April 8, 2002

12:37 PM

Major muckraking - Greg Palast on C-Span. God I love C-Span, sitting here in the UK with a broadband connection, going thru the archive. You'd never see an anti-corporate author given a polite 50 minutes to explain his book in Britain. I'm only wondering when the Homeland Security hawks will get round to rapping the knuckles of Mr. Lamb's outstanding operation.
posted by theplayethic (6 comments total)

You have little to fear. Washington mainlines C-SPAN (and C-SPAN 2, and C-SPAN 3, and C-SPAN Radio) like a heroin addict. They'd never dare screw with it.
posted by aaron at 12:48 PM on April 8, 2002

theplayethic, we're sorry, we already locked up all the people responsible for doing the locking up. Just as soon as we figure out who shouldn't be locked up, we'll let them out so they can resume all-important locking-up operations.

It's not like we ain't civilized.
posted by dhartung at 1:23 PM on April 8, 2002

he was also on thisishell last saturday (realaudio) and has a website promoting his new book, "the best democracy money can buy" :)

c-span rules!
posted by kliuless at 1:45 PM on April 8, 2002

I've never seen (or heard of) C-Span but it sounds great. Perhaps it could be incorporated into the Parliament Channel, which only really has something to do during Prime Ministers Question Time.
posted by Summer at 1:54 PM on April 8, 2002

Well, Palast hasn't done badly out of the BBC, with his 20-minute Newsnight reports on the Florida election scandal and the Carlyle Group. It's only the skewed libel laws over here that keep him out of the Obs. And I suspect he'll end up on Radio 4 or 5 for an hour once he's finished touring the US, as long as the lawyers don't get scared.
posted by riviera at 2:02 PM on April 8, 2002

The main C-SPAN page. Provides live video and audio 24/7.

C-SPAN does air Prime Minister's Questions, but they do it Sunday night at 9 pm. It used to be wildly popular here, but has become less so as the quality of the participants has fallen. (Regardless of your politics, you have to agree that watching Margaret Thatcher take on Neil Kinnock, with Bernard Weatherill presiding, was infinitely more fun than watching Tony Blair and Iain Duncan Smith bitch at each other, watched over by whoever that weird new Speaker is that doesn't seem to have any control over the chamber whatsoever.)

(And of course, way back when it you always hoped and hoped that David Amess would get to ask a question, just so that the entire chamber would erupt in laughter and maniacal "Hear hears!" every time he said the word "Basildon." It's just not the same any more. Making it one 30-minute weekly session instead of two 15-minute sessions didn't help either.)
posted by aaron at 2:08 PM on April 8, 2002