Convention Blog Lab Up and Running

Hugh Hewitt talked to some politicos last evening in NYC and reports on some of their thoughts. (Modest observation number 4.) Most interesting to me were their comments (paraphrased by Hewitt) on the new media:

John Podhoretz and David Frum: "New media has won. Old media knows it. And old media are very unhappy."

From Brent Bozell: "Don't underestimate the power of a handful of bloggers, recalling that it was three East Gedrman students who in essence organized the 1989 revolution via a mimeo machine and a battered car."

From Hewitt himself: "The reason the new media is so powerful is that people with opinions no longer need to persuade people to be allowed to persuade people. The gatekeepers are finished."

That last point is crucial and is of course why I'm writing this and why you're reading it. That's not to say that gatekeepers aren't important, per se, but that the gatekeepers of the elite media abused their powers to advance their own agendas rather than engage in consistently rigorous journalism. Like Kerry's implosion over Vietnam, they have only themselves to blame.

At Captain's Quarters, Captain Ed was up early (or late) to record his impressions of the convention's first night. He gives bloggers in attendance a good grade for their perseverance amidst chaos and tight security and wants to know your opinion on how you think bloggers are doing -- so stop by and share your thoughts. I was most taken, however, by his extensive comments on Giuliani's speech. He nails the dangers of appeasement, something I've written about often.

"It's been asked by myself and others what would have happened to Churchill had his advice on Hitler been heeded, even as late as Munich in October 1938? Europe would have gone to war, certainly precipitively in the minds of many. Churchill would have suffered tremendous political damage for his actions. Absent the camps, the Aushcwitzes, the Polands and the Ukraines that followed, the world would have concluded that Churchill was a war monger who loved nothing but battle and the shedding of blood -- a criticism he suffers to this day among a few anyway. And he would have saved tens of millions of people from the death and destruction of Nazi Germany that ensued."

Meanwhile, Power Line has extensive and insightful commentary from the Gardens. For example:

"By far the loudest response McCain got--probably the strongest response anyone got--was when he denounced Michael Moore as 'a disingenuous filmmaker who would have us believe that Saddam’s Iraq was an oasis of peace, when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty...' I think the Republicans should do more of this. The problem with Moore isn't that he is fat, crude or unpatriotic, although all of those things are true. His main fault is that he is a liar. He is also the intellectual leader of today's Democratic Party. The Republicans need to do more to hang him around the Democrats' neck, while empasizing his untruthfulness."

And he had this to say about Giuliani, who took it upon himself to make up for big media's silence on 9/11: "Giuliani spent the first part of his speech recalling the events of September 11 and their immediate aftermath. This was important and necessary because of the media embargo on images of the terrorist attacks. Giuliani described watching people jump to their deaths from the upper stories of the World Trade Center and the wall of smoke and dust that rolled down the street when the first tower collapsed. His own leadership, and even heroism, on that day are well known, so the Democrats can't challenge his right to tell those stories. But it is shameful that the media, and in particular the television networks, have adopted a policy of not broadcasting images of September 11, for what appear to be transparently political reasons. So it falls to the Republicans to remind voters what that day was like."

More blog coverage of the convention can be found by following the links on this page.