![]() ![]() I look at my mayor, Eric Garcetti, and governor, Gavin Newsom, a little differently, and certainly more charitably, having watched them at work, moderating a crisis. Broadcast live, a conference tells us something extra about character, something a transcript can’t express. When the news is soft (“Tell us about your new picture”), some puffery is expected in serious matters, it is good to be, or at least sound, authentically honest. Lawyers on courtroom steps reinforce the narrative they’ve been unspooling inside movie stars shine their light upon the world. It may deliver a hard truth, or spin an inconvenient one. But an aura of consequence, of urgency, of event still surrounds these meetings of important people with the press and the public beyond - not least, of course, because they concern a virus that might kill any of us, and has in short order changed the way we live.Ī conference may state a case, and might be called on to defend it. ![]() One might imagine that, in a time when anyone in the world might upload a video to a place where anyone in the world might see it, the act of appearing on camera would have lost some of its meaning. ![]() And, oddly, we are as close to the mayor, the governor, the president in our current predicament as we are to nearly all our friends and relations - just a screen away. We come even for the look of distress that says Someone Cares. We come for the reassuring voice, the confident body posture, the air, if we’re lucky in our chain of leaders, of competence. (And sometimes no reporters at all.) Purely as information, you could learn it all from the newspaper - subscribe today! - but we come not just for the facts but for the performance. Key to this new way of living is the press conference - local, state, national, airing, streaming, reporters in attendance or calling in. We have become a nation of castaways, combing the bandwidth from a hundred million islands fearfully, hopefully for news. ![]()
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