Overnight Coverage

I didn't stay up and watch the US election results come in, although I was tempted for a little while. As most of the key states weren't going to declare until well into the night (at least 3-4am in the UK) it would have been a rather pointless exercise. I did watch a bit of the early coverage, which was entertaining.

The main reason it was entertaining was because it was so bad. The networks in the UK started early, just before midnight, and went through the night - but wouldn't have anything to discuss for a good while after they started. They had nothing to talk about, no news to discuss, and were simply bouncing talking points randomly around the room and never actually dwelling on the subject long enough to actually investigate it.

My particular favourite was when BBC, as they like to do, put up lots of random graphics showing different things - the stand-out being a graph comparing presidential reelection success against unemployment. The message was that high unemployment meant no reelection - apart from Reagan, which wasn't the point they were making so they ignored it, but they did use this as the logic for Ford not being reelected. Personally I'd suspect that everything around Watergate and the Nixon pardon had a bit to do with it, but apparantly it was unemployment that was the kicker.

There was much else uninformed opinion, but I went to bed too early to see anything happen. Good news on the result though, and apparantly Karl Rove kicked off about FOX calling Ohio for Obama too early, which sounds like it was worth seeing.

There was also a beautiful comic on XKCD today which neatly lampooned all the nonsensical talking heads, which is worth a look.