Month: November 2010

How I Got Hooked On Watching Elections

This was as exciting as any Bourne movie!

I plan on watching the election results tonight. I’ll watch them closely. I’m hooked because of what happened the first time I watched.

I was born in 1950 and grew up a precocious kid. I remember discussing politics with my grandfather before I was 10&#185.

November 8th, 1960 I sat in front of the TV to watch Huntley and Brinkley and see who would win. No fancy graphics. No satellite live shots (no satellites). Lots of older, white, male, talking heads and numbers written with grease pencils. I was mesmerized.

Through the evening the numbers were tight. I went to bed not knowing who won.

By Wednesday morning nothing had changed! The election was still up in-the-air. It wasn’t until Illinois reported that the election was won.

Kennedy won Illinois by less than 9,000 votes out of 4.75 million cast, or a margin of two-tenths of one percent. However, Nixon carried 92 of the state’s 101 counties, and Kennedy’s victory in Illinois came from the city of Chicago, where Mayor Richard J. Daley held back much of Chicago’s vote until the late morning hours of November 9. The efforts of Daley and the powerful Chicago Democratic organization gave Kennedy an extraordinary Cook County victory margin of 450,000 votes—more than 10% of Chicago’s 1960 population of 3.55 million—thus barely overcoming the heavy Republican vote in the rest of Illinois. Earl Mazo, a reporter for the pro-Nixon New York Herald Tribune, investigated the voting in Chicago and claimed to have discovered sufficient evidence of vote fraud to prove that the state was stolen for Kennedy. – Wikipedia

This was as exciting as any Bourne movie!

I came back in 1964 thinking excitement was an integral part of elections. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Barry Goldwater took only six states. Johnson won in a romp. It was over early.

There’s something about the finality of elections that attract me still. There are few other things in life that have such well defined conclusions.

No matter what the result I’ll be watching the numbers tonight. There might not be as much excitement as 1960 but there will be a whole lot more data to sift through.

&#185 – One of the big issues of the 1960 election was the conflict between Mainland China and Taiwan over the islands Quemoy and Matsu and how the U.S. would respond. Please don’t ask how I remember… I just do. As far as I know this conflict has not been resolved fifty years later!

ABC And Andrew Breitbart — Let The Games Begin!

“This blindsided a good portion of the team here,” the source emails. “And not in a good way.”

(updated November 2 5:00 pm)

Back in July when the Shirley Sherrod video rush-to-judgment exploded I predicted we’d be seeing a lot less of Andrew Breitbart. It was Breitbart whose website brought the edited Sherrod tape to light. I was wrong!

Here’s what I wrote in July.

Undoubtedly this is the end of Andrew Breitbart as an on-camera interview and source. Thank God for small favors. He’ll still have influence behind the scenes, but that’s just not the same and he knows it.

Now ABC News has invited Breitbart to be part of their election coverage.

Surprised? Yeah, I was too.

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent said the emotion was even stronger at ABC News.

People in ABC’s newsroom were also caught completely off guard by the news, a newsroom source tells me.

“This blindsided a good portion of the team here,” the source emails. “And not in a good way.”

That was followed by an ABC press release clarifying not all was as it seemed. Breitbart had been invited, but not to appear on TV, just online. I’m not sure in this day-and-age that distinction means as much as it once did.

Mr. Breitbart’s role has always been as one of our guests at our digital town hall event:

Mr. Breitbart is not an ABC News analyst.

He is not an ABC News consultant.

He is not, in any way, affiliated with ABC News.

He is not being paid by ABC News.

Mr. Breitbart will not be a part of the ABC News broadcast coverage, anchored by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. For the broadcast coverage, David Muir and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg will contribute reaction and response gathered from the students and faculty of Arizona State University at an ABC News/Facebook town hall.

If you thought that would be the end of the story think again! Last night Breitbart published some emails from ABC which certainly gives the impression he would be on-the-air.

This program will broadcast on the ABC Television Network, abcnews.com, ABC News Now, and ABC News Radio.

Breitbart says his diminished role is courtesy of a “calculated “astroturf“ intimidation campaign by the well-funded and frightened-for-their-political-lives institutional left to quash dissenting voices.” Maybe so. There is no shortage of Breitbart haters on the left.

Though this story might not have ‘legs’ it will have an impact on coverage and commentators going forward. My July prediction might not have been wrong, it was just issued too soon.

(update) On Tuesday Breitbart was uninvited! Here’s the email from ABC.

Dear Mr. Breitbart,

We have spent the past several days trying to make clear to you your limited role as a participant in our digital town hall to be streamed on ABCNews.com and Facebook. The post on your blog last Friday created a widespread impression that you would be analyzing the election on ABC News. We made it as clear as possible as quickly as possible that you had been invited along with numerous others to participate in our digital town hall. Instead of clarifying your role, you posted a blog on Sunday evening in which you continued to claim a bigger role in our coverage. As we are still unable to agree on your role, we feel it best for you not to participate.

Sincerely,

Andrew Morse

Roxie: Halloween As A Shark

Part of the fun of having a small child is letting her dress up for Halloween. Stef doesn’t have a child in the conventional sense, but she does have Roxie and Roxie dressed for Halloween… as a shark!

Just One Trick-Or-Treater

“You’re our first,” Helaine said. “We’ve been hearing that a lot,” the princesses father replied. And that was it! No one else came.

Helaine goes to great lengths prepping for Halloween. We have no shortage of candy. If by chance a fully loaded fleet of buses stopped at our door we’d survive.

“It’s my favorite holiday,” she said tonight.

She likes giving. Halloween is a big giving holiday.

This year I had my camera at the ready. My goal was to ask first then photograph the trick-or-treaters and post the results here on my blog.

We went through 4:00, then 5:00, then 6:00 with no kids. Finally the bell rang. Neighbors from a block over were on our steps. Their daughter was dressed as a princess.

“You’re our first,” Helaine said.

“We’ve been hearing that a lot,” the princesses father replied.

And that was it! No one else came.

How sad.

The boys next door have grown too old. Other kids from the block have grown or moved or both. We live in a quiet area of no sidewalks on a street with no streetlights. We’re geographically undesirable!

I’m not sure how we’ll deal with Halloween next year. At our house it’s lost some of its magic.