Jeff Greenfield on CNN noted that without an administration in place, Washington folks did not know where to send their resumes. When his guest, the writer Andrew Sullivan, said no one should feel sorry for unemployed career politicians, Mr. Greenfield responded, ''Send your e-mails to him,'' as if he were talking to members of a private club. But that attitude is especially surprising because there is such lip service paid to hearing from ordinary citizens. And those interviews should not be anything more, given the leading questions, and the answers calculated to get on television by feeding reporters what it seemed they wanted to hear. Votes were counted twice, three times in some places,'' she said, parroting lines she had obviously heard all too often from her party on television.
Viewers can see through the laughable hype.
Far from creating anxiety, the suspense and uncertainty of the postelection weeks made watching television seem different and genuinely exciting. But starting with the wrong calls on election night, for this limited postelection period television was the bearer of unexpected news. Time and again legal scholars were asked to anticipate court rulings, and guessed wrong so often that viewers learned to ignore all predictions. Some of the most compelling moments came when Dan Abrams and Pete Williams on NBC read and sorted out the last Supreme Court decision, freezing as they stood side by side on the steps of the court, displaying all the adrenaline and intellectual energy that even live television rarely captures. Such excitement can't last.