Review – Planet America

Planet America – ABC1/ABC News 24 – 6:30pm Friday – AUS

Of all of the things in this world that I obsess over the one I have the hardest time explaining is just how much I love American elections. This weird obsession dates back to the Gore vs. Bush election of 2000. I can distinctly remember a conversation I had with one of my classmates about who we thought would get elected – this was before Florida, the hanging chads, and the whole mess – I can’t begin imagine how many Australian high school students were discussing the electability of Al Gore and George W. Bush. Don’t mistake my interest in elections as an interest in politics because as I’ve gotten older the one thing I’ve learnt is that with politics there are no winners and losers – there are just losers, but with election, oh boy, those things are where the fun is.

It’s not just the big presidential election that gets me either, it’s the primaries, that stuff is so much fun. As somebody who knew all the players in the 2004 Democratic primaries (John Edwards and his smile, Wesley Clark and his late entrance into the race, Joe Lieberman and his early hilarious flame out) I would have to imagine that I’m exactly the sort of person the ABC’s new Planet America would be targeting. Planet America offers an Australian analysis of the race for the White House hosted by ABC News Radio’s John Barron and The Chaser’s Chas Licciardello. Yet, like so many looks at ‘American politics through Australian eyes’ it falls short because to get the true taste of American politics you sadly need to hear it from an American.

Planet America makes an admirable effort to dissect the week in American election news. This first episode finds Chas explaining Super PACs and caucuses to us, the first in a segment that felt like it’d been left over from Hungry Beast, the second by way of Lego blocks. Each week John will also take us on a journey through the States Of The Union, the first week focusing on Michigan with some random facts about the place. The show also featured an interview with American diplomat John Bolton, and invited former NSW Premier Bob Carr on for a roundtable discussion, which was more of an interview with Bob Carr than a roundtable discussion but that’s beside the point.

Everything in the show was reasonably enjoyable if fairly lightweight. The problem with Australians talking about American politics, and this isn’t just a Planet America problem this is an everybody problem, they have the same problem on The Drum every time they talk U.S. politics; the problem is that they aren’t forming their own opinions on these events. All Australian journalists do is filter the thoughts of American journalists. There is really no other way around this because even though Chas and John and whoever can form their own opinions on these matters those opinions have to be skewed by the journalists they’re reading to help them form those opinions in the first place. Just as my thoughts on Ron Paul and Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum and their various chances at winning the nomination come from the variety of American journalists I read on the matter. We are all reacting to a reaction – unlike Australian journalists talking Australian politics where they are creating the reaction.

What this comes down to is the question of whether or not Planet America tells you anything new. And, as somebody who divides my internet time between reading about television and reading about this election, I don’t think that it does. Chas is fun and John adds weight to the interviews, even if he spends way too much time chuckling at all of Chas’s jokes. The show does do an enjoyable job of repeating information that you can get elsewhere back to you in an entertaining fashion. Despite my unexplainable fascination for American elections I still feel like I’ll only drop in occasionally on Planet America in the coming weeks rather than make it a permanent fixture on my weekly schedule. The audience this show can hopefully grab is all of those nerdy high school kids who are having weird conversations about the electability chances of Mitt Romney right at this very minute. If this show had been on when I was just starting out on the long dark road of obsessing over presidential candidates and the polling numbers in New Hampshire then I’m sure I would have been first in line for this show.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright