In the extremely unlikely event you didn’t tune in to “UpFront with Mike Gousha” this weekend, I made an appearance to discuss the Republican National Convention.  I was joined by Chris Miklos, who attended the Democratic Convention in Denver and also blogged about it for Wispolitics.com.

You can watch the discussion that aired on the broadcast version of the show here.

You can watch a web-only bonus segment we taped here.

Just a bit of housekeeping:  Miklos made a couple of statements that deserve a response better than I was able to provide in five seconds:

First, I admit I was a little caught off guard when he played the race card right out of the chute, mentioning how much more “diverse” the DNC was than what he saw on tv at the RNC.  I kind of thought we were just there to talk about our experiences, not score partisan points.  But I saw plenty of minorities at the GOP convention – in fact, the Wisconsin contingent itself had several.

In the second segment, Miklos defends the blogosphere by pointing out how quickly bloggers uncover certain “facts.”  As an example, he used the bloggers “discovering” that Sarah Palin had fought to cut special education funding in schools by 62%.  Of course, this is flatly false – they are attributing a budget proposal to Palin that actually came from her predecessor, Frank Murkowski.  In fact, Palin increased funding by 175%.  I knew the number was bogus, and pointed it out, but didn’t have enough time to fully rebut it.  In using numbers like this, Miklos is essentially proving my point – as P.J. O’Rouke said, blogging is free – and worth every cent.

Finally, Miklos says that it was the McCain campaign, not bloggers, that exposed the story about Palin’s pregnant 17 year-old daughter.  But, in fact, the McCain campaign had to do so to respond to an internet smear started by bloggers that alleged Palin’s son was actually her daughter’s.  While I pointed this out on the show, it seems not to have made a dent in Miklos’ talking point.

I suppose after watching the two pieces, you’d get the idea that I am somehow anti-blogger.  As I mention, I think there is a valuable place for blogs – but I do think the decline of newspapers is a terrible thing.  While it’s certainly valid to complain about a lot of the content in the mainstream media, they do quite often do outstanding work, and have much more knowledge and resources to investigate certain issues than bloggers do.  The day newspapers disappear altogether, it wil almost leave us rudderless as a society.

I’d like to thank both Mike Gousha and Wispolitics.com for allowing me the chance to appear in the past week.  It was a great time, and hopefully they let me do it again.