Yes, it's tonight, screaming across almost all* the main channels: the January 6th Hearings! Some committee members have promised stunning new revelations. I predict a lot of Americans will tune in, at least for the first fifteen or thirty minutes. If they haven't flipped back the curtain on some major eye-openers by then, America will tune right back out, too, over to Cozi or Me-TV or some other nostalgia channel, or off to stream the latest-greatest bingeable series.
Will it change any minds? I'm doubtful. If the last six years have taught me anything, it's that people prefer to believe comforting bullshit over awkward reality, and will put ten times as much effort into confirming it as they will into figuring out ways to test it for accuracy. I don't know if anything will shatter that, especially if it can be fogged up under a cloud of partisan politics.
Me, I'll be watching Congresswoman Cheney. She's about as hardheaded as they make 'em, nearly as hard-hearted, and came into the 2020 election mess and aftermath as a mainstream, establishment Republican.† The Dems on the committee can be shrugged off as Party hacks; any evidence Cheney will stand behind will be incontrovertible.
I hold out no hope that even the most ironclad, gold-plated, sterling truths will convince many of the gen. pop. People have their minds made up. They have chosen their particular warm and snuggly nonsense, and neither Congressional hearings nor wild horses are likely to move them.
Still, it should make interesting watching.
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* All but one news network, who are eating their cake and getting free promotion across the Web and on other channels from it at the same time, by airily snubbing the hearings in favor of the usual programming on their main channel while going wall-to-wall with them on a lesser, specialized channel, just in case a Maltese Falcon, smoking gun or well-papered Pentagon pops up. I'm sure they'd like to have me mention their name, but I'm not playing along. If you get your TV from a cable or satellite provider, you can just click the remote to find out.
† Let me point out that if her father was "Darth Vader," who would that make her? Yep. Art, life; life, art. Bring your own crayons!
You have more patience that I do.
ReplyDeleteI can't stand the time wasted by any politician or group of politicians with grandstanding "look at me" blathering before they get to the meat of the matter at hand (if they ever do).
I read transcripts after the fact. Takes far less time (especially with speeches with built in applause lines, I assume not the case tonight) and strips a lot of extraneous emotional context away, and easier to pick out relevant information.
(It's not just politicians, I can't stay focused on Books on Tape, and when at a museum with one of those recorded audio "guides", I ask if they have a copy of the transcript so I can read and move through the place at my own, usually faster, pace).
I only have local channels anyway. Hopefully there will be a band opening on 6 or 10M tonight.
I am of two minds. I feel like as a marginally-responsible adult, I should watch. But I also feel like this whole couple years have just been a firehose of terrible news right to the face, and I have absolutely zero trust or even really liking for most of my fellow humans left, and I'm not sure it's good for me to see things that will probably confirm my priors ("most people are terrible and give in to their worst impulses")
ReplyDeletehonestly this is a time I wished I owned a camping trailer; I'd eff off to some remote park and just hang out there for a while.
RandyGC,
ReplyDeleteThen you entirely misunderstand what a “hearing” is.