Originally published at: Jason Alexander on why we must watch the J6 hearings | Boing Boing
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My only hesitation is that live hearings tend to be very slow and full of irrelevant digressions
Maybe this will be different, or maybe I can do something else at the same time
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Iran Contra was a really slow burn, but even as a young teen, it seemed worth tuning in for. J6 hearings will be worth tuning in for, to be sure.
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Hope they’re running these things on Fox, along with a note that Fox is afraid to let their devotees see the hearings.
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There’s nothing funny about an attempted putsch in a liberal democracy. As many of us as possible need to bear witness. The fascists will be out in full force denying that right-wingers perpetrated anything on 6 January 2020, let alone something that merits a hearing.
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They need to get the people who post viral reaction videos of the Amber/Depp trial. Those were EVERYWHERE.
As important as the trial is, these things simply do not have the reach they once did. People’s attention spans are super short and most everyone who really NEEDS to see this stuff is tuned into an echo chamber. I put the hearings in a pinned tab though. It might be small, but I’m doing my part.
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I think the Jan 6th committee fully realizes that the hearings are the last opportunity to move public opinion before the November elections. Today I saw that a television producer is involved. Everything we’ve heard about the planning for the hearings is that testimony and evidence will be narrowed to specific issues. It’s sounds like they are trying desperately to NOT make the hearings look like traditional Washington “slow” and “irrelevant digressions.”
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Please, media, don’t push the idea that this business is OVER when the TV broadcast ends. The vast majority of people AND POLITICIANS involved in this clusterfuck are still out there, untouched, and have barely even been identified. Locking up 5 guys from out of state and embarrassing one or two minor political functionaries on TV does not resolve the problem. It just gets them book deals. (e.g.: Iran/Contra)
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I dream of the day where the widget that embeds youtube videos from posts into the BBS side comes to fruition.
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Impeachment II was incredibly well produced to the degree that it looked nothing like the usual feckless Democrat finger-wagging. I think they learned a lot of lessons there and, frankly are scared shitless about what nearly happened. As @megalodon points out, each segment will be focused on a specific topic (can’t find the article I read detailing the topics, but will post if I do). The fact that they booked prime time slots indicates that they have compelling evidence to present. They could just hand things over to the DOJ, but they clearly have a story to tell the American people.
Edited for clarity.
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We were all hoping Reagan would be impeached, like that would have mattered … impeachment seemed like such a big deal back then
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Most of the time the frustrating parts of live hearings are from GOP members trying their best to derail them. But in this case this isn’t one of those 50/50 committees (most GOP members refused to participate) and the two GOP members that are there are supportive of the investigation. So this should be a different kinda show.
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Here is what I have issue with. It’s not a show. It’s history in the making. Red flags foretelling the end of democracy are waving in the wind and people are setting this up to be a Columbo finale.
Seinfeld was a show.
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I didn’t mean that as a pejorative in this case. It is very serious business. But it’s also being presented in a very deliberate way, and the reality is that like other important political issues it’s critical that the presentation is received well by the public if we want it to lead to action. And this has a better shot at that because there are fewer people involved who are trying to actively sabotage it.
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No such luck:
Fox News opts out of live coverage
Television viewers will find nearly blanket prime-time coverage of a Congressional hearing Thursday on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, with the exception of Fox News Channel.…Fox Business Network, Fox News Digital and other corporate siblings will carry the hearing…
So were the Watergate hearings, but they were pretty much the only game in town.
Yep. I look forward to the screams from the Usual Suspects on Friday.
To the surprise of no one: Fox has ignored the coup and the commitee investigating it.
Basically, Fox viewers are almost completely in the dark about the insurrection or the revelations since then, including the work of the Department of Justice and the January 6th Committee, not to mention the many stories reported in the media about the coup plot itself.
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I think that BB relies on Mechanical Turks to do that. Thank you for your service 
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People said the same thing about Tiger King and I didn’t watch that either.
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I hate watching congressional anything because the congress people doing the questioning always waste most of the time make speeches before they ask a question and the speech rarely has anything to do with whatever the hearing is about.
It’s why people in our local community are voting for republicans strictly on their stance on open meetings act. They keep posting school board meetings where people get up to speak and want to give speeches on crt or some other irrelevant subject when the subject is new school dress code or some other school related topic. When the person with with gavel says stay on topic and then cuts them off when they don’t they all scream first amendment and cancel culture.
These people see how our representatives behave and they want that YouTube sound bite to own the school board.
These hearings would be over by now if they stayed on topic.
Meanwhile, the far-right channels will be running Beg-A-Thons.
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nothing funny about…
Ari Shaffir could write it. Might not. I would’ve gone with ‘I’m known for snacking and baking and sex and clean kitchen floors [sic. probably not wrong enough], and this is not clean kitchen floors.’ Could even have a supercut of Latin in Politics wondering how one can possibly be elected in the face of given electors and a good bit of incumbency, mocking parkour of public buildings and bipartisan leniency to people who see statuary as improvised weapons (and against whose Masters’ House! if Colonialism gets an episode. Aww, it was just a Town Hall with extra blue code murder steps. Let them run a Hippopotamus Farm upstate.)
It’s not a show.
We’ll see who runs it? The conventional and available punishments for Treason are not like 10 minutes Congressional Quiet Corner even if they don’t make Extreme Body Modification magazine. (Dare Old Age! Drink McWotsisname Kombucha!* *It’s invasive weeds instead of imported tea. Plus sparkling E35 and a pound of flesh per 2 12 packs (40 oz.)) A default showrunner might be like ‘Pwease cwoss the party line to pwosecwute,’ but they all got that shook off and deprecated, I hope. Down to digressions to Taiwanese and French rule alternates for prosecution/obligatory relearning.
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