If you enjoyed last week's third hour discussion on the relative merits of NPR and commerical talk radio, you can find links to much more on the subject from this roundup at the evangelical outpost.
Posted by The Elder at November 30, 2004 06:02 PM**** I WASN'T ABLE TO POST THIS COMMENT ON MITCH'S BLOG... AND CAN'T FIND MITCH'S EMAIL... PLEASE MOVE THIS SOMEPLACE APPROPRIATE! ***
Hey Mitch, thanks for the plug... sorry I'm just seeing this now. Now grab some popcorn and get ready for my long-winded response. :-)
1) I really wish I'd done a better job of getting word to you guys about the premiere. You have to understand, I literally dropped off the "finished" product 2 hours before the screening and nearly lost my job trying to get it done. (I have since resigned.) I was all over the media that week, including heavy promo on the local FOX news that friday morning. Obviously it was all over my blog and Fimoculous but I don't expect anyone to read those. Lastly I sent an email to everyone in my address book. I don't think we've ever exchanged email... but I did send the announcement to Hinderaker (you know, he only gets a million emails) and I *think* St. Paul at Fraters, at least I hope I did. Anyway, it wasn't intentional and I really was hoping for a right-wing contingent. It was an incredible night for me, and an almost sellout crowd.
2) Yep, don't judge the film my Mark Desrosiers (CHEEK) review. I don't agree with some of his assessments. The destructive power of bloggers is implied in the downfall of both Lott and Rather. It's not related to ideology. The Dean campaign represented the power of bloggers to create, bring someone up rather than tear them down.
3) I think I treat conservative bloggers very fairly. I let Hinderaker go on quite awhile, no tricky editing here. Eventually I break up his anti-liberal media rant with some "Blogumentary factoid" graphics. For example, after he goes off on Krugman and the NY Times, I bring up a little lounge music and the graphic says, "Republicans are notoriously skeptical of the New York Times. Only 17% believe what they read. (Democrats, 31%.)" Or something like that. Basically, it's a humorous way to break up the interview and it's a way of saying "Chuck doesn't want you to just swallow everything this person is saying."
I could have made them look really bad, for example, with this footage of Hinderocket going off on the left:
http://blogumentary.org/video/powerline_left.mov
But I didn't. When I interviewed them, Scott Johnson said, "You're not going to Michael Moore us, are you Chuck?" Because this is an open source documentary, I'm going to upload much of my raw footage to archive.org (Which I may finally have time to do once my employment is up). This effectively makes it *impossible* to "Michael Moore" anyone, because you can go watch the raw footage if you think I'm making a tricky edit.
Finally, I make conservative bloggers (led by Scott Johnson) out to be downright heroes in the Dan Rather affair. Yes yes yes -- all the business about blogs and democracy, and fact-checking the MSM's ass -- don't you think I get that? Dude, the film is frigging *about* that. Trust me. It's in there.
4) My current cut (65 minutes) doesn't have anything about Swift Boat Vets. Sorry. That's one thing I've been intending to put in there, both how right-wing bloggers made it an issue and how I jumped into the fray on my own blog. At one point I ranked something like #3 on Google for "Swift Boat Vets" and was really in the thick of it. Then I was going to do a dramatic recreation of me staying up all night posting about it, and my girlfriend coming down and yelling at me to go to bed. And me realizing I didn't have the stamina to singlehandedly post about politics all the time, which led to the creation of New Patriot.
5) Probably the only other chance to see Blogumentary in Minnesota is coming up December 11 at the NorShor Theater in Duluth. But better yet -- why not contribute $25 or more to the Blogumentary Debt Relief Fund?
http://www.dropcash.com/campaign/blogumentary/blogumentary_debt_relief/
I'll send you a rare DIY homemade DVD in time for Christmas. Give it to someone you love.
Posted by: Chuck Olsen at December 1, 2004 04:15 PM