The Political Media (part 2)

part 1 of 2 part series! oh wow! super exciting man!

---
The KFXA/CBS news crew showed up at John F. Kennedy High School on Wednesday and apparently needed the assistance of the Kennedy speech team. In turns out that they wanted to have the speech team give their opinion on the politician's faux pau... because it was a speech. Not only did this feed the misconception that speech team is an entire team dedicated to giving speeches, but it was also just sort of a stupid news story to begin with. Essentially they were saying "RICK PERRY IS SOOOOO DUMB DAT EVEN KIDZ THINK HE DUMB TOO".

However, once the questions started rolling it just got stupider. Before we watched the video, we were already pretty much informed what "our" stance would be on the subject. Prior to having the video played for us, our on-site reporter (who was very nice by the way, only doing her job) said they'd be looking for reactions to the clip before throwing out buzzwords like "embarrassing", "pathetic", and "sad". Got it? Good. Now roll film. Wait, these guys DON'T like Rick Perry? You don't say.

We watched the clip, which as I touched on before, was indeed a bit of a slip-up. They asked us to film reaction shots to the video being played, where we were all decided to turn around quizzically to our neighbors, feign scorn and shame and laugh painfully at him. We actually did three different takes of this, somehow the shot where I gripped my hair frantically and cried in agony before bellowing "HOW COULD HE!?!" didn't make the final cut. It was kind of sad the way we didn't have to say anything, we all just had a mutual understanding that the news needs money shots, so we all picked up in the same place and plugged in canned emotion in places there really was none.

And then came the interviews. Again, only doing their job, we were prodded with totally objective questions laced with completely unbiased suggestions, like "How did this make you feel? Just a little sorry for him? Did it make you sort of cringe?" Everyone did a great job of answering these questions as the news station intended (my best friend laughed about his totally bullpoop answers afterwards, confessing that he really didn't mind that Rick Perry made an error at all, before also confessing that he liked being on the news), except good old maverick me.

I ignored their prompts and political mad-libs and instead answered truthfully: It didn't change my opinion of Rick Perry at all. If anything, it made him more human. I went on in this manner for a good 10-15 seconds before they continued the onslaught of questions. True American hero? I mean, I wouldn't dispute it if you said it...

final note: I have no problem with CBS2/KFXA28 and I recognize that they were doing their jobs. It's not just them, it's literally every news outlet in the nation, they were just the only group I had personal experience with. They aired this segment last thursday, and they actually ended up using a brief excerpt where I said my opinion of Rick Perry did not change as a result of his screw-up. Go society!