The UK's
Guardian has sent a pair of bloggers to America in advance of the midterm elections.
Gary Younge and Dan Chung are driving from Denny Hastert's district in Illinois to Nancy Pelosi's district in California to symbolize the possible change of control in Congress, posting video, audio and written blog posts along the way. In Denver, they decided to crash the special edition of
Drinking Liberally that was held to welcome mcjoan to our city while she was here to blog about the
Paccione,
Fawcett and
Winter campaigns.
Drinking Liberally Denver held this event at a special location, the Skylark Lounge on South Broadway. A number of Kossacks were there including em dash, fbiots, Frankenoid, TakeBackTheHouse and pacified, lots of folks who participate at
SquareState, and Jeralyn Merritt of
TalkLeft showed up as well. We got a little defensive when the two reporters showed up with a camera, but relaxed when we learned it was the blogging duo from the Guardian.
I was happy to be interviewed, even though the British interviewer Gary Younge pronounced my name the French way ("Louis") instead of the Spanish Luis. I should mention that non-Spanish speaking Americans almost all pronounce Luis correctly these days; I credit baseball star Luis Gonzalez of the Arizona Diamondbacks for popularizing the correct pronunciation. Anyway, watching the video of the interview I realize that I totally failed to give good soundbites, and I ramble even more than usual after I've had a couple of New Belgium 1554s (that's me hoisting my 1554 during the cut away from johne while he is explaining Drinking Liberally to the interviewer). Mcjoan and johne did not have to be literally cut off by the editor.
The story that resulted from these interviews uses Denver as the setting for a good take on the role of talk radio on the right vs. blogs on the left, which I would have found worth watching even if I hadn't have been in it. Younge also did an audio post from Denver about the role of anti-immigrant hysteria and the Latino vote in the midterms. Check them out if you are interested. Also, don't miss em dash's story at Colorado Confidential; she was able to turn the tables on Gary Younge by interviewing the interviewer.
I think the fact that the Guardian's bloggers would make a point of meeting up with mcjoan and the Denver liberal blogosphere shows that our role in helping the Democratic wave in the mountain West is getting international recognition.