British Presidential election Coverage

[Princess of Hearts]

I wrote this on another - non gender forum but as there are no British posters there it didn't get the verification or start the discussion that I was hoping for.   Here's what I wrote:

" Hi [username deleted by poster]

My post above was a bit mean spirited.  We don't mind some information about your Presidential election.  The emphasis however is one the word some.   Unfortunately with rolling 24/7 news there is a constant demand for news no matter the time of day.  This means that stories are often inflated way past their merit and gossip, speculation, and gossip about speculation is rife on all news channels and news programmes.  I suppose the news people have to justify their six-figure-salaries somehow.

What this leads to is extraordinary coverage in the British media of all the Primaries which as you know go on for months.  Each and every news programme gives far too much and far too in depth coverage of what you must remember is a foreign matter to British people. 

During the last month of the Presidential election campaign all news programmes devote between 30 -50% of their airtime to coverage of the election.  These news readers and reporters seem to be wildly interested and almost feverishly excited in everything that is going on in the campaign.  No incident is too small for them to cover.  This media excitement would be all well and good if the majority of people here in GB were interested in the election but very few here in my experience can tell you anything about the campaign so there is little interest among the general population.   This lack of interest appears to baffle those in the news media, as they report faithfully after every Presidential election that the ratings for the news and news programmes nose-dive during the campaign.
Their attitude seems to be: 'we're going to give you this stuff wall-to wall and with acres of coverage whether you like it or not.  It's good for you like castor oil so b****y [swear word edited by poster]well get used to it!'

I suspect that American coverage of the recent royal wedding while no doubt quite extensive and tooth-rottingly saccharine was no where near the level of coverage Presidential elections receive over here.

The BBC doesn't just send correspondents and reporters to Washington or on the candidates election planes.  Reporters get sent to the Deep south, the Mid-West and to states where nothing has occurred since either the Civil War or Independence.  [name of member deleted by poster]if you live in a so-called 'swing' state you might just be interviewed by someone from the BBC! "

[tekla]

YOU'RE tired of it?  God, imagine how we feel.  This election has been going on since the morning after the last election when some people woke up and found that the White House had a black man in it who wasn't a servant.  (Not to blame them, Hillary started running the day after the Bush re-election.)

I suspect that American coverage of the recent royal wedding while no doubt quite extensive and tooth-rottingly saccharine was no where near the level of coverage Presidential elections receive over here.
Apples and oranges.  Quite extensive is on the short side - it was wall to wall on many of the channels.  Talk about finding out far more than you ever want to know about people...  However which honey-pot the Royal Tallywacker gets stuffed into is probably less important in the whole scheme of things than the notion that 3 of 4 of the 'Pubs running to be Commander in Chief of the American military are calling for a war against Iran.  Who's chewing on His Majesty's Liebewürstchen impacts far fewer people than say - shutting down the Straight of Hormuz for a couple of months - or years - would.  Or turning Tehran into a glass parking lot.

And our elections are pretty much the entertainment branch of American Industry.  Are you not entertained? 

Really, what could possibly be funnier than people running for office (pick one, though all are true):
a) a former congressman, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and big time lobbyist running as 'an outsider'
b) a person who thinks the government has the right to tell women what kind - if any - sort of birth control they use running as 'small government' candidate
c) A guy with TWO graduate degrees from Harvard calling the guy with one graduate degree from Harvard 'an elitist.'^*
d) Obama running as a liberal democrat when in fact he's a moderate Republican
e) a guy married 3 times running on a 'family values' ticket

Come on, who else in the world has such a circus of dysfunction enshrined as a way to pick their leaders?


* - actually all 4 of the Republican candidates have advanced degrees - one an MD, one a PhD, and two have both MBAs and JDs - and ALL from private universities - so much for the 'man of the people' thing

[Princess of Hearts]

They say that politics is show business for ugly people.    I have no doubt that the whole Presidential election business can be very entertaining IFyou are thoroughly familiar with the candidates and their 'backstory', and you are also thoroughly familiar with politics at a local, state and national level, with a good firm grasp of the history of the Republican and Democrat parties.   If a person can say 'you know this reminds me of the Wilson administration's muddled foreign policy.'  Or ' This administration is even more bungling than Harding's administration.'  Such people always enjoy elections
Needless to say the average Briton knows none of this, so a great deal of the piquancy of the election is lost on British viewers.   The last General election here was bone achingly dull with the candidates looking as interchangeable as shop mannequins with about the same level of personality.  In Britain politicians seem to compete with each other at election time to see who can be as bland and middle-of-the-road as possible.   With  the collapse of the Soviet Union a lot of the heat and passion vanished overnight.  The conservatives used to say 'if Labour get in the Red Army will be in London by next month',   I am sure that Labour had something equally as potent to whip the Conservatives with. 
Today's leading politicians seem like second-rate television game show presenters or telly evangelists.*

* without the mania and hysteria and the asking for money, as this would be totally un-British.

[tekla]

Needless to say the average Briton knows none of this, so a great deal of the piquancy of the election is lost on British viewers.

Same thing with the Royal Wedding.  Hell I had to explain to the people my GF had over at her wedding party why the Queen was not singing God Save the Queen with everyone else. 

But I would think that opposites work in this case, so the more you know about quaint British Royal customs the better it was.  My buddy and myself, (the two guys with 7 women) tried to keep all the majesty and splendor in the Royal Wedding by doing a tag-team color commentary in my best (and it's pretty damn good if I say so myself) Elmer Fudd voice (Hewe we awe at the woyaw wedding) while Josh did his as Foghorn Leghorn(I say, I say there boy, which one of those guys is the queen?  They awe bwitish, so aww the guys awe qweens.) .  Until the girls kicked us out.  Don't know why.

But the more you know about American politics, the more this stuff should scare the hell out of you.