A British view of Roanoke and the 2012 election
Four years ago, The Guardian newspaper in Great Britain sent a reporter to camp out in Roanoke for several weeks — to report on the presidential election on a ground level from the vantage point of a swing state.
This fall, reporter Gary Younge returned. Here’s his report – along with this video.
Want to see his reporting from 2008? You can find it here.
October 4, 2012 - 4:51 PM
The Brits could well relate to the folling blog item — they are very familiar with Waterloo — even though our educational system is not big on important historical events:
-
RoanokeSlant blog Item July 20, 2012: Was Roanoke’s Fire House #1 Obama’s Waterloo?
-
http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2012/07/was-roanokes-fire-house-1-obamas.html
-
Quote of the season.
“Conventional wisdom, backed by historical polling data gathered by Nate Silver and others, always suggested that the challenger usually wins the first debate just by showing up and standing shoulder-to-shoulder as an equal with the presidential incumbent. But the initial Romney-Obama matchup raises questions about a whole new paradigm: what happens when the challenger not only stands up to the perceived invincibility of the charismatic, regal commander-in-chief but, for most of the evening, enthusiastically mops the floor with him?”
What I heard was style for the President, not substance and people liking him based on emotions.
Shouldn’t this be called a liberal view of Roanoke by a British “reporter”?
So, apparently media bias is not limited to America. What’s remarkable tome is that the reported deliberately chose “a swing town in a swing state” and then only aired interviews of Obama supporters from 2008 who are still Obama supporters. Why bother going to a swing state and ignoring half the voters?
Well good thing you all have the right wing media to weed out all that awful bias! Good grief and gravy you are too funny at times. Poor babies, you cannot “win” by sharing demonstrably false plans and policy that you cannot deliver. Has that not been your rap on Obama for 4 years? Suddenly it looks good to you now. Hypocrites!
Go Freeda Go!
Obama will win, not because he solved the problems, but because he was trying to solve them alone. When he wins, and he will, blame your loss on a terrible Congress that behaved like bullies and left any semblance of statesmen in the dust. Romney is just the head of an ugly snake and America knows it. It is only the right wingers who have been running this nation into the ground and yelling “winning!” who do not.
Well, this video is a joke.
Joe (and others) — the British media has always been considered much more overtly partisan than their American counterparts (often making no distinctions between their editorial pages and their news pages, the way U.S. papers do). This difference involves not just ideology but also social class. The Guardian, I’m told, is considered a left-of-center “middle class” newspaper. Here in the U.S., we have local newspapers, with some of the bigger ones (such as the Washington Post and the New York Times) having national impact, although not national distribution (USA Today and the Wall Street Journal being exceptions, of course.) Britain, being a much smaller place, has more national newspapers, organized along philosophical and social lines (and we certainly don’t have that same sense of class that the British do, the hub-bub over the 1% and the 99% and the 47% notwithstanding). So you can ride the London Underground and sometimes tell people’s political orientation, or social status, by the newspapers they choose to read on their daily commute.
– Dwayne Yancey
The reason why Virginia is a swing state now is because of all the people that lived in the north east moved to NOVA and still vote like they do in Boston,new York, Phili etc… And why this guy choose these people is beyond me, the lady at first was like I didn’t expect him to do anything great so I’m going to vote again. I just can’t wait to see what they say when the economy takes a nose dive when all the QE ends.
Well Roanoke Times, you’re not obligated to change your voting choices because you move somewhere different.
Editor’s note: The comment posted above (#9) using the name ‘Roanoke Times’ was not posted by anyone with the Roanoke Times. We’ve burrowed into the system and the email address it was posted from is not one of ours. While we allow people to pick their own names here, we don’t want people masquerading as somebody else. Please refrain from doing this in the future.
– Dwayne Yancey, senior editor
#6
“Romney is just the head of an ugly snake and America knows it”
I’ll fix that for you. obama is just the head of an ugly RAT!
Snakes eat rats.
“America knows it”? Who appointed you spokesperson for America? So, you are saying, only leftwingers are America. That is just too funny and silly!
correction: ….only lefrwingers are “American”
Romney has promised everything to everyone and he is STILL behind. Yes, America knows, and eventually it will sink in for the right wingers.
“Yes, America knows”
I know why leftwingers are nuts. Here is a fine upstanding leftwinger,”knowing”. The proof is here for all to see.
http://v103.cbslocal.com/2012/10/05/snoop-dogg-mitt-romney-is-a-morman-with-no-hoes-and-other-musings/