Hypocritical, I say, because I'm sitting here blissfully unaware of what's going on in real-time in Manhattan tonight - who's up to speak at the moment, what scurrilous lies and inconceivable claims about the war, the economy, and that repulsive man are being shoveled out there tonight like so much manure (and being the home of the Rangers, you know MSG has seen more than its share of shit.)
It doesn't even mean enough to me that I'd leave the TV running in the other room. This is where I'm at right now - perhaps unfortunately; having to listen to Dick Cheney go prattling on for a half hour, unfiltered, would induce apoplexy. It's a show, nothing more (so was the DNC, and I watched that sparingly). A show I'm not watching.

So perhaps condemning the networks for not showing more than a few hours of the RNC in prime time isn't wholly fair. Pertinent to the article below, what's worth thinking about is the sense that the Arab world feels it has more at stake in this campaign than many Americans do. Is that a fair assessment? To some degree, I'd wager: after all, Americans merely get ripped off by BushCo, while Middle Easterners - be they Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians, etc. live under the spectre of current or future invasions. To say that the US is a Middle Eastern power is a bit facile now, isn't it? Arab audiences may have some distorted views of the US and its political processes (sometimes distorted, sometimes maybe truer to reality than what we see from within) - and god only knows what they're going to be thinking after watching this week's charade - but compare that to the apathy and disengagement from the whole sphere of real issues (in favor of comparatively irrelevant single-issues), which is evident among a lot of people you and I know.