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Barack Obama

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smurfchops | 08:59 Fri 07th Nov 2008 | News
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Can we have some other news now please ? I keep switching American Politics off, on the radio (Nick Ferrari and James O Brien in particular) and TV News. Does anyone else feel the same ?
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You're kidding surely?

Barack has only been Prez-elect for a couple of days...we had three weeks of Brand/Sachs/Ross.

Well I suppose we can be thankful to the BBC this morning who decided not to report from the streets of Harlem, but instead dedicated at least 15 minutes of national news to the plight of the people who can no longer afford to keep horses.

Makes a change from discussions about how the Obamas are going to redecorate the upper bedrooms of the Whitehouse.
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Give me Brand/Sachs/Ross any time.
On my TV and Radio the lead item has been...

Labour victorious in Glenrothes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
The amount of air time and column inches given over to the US election is preposterous.

Very few people resident in this country have a say in the outcome, so the build up showing the two campaigns (which seem to begin almost as soon as the previous election is over) is completely unnecessary. Few people are really interested in what Obama�s father fed him for breakfast when he was five years old.

Whilst the result is of interest it is essentially a one liner. The Telegraph yesterday gave its first fourteen pages over to this result, and copious articles later in the paper provided �commentary�.

I have no doubt that the US media provide just a passing glance at UK general elections and do not saturate their newspapers and TV news bulletins night after night.

Of course, whilst the media is full of this hyperbolic trash, the real issues of interest to the people of this country are secreted away at the bottom of page 94.
if US news is as unimportant to the UK as everyone claims, why are we in Iraq? Why is there a credit crisis?

US leadership matters to us.
No I dont agree smurf. I think its important news, relevant to us and worthy of analysis.

And besides that I'm not particularly feeling inundated by it but then I dont watch much TV and dont buy a daily newspaper. I havent heard that much on the radio. Ill be spending Saturday and Sunday morning (after the Remembrance Parade of course) digesting whats happened this week with the benefit of a few days thinking and watching on the part of the journos.
Whilst the US elections are hugely important to this country, items such as this are ludicrous and over the top: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/us_e lections_2008/7714480.stm

S President-elect Barack Obama is still working on the make-up of his cabinet. A far more important decision - for his daughters at least - will be choosing the puppy that accompanies the new First Family to the White House.

Mr Obama made the promise of a new pet to Malia, 10 and Sasha, seven, in an election victory speech broadcast to millions around the world, suggesting it is one campaign pledge that will be kept.
Yes, the overall political spectrum of the USA is important to us in the UK � probably more important than the situation in the minor countries in the EU. However, the amount of coverage given to the US elections is out of all proportion to the effect the result has upon us.

I cannot recall similar levels of coverage being provided in the past and I cannot imagine the US making a similarly heavy play of a UK General Election. After all, one of the vice-presidential candidates (it is alleged) thought that Africa was a country rather than a continent, so what hope is there that Joe Public (US) may know who we are and where we fit into the scheme of things?
There is a very large element of supply and demand in any news agenda.

The Independent knows that if it decides the US election isn't important and drops it, but the Guardian reports on it, many Independent readers will defect to the Guardian, for example. Same with any big world event.

They're not spoon-feeding information to us for our own good. They do it to sell papers or get more viewers.
of course the USA wouldn't publicise UK elections as much. The USA is a big and important country. Britain is small and unimportant, which is why we try to make ourselves look big by getting involved in wars.

But Ms Palin's ignorance about Africa seems to be one of the major reasons she and her partner were not elected, so this doesn't necessarily indicate that Americans are idiots.

Vic, stories about puppies are seen as human interest stuff, and animal stories seem particularly popular in the UK, which is no doubt why the BBC reports them. They are not, as far as I can see, doing it at the expense of bigger stories.
I wouldn't believe everything one reads or sees, jno... the Sarah Palin stories are from trash talking staffers from McCain's failed campaign trying to cover their own butts.

But, ya'll think you're tired of it... you should live here! It's been the same garbage for two years straight. It continues now since Obama is the first person of color elected to this office and, besides, their really isn't much else going on that's newsworthy. The economic mess will have to play itself out and there are no big blurbs for the talking heads to interpolate to death...

For crying out loud, few people are even aware that for the first time in eons, the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series in our version of your game of Cricket... Now, that's news!
agreed, Clanad, but it seems to have a kernel of truth in it... or perhaps I have been watching too much Tina Fey?

I guess the 2112 election starts here - if memory serves, Obama's first big speech was quite soon after the 2004 election, and GW Bush's call for compassionate conservatism came hot on the heels of Clinton's second victory. So it seems potential candidates have to get their hats in the ring very quickly. This thought may have occurred to Palin too. I don't think she has much chance - she reminds me too much of Dan Quayle - but who knows?
For crying out loud, few people are even aware that for the first time in eons, the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series in our version of your game of Cricket... Now, that's news!

World series???

How many countries in this then?
Point of order, Clanad - baseball is actually your version of our game of rounders. ;-)

I agree (as I often do) with sp1814 - the American election is very important news that will affect millions of people, unlike Sachsgate.
I thought the World Series took its name from the newspaper that originally sponsored it. Or is that a myth?
Pedantic and off subject, but it's a long lived myth that our World Series was named for the New York World newspaper, which supposedly sponsored the earliest contests. In actuality, the name had a more benign and less domineering beginning.

"This usage can be traced through the annual baseball guides. Spalding's Base Ball Guide for 1887 reported the results of the 1886 postseason series between Chicago, champions of the National League, and St. Louis, champions of the American Association, under the heading "The World's Championship." As the editor noted, the two leagues "both entitle their championship contests each season as those for the base ball championship of the United States," so a more grandiose name was required to describe the postseason showdown between the two "champions of the United States."
"But the Spalding Guide -- which, after all, was published by one of the world's largest sporting goods companies, with a vested interest in bringing baseball to other lands -- had grander ambitions. By 1890, the Spalding Guide was explaining that "[t]he base ball championship of the United States necessarily includes that of the entire world, though the time will come when Australia will step in as a rival, and after that country will come Great Britain; but all that is for the future."
(Source: Fall 2001 issue of Outside the Lines)

This didn't happen, but the name "World's Championship Series" stuck...

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