C-SPAN: A Quarter Century of Protoblogging--Marathon Style!
Ah, C-SPAN! The closest thing to blogging that you can achieve, using nothing more than basic cable, a telephone, and a fistful of questions about Castro's whereabouts on November 22, 1963! Tomorrow, the cable network with the high water pants and the pocket protector celebrates 25 years of viewer call-in segments, with a 25-hour marathon of viewer call-ins. They will also interview, every hour, winners of the C-SPAN viewer's call-in essay contest. Given that all Washington usually offers on Friday nights are third or fourth viewings of "March of the Penguins" at the Uptown, we predict that marathon-viewing parties will break-out citywide. Souter will have Harriet Miers over on a mom-supervised stopover--though curfew is of course at 11. David Gregory and Mike Isikoff will prank call Brian Lamb with "Seymour Butts" jokes from the den at Maureen Dowd's pyjama party. It's gonna be wild! Especially when you get a load of the schedule, which marches through the last 25 years of American political history hour by hour, with a year-appropriate personage fielding calls in the studio. Kicking it off is a way-meta throwdown between Phil Donahue and Pat Buchanan on the question "Have call-ins changed the political discussion?" Punches will be thrown, we guarantee it. Also, look for the Saturday 5-6 am segment, when we hit 1989, and Christopher Hitchens discusses the role of the US in the world. Cause, you know, we've been convinced for some time that Hitch reaches his peak epiphanies about US power just before sunup Saturday--and we're dead sure that 1989 was the last time he went to bed before 5 am.-- HOLLY MARTINS