ive heard a few tracks from the new yo la tengo. not bad. good enough for me to listen to a few more. for awhile there i was convinced yo la tengo was making music specificall y to be palyed in the car while taking your kids to school.

You don’t sound like someone who would equate intelligent with evil. Nor someone who resents education and believes it corrupts. Hence the line about ‘not finding a CSPAN devotee I didn’t like’.

I’m certainly going to make more time for CSPAN though. Although my American friends tell me the that the Houses of Parliament are much more amusing.

Prime Minister’s Questions though? Mostly just two packs of adolescents braying insults at one another, from what I’ve seen.

C-Span is quite often simply the turning on of a camera inside the House of Representatives or Senate floor. Often it consists of recording the presentations of conferences and information panels to government officials and panels. The mornings are given to call in shows where a host will take, in turn, questions and comments from lines devoted to red for conservatives, blue for liberals and some other such line for undecideds on a particular issue or question from which a guest has given a short talk right there in the studio with said host.

C-Span has hours and hours of panel discussions on the latest non-fiction books and it’s Book-TV channel is a wealth of information on US history and the state of literature in the US. It covers (mostly without commentary) all State funerals, most Presidential and Vice-Presidential press conferences, and also gives Americans a view (again without commentary, just cameras running) into the British House of Commons – Prime Minister’s Questions.

The whole idea of C-Span was to give people an unbiased view into the workings of their own government. Yes, unbiased, in the true sense of the word. That’s why there is as little commentary as possible in as much as possible, aside from the talk shows in the morning. The point is to put cameras into meetings and floor debates and briefings and just let them run. When commentary is allowed there is a true effort to give all sides a chance at equal time to have their say. I’ve never seen anything like this on television anywhere else. Let me know if you’ve got this where you are. It is all privately funded as far as I know.

/civicslesson

ben – hopefully you dont lump me into those types that usually use left-east coast-intellectuals in that way (i dont think you did) – i do borrow that phrase from those types but don’t think i have the venom…they just irk me at times because i am a product of public schools and state colleges (as you might be able to tell by my grammar and spelling) which tend to be seen as something less by those uppity east coast liberal types.
and the fact that you dislike this american life makes me think we have similar attitudes. – i don’t think npr should be banned or their stations burned…but i do have trouble with the tone and content at times.

In everything there is bias. Like Chris says, as soon as you choose how much time to spend on each story you are showing bias. I used the word unbiased foolishly because I actually think it is a misappropriated concept.

I will say that I find NPR news fair, I don’t watch the television in the morning so I don’t know anything about CSPAN. The use of phrases like “east coast liberal institutions” borrows language from a rather troubling group of people but as I’ve never met a CSPAN devotee I didn’t like I will assume it was not meant as it usually is by pundits, and simply agree with Chris that “This American Life” is the most pretentious, self-indulgent wank, even if I tend to like a lot of the other programing.