The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Re: The Plight of PJTV

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I agree with basically everything J.P. Freire says about PajamasTV, but I want to deride the venture by praising other, better Rightosphere web video ventures. For example, reason.tv* does some of the stuff that PJTV does—talk shows, quick takes from employees—but supplements it with actual reporting from events being held by non-libertarians. Eyeblast.tv (terrible name, good people) and CNSNews.com ignore the opinion angle and gives young reporters cameras with which they... interview non-conservatives.

If I click over to reason.tv right now I can watch acidic interviews with dazzled Obama supporters, recorded on the streets of Washington. If I click over to Eyeblast.tv I can watch a reporter ask George Lucas about the stimulus. If I click over to PJTV I can either watch video interviews with conservatives who are already on TV or who want to read their blog posts into a video camera. Who wants to watch that?

It's really unforgiveable that an organization with the start-up capital of PJTV isn't using it to send its cameras out of the studio. Why not hound Rep. John Murtha about his lobbying scandal? Why not show the "monkeygate" New York Post cartoon to actual humans and see if they find it offensive? Even an intra-movement story like the small but rowdy anti-stimulus protests that have followed President Obama would be more interesting than some ill-read rambling by Joe the Plumber.

*Disclosure: I'm a contributing editor of reason magazine.

View all comments (2) | Leave a comment

Alan Brooks| 2.21.09 @ 8:12PM

i just love them modern corn-venyunces

Jeremiah| 2.22.09 @ 3:32PM

The congitive dissonance around here is becoming downright vertigo-inducing. On one thread I read a commentator celebrating the stubborn continuing survival of newspapers (see Collins), and here I experience the unthinkable: a conservative criticizing Joe the Plummer, a man we'd been led to believe was a sort of citizen-saint among you people (see the "ill-read rambling by Joe the Plumber" line above).

Either conservatives have the capacity for critical thought (which you would totally have to be lacking if you actually found Joe the Plummer or his female incarnation, Sarah Palin, interesting) OR they are deliberately trying to deceive poor wayfaring liberals like myself. I'd like some answers, frankly.

As for "alternative" media, right wing or left, I say the more the better.