As Thursday marks the first day of the January 6th hearings and it’s worth mentioning that the committee hired a big-time TV producer to help them tell the tale. While speaking to late-night host Stephen Colbert, CALF-D Rep Adam Schiff basically stated that Americans aren’t smart enough to watch boring old hearings. According to Schiff, we don’t have the attention spans so the producer is there to bring the pazazz.
Cobert asked, “Now, you guys hired a fancy TV producer, a guy who used to work at ABC, to help with the broadcast. In what way is this fella helping you? And—and–, secondly, did you think you needed a fancy TV producer because the American people aren’t interested in whether democracy survives?”
Here’s how Schiff explained it—Tell me this isn’t insulting:
“We’re not commenting on the internal staffing or how we’re structuring the hearings, beyond a certain degree. But, look, this is a very different era than Watergate. I wish we were back in the day when the American public would sit for hours and hours at a time and watch hearings of national consequence, and they would be presented, you know, by major networks, rather than, you know, the talking heads on Fox News. But we’re in a different world now, where most people get their information from social media, where we have to be able to tell the story in an engaging way, tell it in a limited period of time.”
Watch
Transcript
ADAM SCHIFF: We want the public to understand how close we came to losing our democracy. And most important, the fact that we are not out of the woods. It’d be one thing if what started on January 6 or culminated on January 6, that violent attack had ended on the sixth. It didn’t end. The effort to use the lie that resulted in that violence has continued. And if anything, our democracy is even more vulnerable today than it was on January 6.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Now, you guys hired a fancy TV producer, a guy who used to work at ABC, to help with the broadcast. In what way is this fella helping you? And—and–, secondly, did you think you needed a fancy TV producer because the American people aren’t interested in whether democracy survives?
SCHIFF: We’re not commenting on the internal staffing or how we’re structuring the hearings, beyond a certain degree. But, look, this is a very different era than Watergate. I wish we were back in the day when the American public would sit for hours and hours at a time and watch hearings of national consequence, and they would be presented, you know, by major networks, rather than, you know, the talking heads on Fox News. But we’re in a different world now, where most people get their information from social media, where we have to be able to tell the story in an engaging way, tell it in a limited period of time.