Ode to C-SPAN

My ears perk up when I hear mention of C-SPAN, although in the past week my favorite cable television channel/internet content provider has gotten the egghead treatment from WWDTM, Stephen Colbert, and more.

I wanted to pay homage to C-SPAN for doing right when most mainstream media outlets are failing us tremendously. For example, this past Saturday morning while the liberal-leaning cable news channel spent about 7 minutes on Lindsay Lohan's latest lapse in judgement, over on C-SPAN the topic was "Is the UN still necessary?"

Granted their loosest cannon may be their morning show, Washington Journal. It totally reminds me of my days in community access TV where conspiracy theorists, various loons, and hatemongers called in just because they could.

But that comes with serving the public. (I should know, I work at the library.) Many other callers are intelligent, proactive, and worried citizens. I realize snarky cynics don't actually care what the masses have to say, but I do, and what better way to hear their opinions than to broadcast them for anyone to hear? Public discourse is sorely absent from our superstar talking-head "news" shows.

I admit my own introduction to C-SPAN was due to Chris Farley's Newt Gingrich act. That was what it took to get a 15-year old interested in politics.

I continued to watch on and off for years not really understanding most of what I saw (after all, I only had one semester for civics in my entire public school education). But coming back again and again continued to educate me.

C-SPAN's original programming, along with their other channels like Book TV, provide more in-depth political analyses (that the average person can usually understand), history, and public affairs than any other network (and I'm betting all networks combined). What I like most about C-SPAN is that they turn their cameras on, shut up, and let us think for ourselves.