If you were watching C-SPAN at all during theconventions you probably remember the reports from Leslie Bradshaw, who was one of the senior editors of the "Convention Hub," which ran tons of blog posts and tweets and sorted wheat from chaff. It also let you pull video from C-SPAN archives to insert into blog posts. Now, Leslie tells me (full disclosure, she is my friend) that they are doing the same for each debate- four sites in all. They announced the plan on C-SPAN on Friday but I was unable to post about it until now.
Given the live-blogging madness that has overtaken all of us during big speeches, and the high interest the debates are certain to generate – this seems to me a good thing. So I’m passing the word to you. Here are the main points (Oh and that’s Leslie next to Susan Swain on C-Span during the conventions):
1. The four sites will launch later this week. 2. Each website will be a "time capsule" complete with blog posts, tweets, transcripts and video from each debate. 3. They will also tracking twitter posts with: #debate08, Palin, McCain, Biden and Obama 4. C-SPAN is also very active, and very popular, on Twitter.
I got majorly addicted to these hubs during the conventions and you’ll love them. You can also submit your own posts, and they will read them and often include them in the crawl. So, later this week, check it out for yourself.
I worked at the TODAY SHOW from 1980 to 1989. During that time I probably produced, conservatively, two pieces a month on "working mothers", as we were called then. It was rough slogging. No matter how many times we looked at it (always from both sides) it just wouldn’t die. Of course early in that same period we had trouble getting cameramen who would shoot a story including an AIDS victim, so there were tougher issues for sure.
In any case, in that period we talked to T. Berry Brazelton (often), Lois Hoffman, Ellen Galinsky, Dr. Edward Zigler, Phyllis Schlafly, Sylvia Hewlett, activists from Catalyst, NOW, Eagle Forum, David Elkind, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and literally hundreds of others. We debated every aspect of child development, nature/nurture – you name it, we covered it. By the time I left at the end of 1989 the issue had mostly been settled – by demographics if nothing else. Mothers were working. Many needed to be. More were on their own, abandoned by or never having had a partner in raising their kids. What was left of the battle was scraps, remnants and [very important] policy issues dealing with childcare, equal pay and family leave etc. Working moms were an American reality.
That was twenty years ago! Twenty years! And now, artificially or not, the issue has emerged again. And many of those allegedly "defending" working moms (or at least one named Sarah) are those who, for much of my working mother life, so vehemently opposed the idea of women going out of the home to work. Sorry. I know the conversation has passed this issue in many ways but as I read posts and newsletters today, it made me mad all over again. With all these conservatives defending working mothers, after what I remember, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. They’re all working now too so some of it is probably genuine but there’s also such an element of strategic hollering. Anyone else feel like they fell down the rabbit hole?
At
last. Our whole day had been built around this. Obama accepts
the nomination with the highest TV ratings of
any acceptance speech in modern US history, according to the Hollywood
Reporter:
Barack Obama’s historic acceptance speech for the Democratic
presidential nomination Thursday night was seen by 38.4 million viewers — 57%
more than watched John Kerry four years ago — and was the most-watched
convention speech ever.
Thursday
night’s viewership set a new record for national convention coverage, according
to Nielsen Media Research. Naturally, it’s also the largest number since the
convention began, up 42% from Hillary Clinton’s
speech on Day 2.
Obama’s
speech was seen by more U.S. viewers than the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony
(34.2 million).
It was a remarkable speech in a spectacular setting. You either watched it or
you didn’t – watch it here. It’s actually worth more than one viewing for
not only the substance but also the environment and symbolism. Watch it —
it’s pretty amazing.
I
waited until today to write this because I felt so much emotion last night that
I thought I should let it all sink in. I’ve seen so many acceptance
speeches, and my sense of Obama’s role is so deep that I didn’t think I had
much new to offer. It doesn’t seem to be wearing off though — not that
I’m alone. MSNBC super-conservative and often inflamatory and somewhat
cruel Joe
Scarborough was still rhapsodizing when I woke up. I think any aware
American, anyone who’s lived through a substantial portion of our modern racial
history, anyone with any desire for a better, more just country — any of us —
could not have watched what happened last night and remained
dispassionate. Tweets all night, and not just from those in the arena
kept saying "Tears everywhere" "Tearing up"
"Didn’t think I’d cry but…" I was fine until the family
walked out to the center of the stadium holding hands. Then I just
disolved.
Beyond
the moving historic moment, and the incredible tableau of two decent committed
families who have made public service a life-time commitment, who are the kinds
of people who seem to manifest what Americans used to think of as "real
American" character, the substance was also inspiring, at least for
me. You can read blogger comments on the wonderful CSPAN Hub — assembled by a team that
includes that very smart woman you keep seeing on CSPAN, Leslie Bradshaw. This post of
hers will give you an idea of
what it took to run the Hub operation – so valuable to so many bloggers.
I was about to be a senior in high school that summer, with my family on vacation in Provincetown, MA, at the tip of Cape Cod. All I really wanted to do was find Edna St. Vincent Millay’s summer hangout and the theater used by Eugene O’Neill and the Provincetown Players. Those were gone; instead, I tripped over a future that quickly ended my quest for the past.
Walking by a restaurant, we passed a TV sitting on the sidewalk, on a milk crate so everyone could watch. On the air: the March on Washington and the speech by Dr. Martin Luther King. I was transfixed. Living in a little town outside Pittsburgh, I hadn’t really paid much attention. Until that moment. It was August 28, 1963, and it launched the next phase of my life. As I watched, I knew that I belonged there – where there was purpose – in the middle of history. It was a profound thing to listen to this man, to see the sea of people around him, watch the individual interviews, hear the music. When people wonder how we became a generation of activists, I know that this was one of the moments that drove us forward, if we weren’t there already.
How beautiful then that EXACTLY 45 years later, Barack Obama will accept the nomination of his party to be the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. I heard Rep. John Lewis, so badly beaten in the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, tell an interviewer that he wasn’t sure he could make it through his own speech — that if anyone had told him that 45 years after that Selma march he’d watch an African-American man accept the presidential nomination, he would have told them they were crazy. Obama adviser and friend Valerie Jarrett, describing what it would mean to her parents in an interview with our own Erin Kotckei Vest, struggled to contain her own tears. This is important.
I wonder if you can imagine what it felt like to be 22 years old, totally idealistic and what they call “a true believer” and to see policemen behave like that. To see Chicago Mayor Richard Daley call the first Jewish Senator, Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, a “kike” (you had to read his lips – there was no audio but it was pretty clear) and to see your friends, and colleagues, and some-time beloveds with black eyes and bleeding scalps. To be dragged by a Secret Service agent from your place next to Senator McCarthy by the collar of your dress as he addressed the demonstrators, battered, bruised and angry. To see everything you’d worked for and believed in decimated in the class, generational and political warfare.
That’s how it was. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, of course, on this momentous anniversary – when hopefully another, happier landmark will emerge in the extraordinary nomination of Senator Obama. I’ve been to every Convention from 1968 until this year. It’s kind of sad to break the chain after 40 years but I think I’m ready. I did a workshop on convention coverage at the BlogHer conference to pass the torch; I’m so excited for all the women who are going. Just as Senator Obama is a generation behind me – in his 40s to my 60s – a little kid when we faced billy clubs and tear gas in his home town, so are many of the bloggers credentialed to cover the week. I know it will be great for them and that they’ll make certain we know – in twitteriffic detail, what’s going on.
I know too that, 40 years from now, it will still be a milestone
memory in their lives. I started to write “hopefully, a happier one”
but despite all the agony of those terrible days in 1968, I’m embarrassed to tell you that I wouldn’t trade the memory. It’s so deep in my soul and so much a part of my understanding of myself and who I’ve become that despite the horrors within it, I cherish its presence. So, what I wish my sisters in Denver (and Minnesota) is to have conventions — happy or not — as important to their lives, sense of history and purpose and political values as Chicago was to mine. Along with, of course, the fervent hope that this time, there will be something closer to a happy ending.
OK so you’ve probably seen this but just in case I’m posting it here (probably like half the web.) I’ve (embarrassingly) never heard this woman speak before. I thought she’d sound horrible but she’s not half bad. And the ad? Pretty funny, huh?
This photo was taken at the closing plenary of BlogHer08 and I’ve barely covered the event at all. There are so many moments I’d love to tell you about: readings by bloggers whose words hold incredible power; one by one they reveal intimate moments of sadness and joy, anger and hilarity. The words, drawn from their posts, are the clearest evidence of the power of this institution, not yet five years old and already a gigantic force for good in the lives of the women who have come here. So many more.
We’re all on our way home now; to Austin and Sacramento and Virginia and Manhattan and Minneapois, energized for another year, ready to write and comment and commit ourselves to that which we create. From these two days we’ve learned about traffic and writing, activism and art, gender and age tribalism, friendship, sisterhood and the joys of San Francisco. What we gain here informs the rest of our year: makes us wiser and funnier and more determined. And really, whatever I would have written had it not been for Sabbath obligations and general exhaustion boils down to that. So thanks Elisa and Jory and Lisa (and Jill and Mary Margaret and Kristen and Asha and Erin and Sarah and Devra and Jill and Kari and Beth and Tekla and Catherine and the other Catherine and Morra and Nicole and Liz and Kelly and Jen and Julie ) and all the other beautiful bloggers who, when we’re all together, raise the roof of whatever building we happen to be in, and also – every one of our spirits and our hearts.
From the day Richard Nixon was nominated in 1968 until Tuesday afternoon, forty years later, when John McCain began running this “Love” commercial, Republicans have been running against us. All of us who share a history of opposing the Vietnam war and working to elect an anti-warpresident. Against everything we ever were, believed, dreamed, voted for, marched against, volunteered to change, spoke about, created, sang, wrote, painted, sculpted or said to one another on the subway or the campus or anyplace else from preschool parent nights to Seders to the line at the supermarket.
How is it possible that what we tried to do is still the last best hope to elect a Republican? They used it against John Kerry. They used it against Max Cleland. They did it every time (well, almost) they were losing policy battles in the Clinton years. They called CSPAN and said unspeakable things. And now they are using the history of people my side of sixty to run against a man who was, if my math is right, seven years old during this notorious “summer of love” which – I might add, had nothing to do with those of us working to end the war. In fact, there were two strands of rebellion in those years. The Summer of Love/ Woodstock folks and the political, anti-war activists.
At the 1967 National Student Association Convention in Maryland, I saw a room full of students boo Timothy Leary off the stage, literally. We didn’t want to “turn on, tune in, drop out” we wanted to organize against the war. The anti-war movement was not a party. I know that’s not a bulletin but it is so hard to see all of us reduced to a single mistaken stereotype. Those who chose to find a personal solution weren’t nuts; communes and home-made bread were a lot more immediate gratification than march after march, teach-in after teach-in, speech after speech. “If you’re goin’ to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Tempting, romantic – and not us.
Even more painful is the fact that the cultural and political divide is still so intense that research (I assume) told the McCain guys that this commercial would work. That our patriotic, committed efforts to change our country’s path, and the cultural alienation that drove others toward the streets of San Francisco, combine to become a stronger motivator than all the desperate issues we face today, this side of those 40 years. Perhaps even worse, these Bush years have dismantled so many of the successes we did have, so that in addition to facing, yet again, this smear against the activism of 1968 (and I repeat, that was forty years ago — longer than most of the bloggers I know have been alive) there’s the awareness of what we did that has been undone.
I need to say here that I grew up on the shores of the Monongehela River in Pittsburgh and my classmates were kids who mostly went into the steel mills or the Army after high school. I knew plenty of supporters of the war. I went to prom and hung out at the Dairy Queen with them. But it never occurred to me to demonize them, to hold against them their definition of patriotism.
I’m not writing off or looking down upon those who did support the war; I’m saying that this cynical, craven abuse of the devotion of people on both sides to the future of their country is reprehensible and precisely the kind of behavior that has broken the hearts of so many Americans, on those both sides of the political spectrum, who just want their candidates to lead us in hope for what our country can be, not defame others whose dreams aren’t quite the same as theirs.
Have you seen this movie? I sat in bed watching it early Sunday morning on cable and was just blown away. It’s one of the saddest, scariest, most moving American documentaries I’ve seen in a long time. That’s no surprise, since it was directed by Barbara Kopple, who made Harlan County USA – the landmark documentary about coal mine union battles in Kentucky.
What happened to the Dixie Chicks is infuriating: performing in London just before the start of the Iraq war, lead singer Natalie Maines (married, by the way, to HEROES star Adrian Pasdar,) told the crowd "Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas." The scene is included in this preview.
As I watched the film, seeing the rage and cruelty that emerged in the response to this one sentence, my first thought was, "Oh my God, what does this mean for Barack Obama?" The people who went after the Dixie chicks were nowhere near a sense of respect for the First Amendment – and sounded like they would be particularly vulnerable to "elitist" or racist accusations against a candidate. If you remember the exit polls in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania you’ll recall that many respondents just about acknowledged that they would not vote for Senator Obama simply because of his race. Am I unfair to wonder if many of those people are the same ones booing and even threatening Maines’ life? Still "out there" in larger numbers than we wish? Look at these figures:
In Pennsylvania
exit polls on primary day, 14% of voters
said that race one one of several important factors. Fifty-five percent of those were Clinton
voters and 45% Obama voters. When asked
race was “important” 19% said yes – 59% of them Clinton voters; when asked if
race was a factor in their decision, 12% said yes. In this group, 76% were white Clinton voters.
In West
Virginia, when asked race was “important” to their decision, 22% said yes –82%
of them Clinton voters; when asked if race was a factor in their decision, 21%
said yes. In this group, 84% were white
Clinton voters.
Finally, Ohio. There, when asked race was “important” to
their decision, 20% said yes– 59% of them Clinton voters; when asked if race
was a factor in their decision, 14% said yes. In this group, 59% were Clinton voters. (the racial breakdown was not available here.)
Please understand – I don’t know if I’m right. I’m not alleging racial bias in all those who rose up to burn Dixie Chicks CDs and threaten country stations with boycotts if they "ever played one of their songs again" – but I do suspect they could be more vulnerable to campaigns run in an uglier vein – just as they responded to this one. It’s worrying me.
I’ve written twice now about Tim Russert, feeling a real loss, and decided I was finished, but this afternoon my son sent this to me with the message "Crushingly moving." As usual, he was right. So if you missed it, here it is.
