Cable News Cretinism
John Thune's shotgun wedding.
After getting a good day's sleep and powering through all five of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief (with a brief stop by #6: drinking!), Surfergirl is now ready to turn back to the culling of post-election Cretinisms from the cable talk circuit. And what a rich harvest it's been over the past few days. Last night's winner: a video clip on Hardball of John Thune after winning Tom Daschle's Senate seat. "When you finally get to the finish line," mused Thune, "it is like, you know, relief. And especially when you get an outcome like this one. But I have not done some things I normally do this time of year. So I have a date with my 12-gauge in a corn field."
You know, ever since Tuesday's results came in, I've been thinking about making a date like that myself. And I don't even hunt. ... 10:15 a.m.
Tuesday, November 2, 2004
3:27 a.m., CBS: To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald: In a real dark night of the soul, it is always 3 a.m. Dan's gone folksy again at CBS, pointing at his screen map with his low-tech pencil and reminding us that the race in Wisconsin has been "closer than Lassie and Timmy all night long." The crowds over in " Democracy Plaza" (as MSNBC has Orwellianly rechristened Rockefeller Center) are already chanting "Four more years! Four more years!" Me, I'd just like to get four more hours of sleep before this craziness resumes in the morning. I'll drift off counting provisional ballots—sort of like counting sheep, but less fluffy.
2:29 a.m.: John Edwards appears at Kerry HQ in Boston to give a brief pep talk to supporters—essentially, an anticoncession speech. With several hundred thousand provisional ballots yet to be counted in Ohio, many of them from African-American districts in big cities, the Democrats are going to spend the next few days more obsessed with numbers than the Count on Sesame Street.
1:17 a.m.: NBC and MSNBC have already given Ohio to Bush. CNN, ABC, Fox News, and a self-consciously cautious CBS ("We'd rather be last than be wrong," says Rather) are holding back.
12:04 a.m., MSNBC: So what was the problem with the exit polls? Joe Scarborough just mused that perhaps voters were just embarrassed to tell pollsters they had voted for George Bush. I know I would be.
11:43 p.m., ABC: Peter Jennings just called Florida for Bush. No joy in Mudville.
11: 20 p.m.: Another tip from a Slatester: Apparently Anderson Cooper, in contrast to the rest of the sedate CNN crew, has been bouncing around the set as if tweaked on crystal meth. Developing.
