The morning after Obama’s acceptance speech

Update (Nov. 5, 2008): If you are looking for video and a transcript of the speech by President-Elect Obama on Election Night, it is here.

The text that follows was posted on Aug. 29, 2008:

I would like to say for the record that I watched the convention on television. I watched it Tuesday, Wednesday, and last night. I watched it on PBS because Gwen Ifill is my favorite TV journalist. (I used to be loyal to Peter Jennings, especially after September 11, 2001.)

I didn’t flip channels. I didn’t look at any Web pages.

I did participate in a running conversation on Twitter (mostly reading, not tweeting), via Twhirl. That is, until Barack Obama entered the stadium last night. Minutes before, BreakingNewsOn had sent out a link to Obama’s complete speech. I downloaded it, glanced at it, and decided not to read it. Then I closed Twhirl and put my laptop to sleep and slid it out of sight.

Old media, unmediated: I watched Obama’s acceptance speech on TV.

Afterward, I waited to see if Gwen Ifill would talk to anyone good. I was not a bit interested in the blah-blah Jim Lehrer had going on. Then I flipped over to CNN — for the first time in four days — and after about five minutes turned it off and went to bed.

More old media this morning: I always wake up to NPR and listen to Morning Edition until it ends. There’s a lot of replay of good bits from the speech (it’s still on as I’m writing this), but nothing new. Update, 8:43 a.m.: Now they’re interviewing pundits for a little analysis. Talking about “celebrity.”

Queued up for my morning reading are Politifact (so I can see if they have fact-checked the speech yet); Politico (the best politics journalism in the U.S., in my opinion), and Daily Kos (to see what the ardent Obama supporters are sayiing). That’s it. Then I’ll go to work.

I offer you this as one example of an American’s media consumption habits. Update, 11:42 a.m.: Read how my online-savvy friend Steve Yelvington watched. It seems we feel the same aversion toward blabbing commentators on CNN, etc.

Politifact (9:07 a.m.): There were “more than 84,000 people” in the stadium during the speech. The fact-checkers say this one is true: “John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time.” Another true one: “Biden had his number right that McCain voted 19 times against a minimum-wage increase.” (Source page)

Politico (9:19 a.m.): “One clear consequence of Democrats’ choice of Obama over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been the demotion of health care on the list of Democratic issues. The issue received two emotional paragraphs but came after his discussions of taxes, energy, and education. His plan would extend government-backed, but not government-run, care to anyone who seeks it.” Reader comments here present an interesting assortment of people who will clearly NOT vote for Obama, speaking without trash or invective. (Source page)

Daily Kos (9:36 a.m.): Wow — this is a good one — a bartender switched one bar TV to CSPAN and left another one on MSNBC. Guess who showed the long line of military generals and admirals supporting Obama? Guess which one didn’t show them? Didn’t show or mention them at all?! (Let’s talk about objectivity now, shall we?) Kos himself wrote that Obama’s speech “came from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”

Check out Politifact’s new Flip-o-Meter and see when the candidates do a flip-flop on a stated position!