plan then, its still a good plan today, and it got the same coverage as Joe Biden's health care plan. Recall, he got the media blackout and yet when he was Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he opposed the War in Iraq for fear it would divert attention from Afghanistan. He had clue then, and he had spine then.
And if he were the nominee we'd sweep Florida.
I can loan a server and bandwidth to blogs in Indiana and North Carolina. It beats waiting for someone else to re-invent journamalism.
