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July 29, 2004Broadcast PoliticsAl Sharpton's convention speech was great oratory... Mr. President, the reason we are fighting so hard, the reason we took Florida so seriously, is our right to vote wasn't gained because of our age," Sharpton said. "Our vote was soaked in the blood of martyrs, soaked in the blood of (civil rights activists) Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, soaked in the blood of four little girls in Birmingham. This vote is sacred to us. This vote can't be bargained away. This vote can't be given away.Aldon and I were exchanging instant messages, and he was telling me that Sharpton wasn't giving the prepared speech that was distributed in advance to journalists and bloggers on-site. Following the speech, the cable news anchors were saying the same thing... he had eight minutes, but his speech ran twenty, and was not the approved speech. The party's controlling and orchestrating the convention, editing and sanitizing the texts of all the speeches. The commentators noted that Jesse Jackson's speech was nothing like his usual fiery rant – I assume now that this is the result of the party's edit. I noticed that Jackson was looking grim as Sharpton spoke, probably thinking dang, I should've given the speech I came to give. Responding to a comment on my earlier post about vision, or lack thereof, at the convention, it occurred to me that the Dems may want to reserve articulation of vision for Edwards and Kerry. Edwards did make a good speech that expressed a vision, and I suspect we'll get another, congruent expression of a vision for America from Kerry tonight. Meanwhile restrictive editing of all other speeches is effectively controlling the message and the perception of who owns the message. This is tactically effective if your strategy is all about broadcast. WE shouldn't be surprised. Including 35 bloggers with 15,000 credentialed journalists isn't that much of a nod to post-broadcast politics. We still have a long way to go before we get there. And that's okay with me, by the way. The kind of political evolution we're looking for is not going to happen overnight, and we shouldn't be discouraged if we're not getting a more democratic Democratic Party this season. Four years from now, we'll see even more citizen engagement and participation in the process. However this year's process is still pretty much top-down. Posted by Jon Lebkowsky at July 29, 2004 8:49 AM | TrackBackComments
I thought Al Sharpton gave one of the better speeches of the convention. This was the kind of unscripted passion that reminded folks like me why we got so excited about Howard Dean. The Howard Dean of the DNC convention was not the Howard Dean that we all remember, but I appreciate his commitment to be a team player. Good ol' Al. I love that guy! I'm so glad someone decided to throw out the approved script! Posted by: Eric Predoehl at July 29, 2004 1:45 PMPost a comment
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