More Dirty Tricks

I watched the Obama/Jindal presentations last night and I wish I hadn't. These things should never be broadcast, as they are a cheat and a fraud. Better to wait and read the analysis of thoughtful observers. (April did a pretty good job, herself!) Obama spouted all sorts of figures, none of which are verifiable. The public largely does not realize that... the analyzers will.

Obama was paraded in a magnificent setting - a thousand cheering people, superb communications technology. His video was flawless. His audio was perfect. When he made a point favorable to his Dem buddies, the audio was jacked and you heard all the screaming Dems. The video showed a pooly lit shot of the Republicans, from behind, so it was hard to tell that they were all silently in their seats, protesting. All you heard were the cheers.

As Obama entered and later left the hall, struggling through a crowd of ass-kissing congressmen, you could hear what he was saying, even though no mikes were in sight.

Then came Governor Jindal. That remote broadcast must surely have been set up by David Axelrod. Instead of having him at his desk, appearing as what he is, the Chief Executive of a major state, they set up the mikes in a hallway. They had him come walking down the hall, like he was some kind of a delivery guy who had come in the back door. The video was horrible. The sound was unbelievable. Sixty years ago, I daily carried a homemade amplifier down the street in a small New Mexico town, plugged in at the doorway of a drug store, and did a stand up man-on-the-street broadcast with better audio than they gave Governor Jindal.

The volume was so low he sounded weak and ineffective. As auto-gain devices in the broadcast networks tried to compensate, they brought up a hum, induced, no doubt, by wiring in the old Governor's Mansion. Something kept chopping up the audio. It sounded to me like a limiter amplifier, trying to bring up the gain, and repeatedly overdriving itself and chopping the sound in mid-word.

It was a brilliantly successful effort to totally discredit Governor Jindal's message. As a former broadcaster, it made me furious.

Then, Fox News Channel analyzed, and I must say that I have about had it with Fox. (I am just surprised they did not have that phony Ph.D. Marc Lamont Hill there to tell us all about it!) Brit Hume acknowledged the unfairness of the two settings. No one mentioned the terrible technical quality. That pin-head Juan Williams totally bought the effects of the effort to diminish Governor Jindal and proceeded to trash him. Bret Baier conducted the whole thing about like the students trying their first shot at broadcasting on our local university broadcast station.

Never mind what was said... the unfairness of the presentation made me so mad I couldn't sleep.