Book TV

On weekends I sleep late and then, still in my bathrobe, dawdle over breakfast watching Book TV on CPAN 2 with authors, liberal and conservative, talking about their books. Every print and television reporter seems to write a book to expand things they did not have space or time for in newspapers or on television. Very interesting!

Many new books are published by both right and left wing organizations to promote their ideologies. CSPAN lets both sides vent their opinions. By listening to the authors I learn their thinking without buying the books.

On Saturday the programs were interrupted to broadcast Senate debates on the stimulus plan. (Did you know that wherever the Senate is in session you can watch every minute LIVE on CPAN 2?) This Saturday, when the senators went into recess, it was back to books and authors.

To fill in the time, CPAN rebroadcast an event videotaped at a Washington, D.C., bookstore on January 8. Robert Kaiser, longtime observer of Washington as a reporter and editor of the Washington Post, talked about his book, focusing on the corruption of politics, called “So Damned Much Money.” Television ads are so expensive that the cost of running for office has become astronomical. To run for re-election in 2008, the average senators spent ten million dollars. That’s $10,000,000! Congressmen spend one day a week on the telephone trying to raise money for their next campaign. The result? Lobbyists act as “consultants” advising them on how to contact the big money guys and get the cash, lots of it. “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”

Later in the afternoon I watched a conversation between David Brooks and Gwen Ifill. I can’t remember whether it was Kaiser or Brooks or someone else who commented on the decline in ability in the men and women in Congress. The impression seems to be that most of our representatives and senators are not “public servants” but people who go into politics to get the money. After a few years in Congress, they become lobbyists themselves and make the big bucks. Kaiser told about one who amassed a fortune of one hundred million. That’s $100,000,000.

Brooks and Ifill talked about race relations. Despite great changes in the past 40 years, Ms. Ifill said, even as a successful woman, a Harvard and Stanford graduate, she is sometimes treated differently because she is a black woman. Where she sees racism, she says, “I laugh.” Brooks commented, “All of us have been treated as minorities at one time or another. Some of us have only sipped where others have drunk by the gallon.”

Take a look at Book TV. It is on all day Saturday and Sunday on CPAN 2 – unless the Senate has an emergency session.