My Gorbachev idea

It was a good day at work today. Every once in awhile, I start to feel a little irrelevant with all the rote tasks that an operation such as this would naturally put on an intern.

However, today was gladly different. Mr. Hannity was in today, and so I worked with "Sweet Baby James" to assemble the media packet. I've talked a lot about this process before, but I suppose I should go into some detail about it now.

The media packet is a fairly large bundle of papers that we assemble with the day's news and commentary. I'd guess all-in-all, it's between 100 and 150 pages each day. As a team, we scour the major papers (NYT, WP, LAT, CT), news conglomeration sites (Drudge, Lucianne, Google), and political commentary sites (Townhall, RealClearPolitics, Newsmax, Human Events, etc) There isn't a specified goal for what to print out and pass along. However, you'll do much better at this job if you have a good feel for what would be exciting to hear about on the air, and what's relevant. Catching points of hypocrisy in political opponents earns you extra points. (Remember my "carbon footprint" line about Al Gore?)

So, let me guide you through how my brain processed the day, as I'm looking over roughly 1,000 articles, I have to decide what's salient and worth passing on, or risk having James raise an eyebrow at my work, and toss it away. To start things off, you have to consider what has gone on the show recently, and what recurring themes might be desired. So, things like WMDs, eminent domain abuse, Duke lacrosse, and congressional democrat hijinks are always good, provided the story is interesting. However, you have to have a good feel for what's going on in the world.

For instance, today is a very "international" news day. Iran was re-referred to the UN Security Council, and news also broke that Iranians were present for the recent N. Korean missile launches. Renewed violence in Iraq, an Israeli push into Lebanon, and French interference at the UN. On a day like today, Robert Novak's revelation in his most recent column probably takes something of a back burner. However, it's still relevant because liberal callers will want to try and find cracks in the argument.

So I print out material, and if I want to highlight good quotes, or scratch notes on printed pieces for relevancy, I do so.

Today, a piece came up on Gorbachev. The basic gist of the story is that Comrade Mikhail is criticizing the USA for "winners disease" saying we're too pushy in Russian Politics. He asked us if we "really thought we were smarter than the Russians", to which I scribbled an emboldened "YES" in my notes. I brought my notes to James, and told him why I thought this was such a good story. A few hours later, as audio of Gorbachev's translated words came across the ABC News lines, I caught James' attention, and we grabbed Greg to get the audio.

Greg said, "Okay, but what's the relevancy here?"

Remember when I said that I felt irrelevant to the show process some days?

Not today! Sean spent 15 minutes talking about this story I brought to James' attention. Whee!

Here's a clip I took from today's show. Enjoy, and keep sending me feedback! I love hearing from you.