Hello, I'm Rusty Reno.

Hello, I'm Rusty Reno.

I'm sitting here in First Things World Headquarters at the editor's desk, and this is the

editor's desk podcast.

And I have with me Philip Jeffrey, who is the author of Made for TV Politics in the November 2020 issue. Welcome to the podcast,

Walt. Thank you for having me. Made for TV politics. This is about the January 6th hearings.

And let me just read out out of the gate here, compliment you on, what a

fantastic article. I did not believe that I could possibly read something interesting about this

much commented upon, but everybody kind of says the same thing in very predictable partisan

ruts.

But you really have a fresh take on this.

And your argument here is that the January 6th hearings fail as politics because they fail as television.

What do you mean by that?

Well, first of all, they just don't make for very good TV.

I kind of went into my viewing of these events. Oh, you're a better man than I am to have

sat through the episodes. Yeah, well, it helped that I was, my wife and I are moving into this apartment.

And so there was a lot of spare time just moving boxes and furniture around.

So I could have something in my ear and I could sort of passively download the information

as it's being presented, which I suppose is the ideal way to experience

these hearings as they were designed.

I mean, you alluded to a sort of standard way that everybody reacted to the existence

of these hearings.

...