I've been watching TV convention coverage for as long as I can remember, and I have never witnessed such a shameless brownose job as I saw last night on NBC. Maybe the other networks did better, and maybe tonight wiser minds will intervene and tell these journalists to at least pretend they are impartial. But when the most responsible reporter on the screen is Pat Buchanan, in the opinion of this card carrying pinko, something is definitely wrong here.

I have an ideological axe of my own to grind here, it's not that the Right doesn't deserve tobe roasted, it's that they will seize this performance as an excuse to improve and extend their own divisive propaganda with renewed vigor. I know if I were an uninterested observer with no stake in the outcome of this election and no political preferences of my own, totally unfamiliar with the issues, I would have come away from last night's fiasco with the impression that a deliberate hatchet job was being pulled on the Republicans by a very partisan press. In a few minutes of air time, the painfully gained lessons we have learned about Neocon agitprop a la Limbaugh and Coulter have suddenly been negated and legitimized.

Even the party flacks and speakers on the podium conducted themselves with more honesty and respect for the opposition than these commentators did.