Episode 41: Politics

Ah, politics again. It's such a strange thing- I'm not a very political person, yet I am loving this 1996 political race coverage- but I can tell you exactly why I'm digging it so much: Michael Lewis. I know that I've written about how awesome this guy's writing is and how much he is just making for interesting stories....so what's he talking about this time?

More politics, of course. This time it's a funny story about having a video camera on the campaign trail and how different the response is from people around you, as opposed to just doing print journalism. Lewis' tale then fades into Ira discussing the difference in cable vs. network news campaigning with a professor from MIT.
------
I won't lie, folks, I listened to this episode over a week ago. Thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday, I've been in and out of the house, traveling around the southeast to visit family and waited too long to write this show up. I would go back and try to remember all that was on it, but even after reading the show notes on the website, I'm not completely recalling the episode. That says enough for me, atleast: the one story I've written about is pretty memorable. The other stuff? Take it or leave it.

Episode 34: Democratic Convention

I guess if you do a Republican convention show, you have to do a Democratic convention show, right? Fair and balanced, that is NPR!

The episode didn't have the Dan Savage spin that I loved so much from the Republican convention episode, but Michael Lewis comes back into the picture to share his thoughts from this convention and Danny Drennen, who is introduced as a writer of a "90210" blogger (but this was 1996, so blogger wasn't quite the term) talks about what he saw on the C-Span coverage of the convention.

These two stories make the show pretty good. It's not quite as up there as the Repbulic episode, but pretty good- and that's just the entertainment side I got out of it, not political.

Honest.

Episode 32: Republican Convention

Once again, I thought "UGH! Politics in 1996, no way this will be good!" and, once again, I was proved wrong.

Episode 32 includes a story by Dan Savage, about his infiltrating the Republican party and trying to overturn some of their rules and regulations on gays. The story of his going to the party events and trying to turn them on their head- it's just pretty great. Probably the most I've ever laughed during a political story that was put together over 10 years ago.

Michael Lewis also makes another appearance, talking about visiting Bob Dole's house (but Bob isn't there...from what I could tell..?) and finishing up his coverage on the Maury Taylor election trail (see here and here for his earlier appearances on TAL).  Once again, I really like this guy.

This is going for 2 really good shows in a row...and the next one looks pretty sweet. Woohoo!