September 6th, 2008
Factoid of the day: Maybe Americans aren’t so cynical after all
A week after Barack Obama attracted a stunning number of TV viewers to his convention acceptance speech, John McCain did just as well.
When all the figures are added up, 42.4 million people watched Obama — and 42.4 million watched McCain.
As the Associated Press notes: “Three times in two weeks, political speeches [Sarah Palin's barnburner was the third. -- Ed.] were watched by more people than the ‘American Idol’ finale, the Academy Awards and the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics this year.”
AlliG on September 6, 2008
Wow–not to mention the people who watched it online later on, right? This bodes well for an engaged election, I hope.
Faith on September 9, 2008
Is it truly a lack of cynicism that got all those people watching the speeches? Or were they hoping for a NASCAR moment, when somebody on the track has a particularly spectactular spinout and crash? I’m hoping it’s the former — but I wouldn’t bet against the latter. I still hear and read an awful lot of people’s comments having to do with one candidate or the other, people railing on for or against a given candidate by repeating information that has been PROVEN — REPEATEDLY — to be false. If people can’t even get the facts straight when the facts have been reported over and over, I don’t trust that they’ll be able to delve down into the deeper issues that they should be looking at instead of stupid things like flag pins.
I’m sorry, I think the whole political process in this country is making me more of a cynic than I used to be. There’s a reason why I’m registered independent…