MRC Gala and Trip: Impressions

The Media Research Center:

• The MRC does an awful lot with not that very many people and very limited space. I’ll betcha their productivity dwarfs that of the clowns funded by George Soros.
• MRC’s accumulated archive of TV footage is astounding.
• They assign staff members to monitor specific shows. One poor guy has the job of watching “The View” everyday. I imagine he must have to do 30 minutes of brain exercises immediately after each episode to prevent permanent IQ loss.
• If MRC has a weakness, it’s that it doesn’t systematically address bias that is all too often present in the top- and bottom-of-hour radio newscasts, and it doesn’t closely monitor the various hard and soft news feeds of AP and the other wire services. Bloggers can help them overcome these handicaps by uploading biased audio to EyeBlast TV and by watching the wires like hawks.
• Most people don’t know about all of the various MRC divisions other than NewsBusters, so here they are: CNS News; the News and Analysis Division; The Business and Media Institute (BMI); the Culture and Media Institute (CMI); (New York) TimesWatch; and the new baby, EyeBlast TV. Each deserves its own bookmark and/or blogroll listing.

At the Gala (Overview and video links to segements are here):

• Tony Snow looked very, very good. Full head of hair (wasn’t he totally bald as little as 8 or so weeks ago?), with a high energy level. Very heartening indeed.
• Producing galas such as these involves a lot more than setting up a microphone and making sure the sound system works. There were AV guys in the back doing work resembling what the sound and visuals crew at a concert does. The company MRC hired for the Gala did a great job.
• MRC was extremely generous in its table assignments to its NewsBusters bloggers. I was no more than 40 feet from the on-stage microphone — in a group of about 1,000. Very cool.
• It’s probably been a couple of months since he did it, but Cal Thomas has shaven off the mustache he had for probably 30 years. He said he originally had one to look older, and now he has gotten rid of it to look younger.
• Sigh of Relief Dept. — Ann Coulter avoided having a John Edwards-CPAC moment.
• Surprise (to me) of the Night — Though he mostly masked it well, Mark Levin was the only presenter who appeared to be the least bit nervous speaking in front of the group.
• Sightings of other well-knowns — Rick Santorum attended, was wearing glasses, and looked so ridiculously young that if one of the others in our mini-group hadn’t recognized him, I never would have. He has some interesting plans, which I’ll keep under wraps. Other recognizables we were lucky enough to bump into successfully seek out: Pollster Kellyanne Conway, Mary Katharine Ham, LaShawn Barber, Brian Maloney, Snow, Levin.
• Other notables present who we didn’t get to meet included Tom Tancredo, Mike Pence, T. Boone Pickens, Ron Maxwell (director of “Gods and Generals”), and Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist.

Other observations:

• Though it’s probably as deficit-ridden as any other mass-transit system (oh yeah, definitely), the DC’s Metro seems at least to have been designed and built well. It’s very efficient, fast, and convenient.
• When are allegedly nicer hotels going to do what the mid-range ones do — provide net access as part of the room charge? The extra $10 a day is really annoying (plus a separate $10 if you want to use wireless in the lobby), and classless.
• You don’t have to be in Metro DC long to find US military folks taking deep offense at press coverage of the Iraq War (more on that tomorrow).
• It occurred to me that the Gala crowd was more diverse than Bryant Gumbel would have expected a gathering of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy to be (an item relating to this point is coming up tomorrow).