|
Last night, forty minutes into the debate, I felt like George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson had taken truncheons to the skulls of the candidates, myself, and the TV watching public in general. A sentiment shared by many, as it happened. I had to get up and move around, ask a few members of the assembled press some questions about why they were there and what they thought.
It was either that, or have a fit of Cthulhic gibbering, and a person has got to safeguard their sanity in this world.
Why Are You Here?
Several people cited the spin room as a draw, getting to ask questions directly of the campaign surrogates. Others said it was a chance for the journalists themselves to connect with each other, swap stories of past events (which is exactly, to be fair, what Chris Bowers, Todd Beeton and I did afterwards over a late meal,) and/or interview each other (which is what I was mostly doing in the press room.) Photojournalist Alex Gross with the Journal Register said he was there for the ambience, to provide a look at more than what they showed on TV. Janet Tegley, a senior producer with CN8, described the event as "historic," said she "wouldn't miss it for the world," and that the event was "filled with other interesting people."
Anthony Walker, the DC-based, US correspondent of The Australian Financial, (sort of an Aussie WSJ,) also cited the atmosphere, and said he was frustrated that there wasn't room for the press in the debate hall itself. He'd said he partly came to get the reaction of people on the ground there in Philadelphia, just as he'd come for the Drexel debate in October of 2007, when "Clinton first showed vulnerability" over an immigration question.
I got a somewhat different take from Jonathan Valania, editor-in-chief of Phawker. (Don't know why, but this morning the link to their live debate coverage turns up a blank entry, though you can see it all on the front page right now. I figure they'll fix this, so I linked to both.) "I thought that debate was pointless, ... a waste of time for the candidates," he said after it was all over. He didn't think the Pennsylvania voters that had been the subject of so much recent discussion had gotten their issues dealt with at all.
The Stare, The Snub And Some Substance
Then Valania suggested that I ask Maureen Dowd what she thought, since she was coming our way. I scanned the direction I was more or less facing, as he indicated, spotted her, then looked back at him. She wasn't that far away, our eyes briefly met, she must have gotten a load of my bleached buzzcut or something, and then she pretty much kept staring most the rest of the way over to where she'd have to file past me in our narrow confines. It made me kind of twitchy.
I once heard Sean Penn described as a person who seemed like he was always looking at a menu in a restaurant where he didn't like the food. That does well to describe the expression on Dowd's face as she looked at me. It wasn't hard to catch her eye when she got close and I turned from my conversation with Valania to ask if she had time for a couple questions, because she was still staring at me sideways like she couldn't believe her eyes.
|
STATE BLOGS
