I’ve been watching the healthcare summit this morning, and observing how calmly Obama handles the Republicans. I sure couldn’t do it. I yell at them just listening to them, they are so inane. Same talking points over and over, and it is obvious they don’t really care about anyone. The Sunlight Foundation has been doing a wonderful live coverage with blogging and showing the campaign contributions of each speaker from opensecrets.org, and it’s very revealing. The most adamant speakers against healthcare reform have huge contributions from the healthcare industry. I suppose that’s to be expected, but seeing it live as they are talking is so refreshing. I wish our mainstream media could be this open and honest.
With this kind of coverage available on the Internet, is it any wonder mainstream media is fading? We want to be able to interact with our world, both to share what we know and to learn new things. We want to be able to directly tell our legislators what we think, and not being able to do that real time is so frustrating. Twitter users were twittering CNN to stop talking over the speakers. This is what we want — to get our messages out to the media, to the big corporations and to our government. It comes out from the right wing in stupid ways, but the anger they express is just as real on the left — we all want to be listened to and responded to. I think the healthcare summit, and the kind of coverage and interaction I’m seeing today (also chatting with people on twitter and facebook about this) is the real future of our public interactions. I hope that healthcare reform passes soon, and I know it is not enough — but what I’m seeing today is very encouraging — not just on the political side, but also on the side of those working in the Internet media to really reform how we interact with our government and corporate agencies.
One Response
I watched mot of the summit and watched on C-Span. No comment or commentaries.
The Republicans were ridiculous. It’s shocking that some commentators give them credit. As far as I could tell there was no credit due to any of them, except perhaps Thad Cochran of Oklahoma. He was a surprise.