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.”
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…