Here at Edelman Towers, we’ve all been crowding around the TVs to catch a better glimpse of Derek Draper & Guido Fawkes’ appearance on BBC2’s Daily Politics Show.
Now that its all over, I can’t help but be disappointed at the lack of discussion around issues and the focus on personal rivalries.We could not really have expected more from these two – they are well known in the political blogosphere for exactly that.
And in a way, their personal rivalry is what made us all crowd around the telly. But the reality was a damp squib. The fact that Guido Fawkes turned up wearing a Berkeley T-shirt (he recently went to Berkeley to disprove Derek Draper’s academic claims) set the tone of the debate, and neither ‘party’ tried to change that tone.
It was not the ‘Battle of the Blogs’ but much more the ‘Battle of the Bloggers’. This made it far less interesting then it had the potential to be.
Did you see it? What do you think?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Couldn’t agree more. A nation switches off bemused.
Derek D unfortunately doesn’t understand how his aggresive, hectoring tone goes down with observers.
As for Guido – the Daily Politics draws around 250,000 viewers. My guess is that 245,000 of them had absolutely no idea what the T-shirt was about, and so instead wrote him off as someone who can’t tell whether he’s about to go to bed or give a TV interview.
And so the mass media continues to be able to portray the political blogosphere as a polarised, faintly egocentric, shouting match. A very disappointing ad for political blogging.
Now, in retrospect, do you understand what I was up to?
I wanted to skewer him on the McBride issue.
I think that went rather well.