Michele Bachmann has done over 20 major television appearances since the beginning of September — far more than any member of Minnesota’s congressional delegation. How does a freshman Congress member from the minority party find herself in the limelight so often?
Easy. You and I pay for it.
If you’re curious to know how confident the Obama campaign feels about its widening lead in Minnesota, here’s a dollars-and-cents clue. According to figures released by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project late last week, the presidential campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama spent over $28 million nationally on TV advertising during the week of Sept. 28-Oct. 4. And there’s an interesting anomaly in the Minnesota totals: Among states identified as Midwestern battlegrounds — by UWAP’s reckoning, these are Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania (?) and Wisconsin — Minnesota is one of only two where McCain outspent Obama (the other is Iowa), and by a whopping margin of almost exactly 5-1 ($608,000 – $121,000).
The thrust of the McCain campaign’s plan for gaffe-proofing its standard-bearer is to make sure his only unscripted press exposure is with local newspapers and TV stations. (And, where Sarah Palin is concerned, to warn all comers that
Of the 800-plus people who were arrested or detained in conjunction with RNC protests, a good chunk of them — 43, by our count — were members of the news media. Media representatives in town to cover the events, from both big and small presses, were slapped with citations and pending charges ranging in severity, including unlawful assembly, obstructing the legal process, misdemeanor interference with a peace officer and felony to riot plus other riot pretenses. Many others who weren’t arrested or detained endured pepper-spray and other arms used for crowd-control. Here’s our list of journalists who were detained or arrested. If anyone’s missing, please add them in comments.
The Democratic National Committee is coming to the Republican National Convention — or at least, across the street. Hoping to keep a post-DNC bump, the party is setting up a media office across from the Xcel Energy Center to serve as a rapid-response center for countering whatever goes on inside. The “More of the Same” center — to be accessible via www.justmoreofthesame.com — will host media spokespeople, two dozen fact-checkers (who’ll fisk every GOP speech) and a satellite truck to transit interviews anywhere in the world.
As our sister site the Colorado Independent first reported, Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins — specifically sent to “cause trouble” — was confronted by protesters chanting “Spread the lies” and “Fuck corporate media” just as the DNC…
Last time the Republicans had a national convention, New York-based designers Thomas Fuchs and Felix Sockwell couldn’t pass up a chance to protest — only they did so in a medium they’re comfortable with: They reinvented the GOP elephant in 100 different ways. Sockwell distributed the logos — a Pepsi-sponsored GOP elephant, a trunk transformed into a gun aimed back at a soldier’s head, a pachyderm turned into a hunch-backed man with a cane — in a bicycle rickshaw throughout New York.
With another convention in the wings, I contacted the artists to see if they had any updates to their self-published book, GOP 100: Deconstructing Dumbo. While they said the book is still fresh four years later and doesn’t necessarily need updating, they had one: a retitled piece showing an elephant in prison stripes (reminiscent of this year’s convention logo). It’s now called “Larry Craig.”
Iowa-based conservative advocacy group includes masterminds of Swift Boat and Willie Horton ads
By Jason Hancock, Iowa Independent
A network of Iowa Republicans is playing a leading role in a secretive group advocating nationally on behalf of “conservative and free market ideals” in congressional races around the country. Among the group’s leaders are two media consultants who played key roles in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads in 2004 and the Willie Horton ad in 1988, both of which helped defeat Democratic presidential candidates.
A source close to Jesse Ventura confirms that the former governor is indeed negotiating to play judge for a daytime courtroom TV show, as MnIndy reported yesterday. Further, Ventura is heading to…
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