DID HILLARY DO WHAT SHE NEEDED TO IN HER SPEECH?

Khizr Khan captured the hearts of listeners as well as the
spotlight out of other speakers at the DNC,
photo courtesy of Slate.com

Although the Democrats had an overall better convention (in my opinion, as well as others) the night of Hillary Clinton's speech was a different story. According to Nielsen data, the Democratic convention had more viewers during the entirety of the week with the exception of Thursday when Clinton spoke this week and Donald Trump spoke week.

According to NJ.com, there were multiple 'political pros' that they interviewed about Clinton's speech; all of the political experts featured in the article shared similar conclusions such as this was Clinton's best speech probably ever. Although she didn't "wow!" anybody like Barack Obama or Michelle Obama can with their speech abilities, she did humanize herself and rebuild a sense of trustworthiness and (probably most importantly) she strategically attacked Trump and did well at luring undecided voters as well as 'Never-Trump' Republicans - these are the voters she will need for a decisive victory in November.

Furthermore, the Washington Post conducted a fact-check of Clinton's acceptance speech: there were very few statements featured in the article, especially compared to Trump's acceptance speech last week. In most cases in the article she had simply cherry-picked data or looked at data out of context.

Something probably few expected is that the most-talked about speaker in the media so far was Khizr Khan, the father of an American Muslim Army captain that was killed in Iraq in 2006. Khan asked some serious questions to Donald Trump during his speech such as: "Let me ask you, have you even read the Constitution," eventually heightening his 'interrogation' asking, "Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? To look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America?...You have sacrificed nothing!"

Of course no inspirational and truly thought-provoking speech is complete in America nowadays without an incredibly offensive statement to be broadcasted in response as Ann Coulter took to Twitter tweeting: "You know what this convention really needed? An angry Muslim with a thick accent like Fareed Zacaria."

If you want to get that bad taste out of your mouth just from reading that then check out this video of Jon Stewart taking over Colbert's late show this past week to do what he's always done best: blast Fox News and hateful Republicans.

And for fans of Stephen Colbert, although his late show has not been doing as well as many may have hoped, the RNC and DNC have offered Colbert's show new life with Jon Stewart's segment as well as an appearance from Elizabeth Warren whom many deem as the person to most easily incite Trump. As a long-time fan of Colbert I hope he can continue to breathe a little bit of his 'Comedy Central Colbert persona' into his more serious late show as I feel, and the views seem to evidence, he is much more effective when he does put his traditional comedic twist onto serious issues.

I think Matt Wilstein at The Daily Beast summed it up just as well as I could: "More than the ignorant, America-obsessed conservative pundit, this was the Stephen Colbert that we truly missed. The man who is willing to take big swings in the name of comedy and refuses to toe the line for the sake of being liked."

Although the RNC and DNC have officially wrapped up and coverage of both will begin to wane from the headlines I will be posting a final edition of my media analysis comparing the coverage of the police and security threats in Cleveland during the 2016 RNC with the coverage of the police and security threats in Chicago in 1968, as well as (most likely) the same coverage surrounding the 2000 RNC in Philadelphia.

References

Brodesser-Akner, Claude. (2016) What political pros thought of Clinton's historic DNC 2016 speech. NJ.com. Retrieved from http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/07/what_the_pros_thought_of_clintons_historic_dnc_spe.html.

Frostenson, Sarah. (2016) Hillary Clinton's convention had higher ratings than Trump's - except for the one night it mattered most. Vox. Retrieved from http://www.vox.com/2016/7/29/12324800/trump-big-ratings-convention-speech-beat-hillary-clinton/in/11938179.

Kessler, Glenn and Michelle Ye Hee Lee. (2016) Fact-checking Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech at the 2016 DNC. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/07/29/fact-checking-hillary-clintons-acceptance-speech-at-the-2016-dnc/.

Nelson, Libby. (2016) The DNC's most powerful anti-Trump message came from the father of a fallen Muslim soldier. Vox. Retrieved from http://www.vox.com/2016/7/28/12319658/democratic-convention-khizr-khan.

Wilstein, Matt. (2016) How Stephen Colbert got his groove back at RNC and DNC 2016. The Daily Beast. Retrieved from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/29/how-stephen-colbert-got-his-groove-back-at-rnc-and-dnc-2016.html.