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TPMtv: Good Luck, Waxman

Comments

  • johnny wrote on August 22, 5:11 pm

    "Why are you asking me these questions?" From a White House press secretary at a press briefing??! Hilarious.

  • rhfactor from DailyKos wrote on August 23, 3:32 am

    Jesus H. Christ. First off, Josh, this is a great example of how TPM, under your direction, can make the entire "landscape" of what's been going on with these Oversight investigations accessible to mainstream America. This is exactly the level of detail -- and no more than this -- that has been needed. Blog postings from progressive realm are almost always directed at other progressives, who enjoy processing all the details down to the last nth degree... Second, watching CSPAN coverage of these hearings, whether live or playbacks, takes way more time than most citizens ever have time for -- and i would also say simply do not rank as "entertaining" enough for a good chunk of mainstream America to ever bother in the first place. Third, even if one DID watch clips of playbacks, sequentially, each day they occur, it is next to impossible for people to be able to hold in their memories exactly what was said by Person A last week, and how that compares to what Person B is saying this week.

    Now, let me be the first to note: the conglomerate news media do not do the kind of analytical work you do at TPM - and thus THEY aren't providing Americans with this kind of distillation, with a focus on who said what, and how similar it sounds, and what is this pattern of speech.

    I really commend you for embracing the TV/video medium and --- finally --- we now have an arm of progressive media who understands the criticality of compression -- and juxtaposition. This was expertly edited -- in the way a 60 Minutes expose might handle this kind of material. And any editor, whether for print or film/video, knows that the amount of work it takes to compress effectively is maybe 100-to-1, but regardless a huge investment of time.

    My reason for detailing this comment is to say:

    IT PAYS OFF. And thank you for recognizing that. I really hope to see much much more of this kind of expert use of media to get the story down to bitesize chunks that are digestable for mainstream America.

    As TPM media expands, and the Veracifier network increases its distrubution, and web-published media appears on "TV" via methods like Apple TV subscriptions, we will finally, halleliujah -- have the kind of news media this country has needed for a very long time.

    Do you -- Josh -- do you -- ever review the feedback you are getting here - or on YouTube? I hope so, because it's important that you know exactly how much we appreciate everything you are doing and accomplishing.

    Running a startup news org, and performing in-front-of-camera news analysis is a huge task for any one person. And you have consistently proven, in the just the last few months timeframe that you've begun webcasting these video spots, that you are fully meant for this task and role.
    I can't underscore it enough. Bravo. And keep it coming.

    rhfactor from DailyKos

  • marty klein wrote on August 27, 7:38 pm

    x

About This Video

Good Luck, Waxman

On Tuesday House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) sent out a request for information to 19 different government agencies, all of which apparently took part in an expansive scheme by Karl Rove to use agency officials and resources to help Republican politicians win elections, a possible violation of the Federal Hatch Act. In today's episode we take a look back at some of the past testimony by government officials about these agency briefings to try to figure out why the scheme may have yielded poor results in the 2006 elections, and just how much work Henry Waxman has ahead of him.

Tags : Dana Perino, Karl Rove, GSA, White House political office, Scott Jennings, Sara Taylor, Lurita Doan, asset deployment teams, political briefings, Hatch Act