Episode 2: The Newt Show

The Revolution with Steve Kornacki

NBC News

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5 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Newt Gingrich recruits allies and challenges the House’s staid conventions. With a confrontational style and an assist from C-Span, Republicans begin to rally.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today, finally, the U.S. House of Representatives turned on its television system in living color,
0:12.3	and its deliberations could be seen beyond the House chamber.
0:17.7	It's March 19, 1979, and David Brinkley is anchoring NBC Nightly News.
0:24.5	They held off a long time in the well-founded belief that there is a little ham in every
0:28.7	politician, and in the fear that some of the more flamboyant would use the House floor
0:33.7	as a stage to play to the cameras.
0:36.4	But there almost aren't any flamboyant politicians anymore.
0:40.1	Most of them now look and behave like the managers of holiday in.
0:43.7	I love this clip, and it's nothing at all against David Brinkley.
0:46.9	The truth is, he was only saying what just about everybody in Washington was thinking when
0:51.8	this strange new TV channel appeared.
0:54.1	This was back in the dawn of the cable television era.
0:57.2	Most people still only had antenna TVs that could get a handful of channels.
1:01.8	In this segment, Brinkley is introducing a report from a young NBC correspondent named
1:06.7	Chris Wallace.
1:08.5	The House almost seemed to go out of its way not to perform for the cameras.
1:12.8	Resolved that there is hereby established in the House of Representatives the SLEC Committee
1:17.6	to be known as the SLEC Committee on Committees here and after referred to as the SLEC Committee.
1:22.4	And that's how most of the media covered the birth of C-SPAN.
1:26.6	C-SPAN would in fact reveal a lot of flamboyant politicians who like to perform for the cameras,
1:32.8	but that was not supposed to be its purpose.
1:36.1	From the very beginning, nobody completely figured out that this was not meant to be television.
	...

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