Don't interrupt the Sorrow

Have you followed any of the primary campaigns seeking the major party Presidential nominations? How have you been gotten your information? Mostly print, perhaps online, or via commercial over-the-air news broadcasters or one of those 24/7 cable news mills?

I have a confession-not good for the soul, perhaps but for my sanity. I catch up at night and on weekends with C-SPAN; where I live both 1 and 2 (ooh....living the dream, I know). Admittedly, there's a high school a-v club quality about the sound and picture I'm getting but I can hear and see the people seeking the highest office in the land, interviewing for the job that, in essence, is President of the World. I don't have to listen to someone else set the scene for me, or describe the room and the presence or absence of 'electricity' when the candidate enters it, or even (my favorite part) at the conclusion of the speech/press conference/media opportunity, come back on to tell me what the candidate just said.

I am stupid-but I'm not that stupid. If you have something new to add, TV Person (new being the root word of 'news', which purports to be your profession), then, by all means tell me. If not, shut up. When The Candidate states he/she drinks his/her bath water or believes all babies should be galvanized at birth, I don't need someone to tell me what the The Candidate meant. I was listening and watching.
Am I often vexed, discomfited, confused, frightened, bemused and/or angered by some of the things that get said? Yeah, and I think that's what's supposed to happen instead of just sitting there like roadkill with hair on the Human Highway, as the lights from the Electric Fire in the corner of the living room cast crazy shadows on the wall.

C-SPAN delivers undiluted, and often stultifyingly boring, communication directly from the source. So much for 'and the truth shall set you free', eh? Minute for minute, is there anything less interesting than watching Congressional representatives speak on a point of order concerning an amendment to a farm price supports bill, at ten minutes before midnight on a Tuesday (and probably to an empty chamber but the camera is never allowed to show that, anymore)? I doubt it. But when you buy a ticket, you get the whole ride.
Governance is just as much a process as a product. Appropriations legislation, when accomplished, runs into the thousands of printed pages--and that's not an accident. Everything in there was placed there by one of the folks I'm watching on C-SPAN.

CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, HBO and CineMax--any of them may have all the sizzle, but C-SPAN is the meat and potatoes. So cut the cake and grab a plate and hope it goes around.
-bill kenny