DAJ on TV
It looks like all the news broadcasts of the DAJ press screening for Fahrenheit 9/11 have aired. You can find the CNN and NTV broadcasts hosted here, in Quicktime MOV format (thanks to Mark for the larger version of the CNN segment). The TBS broadcast is available only via their web site, on streaming video, in Real Player or WMP formats.
Darn CNN, they didn’t show a moment of the 4 or 5 minutes they spent interviewing me! I did get on screen for a moment, though, signing the donation form for the event as I arrived (I think I was the first one to do that, I got ticket #110 of 110). But the interviews they did show were good, and I would have probably looked like a goofball anyway.
The CNN report also talked the the Republicans Abroad person, who just smugly announced they were already uncorking champagne for their November 3rd celebrations. Republicans Abroad, by the way, is only a fundraising and voter registration organization–unlike Democrats Abroad, the GOP does not recognize Republicans living outside the U.S. except by absentee ballot only.
What was with Dave Spector being interviewed more than anyone else. He had nothing important to say, and he even said in the Japanese NTV interview that he was from Saitama and didn’t really belong here or something along those lines. Of course that’s fine, I mean I’m neither American or a member of the Democrats Abroad. Then again I wasn’t interviewed by every channel and able to comment on it over and over again on the day time variety shows like Dave.
As you can tell I’m not a fan of this tarento. I don’t like the fact that Dave Spector is the de-facto spokesman for everything American in Japan and how much aired interview time he got on NTV when there were 100 others more opinionated and informed on the subject at hand than he. Why do you think he was even there? I wonder if the DAJ have to have at least one Tarento on the list to get any Japanese media coverage?
Well, to be honest I’m less of a fan of him myself–primarily because I remember him from back in the 80’s. He had put out a book then, in Japanese, titled something like, “It’s Only a Joke!”–and the book was filled with quite racist humor. At any given time, that would be in extremely poor taste–but to a Japanese market, especially at that time, to legitimize racist humor by putting a gaijin’s stamp of approval on it–I really found it unacceptable.
I don’t know how well that represented him, or how much he may have changed, or not, over the years. It just left a quite bitter taste in my mouth.