The Nation's John Nichols

[fflo]

NBC BATTLES TO KEEP KUCINICH OUT OF THE DEBATE

The opening:

Some principles are worth fighting for: like the cherished right of television networks to decide who is and who is not a legitimate candidate for president.

Comments

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

You know, given that NBC let H. Ross Perot purchase half-hour blocks of their airtime during his own whacked-out bid for the highest office in the land... I think they've forever forfeited their claim to legitimacy as bouncers keeping the riffraff from the airwaves.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

what, you didn't like those pie charts? ;)

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

I actually loved the pie charts at the time. T-Bone and I must have been the only twelve- and ten-year-olds in the nation who watched his entire infomercial, because even then, we were thinking, "This guy is frickin' goofy! Who let him in here?" It was oddly mesmerizing.

And Stockdale was just the icing on the cake.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

mesmerizing indeed!

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

That seriously made me cackle. Thanks!

Re-reading my previous comment, I hope it doesn't sound like I was saying, "My brother and I were such prodigies that we were interested in presidential politics even as middle schoolers," or anything snooty like that. Perot's lunacy transcended generations, is what I was getting at. :)

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i got that, dude, don't worry. :)

i was a gaping gawker right into my twenties. still overcomes me sometimes, in a way that calls up, almost all the way to the surface, a kind of nostalgia of amusement.