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I shall post videos, graphs, news stories, and other material there. We shall use some of this material in class, and you may review the rest at your convenience. You will all receive invitations to post to the blog. (Please let me know if you do not get such an invitation.) I encourage you to use the blog in these ways:
To post questions or comments about the readings before we discuss them in class;
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To post relevant news items or videos.

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Sunday, April 3, 2011

Congress, the News Media, and the Entertainment Media


The cautionary tale of Kurt Bardella:
  • From Bardella himself: [R]eporters e-mail me saying, “Hey, I’m writing this story on this thing. Do you think you guys might want to investigate it? If so, if you get some documents, can you give them to me?” I’m, like, “You guys are going to write that we’re the ones wanting to do all the investigating, but you guys are literally the ones trying to egg us on to do that!”
  • "This is a place that, for better or worse, does recognize self-promotion," Bardella said. "It's about winning the daily news cycle and learning to navigate the new media world. Your priorities do become a little distorted, and you lose sight of who you are rather than what you're trying to portray."
  • “Kurt has had danger signs,” said a House Republican aide who refused to be named to avoid dragging other members into the storm. “If you had said, ‘X press secretary did this,’ Kurt would have been eight out of 10 people’s guess.”

The great political movie of them all -- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) -- had a screenplay by a Communist. No joke.



Advise and Consent (1962) had echoes of the Hiss-Chambers case.




The real-life hearing:





In The Candidate, Robert Redford depicted a senatorial candidate showing fatigue:






In 1998, so did Warren Beatty in Bulworth:



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