So, I watched what the networks deemed an appropriate amount of time for viewing the Democrats’ convention: an hour. Actually I would have viewed it for two hours if they had deemed it worthy of that amount of time but they only gave me an hour so I took it and watched what NBC did with that hour and it wasn’t pretty.
First they spent a half hour of it on what the reporters thought of what happened before we tuned in which was how Kennedy unified the Democrats. That was a theme of the night: the unification of the party. That seemed to be the main concern of the reporters and anchor.
They did show some snippets of Kennedy but not his whole speech or the film that was made as a tribute to him and when they were interviewing Caroline Kennedy, you could see that the Michelle Obama video had started so they wrapped up the interview and went to commercial! I switched over to CBS and ABC to see if they were playing the video and they were.
I thought the video was well done and gave us a window into who Michelle Obama is and what kind of family she came from. a loving family with a hard working father and a stay at home mother with a loving brother. A father who fell ill early and whose loss is still felt by the family he left behind.
But I didn’t like her speech and was bored by it, though her delivery was good. I guess I expected more. I thought the part about loving her country was purely political, an attempt to answer her critics. I thought the reference to Hillary sounded forced and was obviously there to placate the Clinton supporters. But what bothered me the most was when she kept repeating “the world as it should be.” That concerned me. How should the world be and who is to decide? Her? Her husband? And how do they intend to “fight” for it? What was left unsaid was more telling than what she said. And I would hope that they might tell us what the “world as it should be” looks like so we have some idea what they expect to do when in office.
The part with the kids was cute but awkward and felt staged. They do make a beautiful family. If he wasn’t such a Marxist and not prepared to be commander in chief in these precarious times with Russia starting to roar, terrorists looking to destroy us and Iran looking to acquire nuclear weapons, it would be tempting to put them in the White House on looks alone 🙂
A transcript of her speech and the video can be found at Hot Air.
Update: Seems like the cable viewers didn’t have much more opportunity than us network viewers to listen to the speeches. Those viewing the network’s coverage of the convention didn’t even know that Obama’s half-sister gave a speech.
Another update: The Charlotte Michelle is the one that you have to read between the gaps.