{"id":3233,"date":"2008-09-05T09:32:23","date_gmt":"2008-09-05T14:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3233"},"modified":"2008-09-05T09:32:56","modified_gmt":"2008-09-05T14:32:56","slug":"what-i-did-all-day-8pm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3233","title":{"rendered":"What I Did All Day: 8PM"},"content":{"rendered":"

I joke constantly that doing the Northern Alliance Radio Network is the easiest talk radio gig in the world, because you rarely need to do any actual show prep.\u00a0 John, Chad, Brian, Ed, King, Michael and I blog about the stuff all week<\/em>; we’re completely, constantly immersed in our material. Prep is almost redundant.<\/p>\n

Counterintuitively, last night was even more so.\u00a0 Palin’s speech was a huge slab of red talkradio meat that could have sustained an hour or two without any notes.\u00a0 McCain’s speech had its notes as well (later post).<\/p>\n

And the guests?<\/p>\n

We landed Hugh Hewitt and Duane Patterson – but that’s no challenge.\u00a0 They’ll do any media they can get.\u00a0 They’d appear on Pacifica, I think.<\/p>\n

We followed them up with a couple of women – east-coast Democrats, actually – who’d gone to Denver in an RV to support Hillary.\u00a0 They worked hard to get the roll-call vote, and were disappointed with the treatment they felt Mrs. Clinton received.\u00a0 They loaded back up in the RV, and started driving home (Pennsylvania and Delaware) – and, listening to the radio, became ever more revolted by the treatment they heard their own side<\/em> giving Sarah Palin.\u00a0 They got to Terra Haute before they realized they needed to do <\/em>something.\u00a0 They put “Saint Paul” into their Garvin (they had no idea where the city was), swerved northwest, and drove all night to get to Saint Paul, on their mission – to convince fellow Hillary supporters to turn out for the Palin\/McCain ticket.\u00a0 That<\/em> interview was a hoot; sort of like interviewing Edith Bunker and Linda Richman.\u00a0 A hilarious couple of ladies, and great people to have on your side.<\/p>\n

And then…Paul Shanklin<\/a> and Michael Ramirez<\/a>.\u00a0 Simultaneously.\u00a0 If you’ve been hiding under a rock; Shanklin is Rush Limbaugh’s parodymonger, writing spoof songs featuring dead-on impressions of political figures (usually Democrats) for the past umpteen years; Ramirez is a big cheese at Investors Business Daily, one of the best editorial cartoonists in the business, and a pretty funny guy himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Northern Alliance – at least, Volume II, Ed and I – don’t do a lot <\/em>of interviews.\u00a0 But over the years on the NARN, I’ve inteviewed quite a few people that I admire a lot<\/em>, in many ways;\u00a0a partial list (because over four and a half years, I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few) includes David Bellavia, Mitt Romney, Victor Davis Hansen, Christina Hoff-Summers, Norm Coleman, Michelle Malkin, Mona Charen, Steven Vincent, Mike Nelson (yes, that <\/em>one, of Mystery Science Theater<\/em> fame), John Lott…and on, and on.\u00a0 Of course, Ramirez is a giant in the field, and Shanklin – well, I used to do parody songs myself, back when I was with Don Vogel.\u00a0 And Shanklin is the best ever.\u00a0 And interviewing people for whom you are an unabashed fanboy is an interesting exercise; trying to sound excited but not obsequious (or worse, like Chris Farley’s awestruck cable interviewer character) can be hard, at least for me.\u00a0 I try to “humanize” them – often (I’m not making this up) by remembering that their underwear is just as likely to be riding up as mine is right now<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That usually helps.<\/p>\n

Anyway – interviewing Shanklin and Ramirez together<\/em> was sort of like sharing a table with Robin Williams and Billy Crystal (and Ed, feel free to book both of them<\/em> any ol’ time here).<\/p>\n

And after all that<\/em>, we had Mac’s speech.\u00a0\u00a0 More on that later.<\/p>\n

Another interview with Hugh and Duane, and it was time to head out.\u00a0 Here’s the point where I give the shout-out to the Patriot crew that actually did the work <\/em>this past week, the setting up and tearing down and moving stuff; program director Nick Novak, producer Matt Reynolds, promotions director Kate Fisher, majordomo Jay “Long Suffering” Larson, and Salem Radio’s extraordinary robogeek engineer Anthony Ochoa.\u00a0 Since I hadn’t the faintest idea how to tear the gear down (and Ochoa would have dissected and killed me in that order if I’d tried), I retired to the “Captain’s Quarters”, a media\/delegate reception area in the basement of the Wilkins Arena, with an open bar, swedish meatballs and jalapeno poppers.\u00a0 It was packed with people – media, delegates, staffers, everyone.\u00a0 I mixed it up for a bit – but after the week I’d had, I was too tired to socialize all that much.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was, truly, an action-packed evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I joke constantly that doing the Northern Alliance Radio Network is the easiest talk radio gig in the world, because you rarely need to do any actual show prep.\u00a0 John, Chad, Brian, Ed, King, Michael and I blog about the stuff all week; we’re completely, constantly immersed in our material. Prep is almost redundant. Counterintuitively, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-convention-08","category-narn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}