Starring: Laura Bush, Tipper Gore, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Boies, Sandra Day O'Connor Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: DVD Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC Label: Turner Home Ent Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: February 06, 2001 Running Time: 65 minutes Theatrical Release Date: 2001
Product Description: When Americans went to the polls on November 7 2000 to elect the next Commander-in-Chief no one could have predicted the events of succeeding days and weeks - events that would test the very limits of the Constitution and mesmerize a nation. For 36 days George W. Bush and Al Gore fought tooth-and-nail for the Presidency - and Florida became the final battleground. Relive Election 2000 - from the drama of Election Night to the Florida recounts from the intense war of words between the candidates' camps to momentous legal actions in the U.S. and Florida Supreme Courts. CNN anchors and reporters Judy Woodruff Bernie Shaw Jeff Greenfield Greta Van Susteren Wolf Blitzer and more reflect on the key events and what the outcome means for America's future. CNN anchor Bill Hemmer hosts.Running Time: 66 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MISCELLANEOUS/SPECIAL INTEREST UPC: 053939847826
Amazon.com: The election coverage that wouldn't end is recapped in this production by CNN, and hearing about the fiasco in Florida is somehow not as grim an experience as one might expect. A number of faces familiar to CNN viewers (including Judy Woodruff, Bernard Shaw, Bill Schneider, Jeff Greenfield, Candy Crowley, and Larry King) share their memories of events, and enough behind-the-scenes material is included to ensure that the program is more than just a review of what news junkies have already seen. Everyone in the country had an opinion about who was trying to steal the election, and viewing some of the coverage as it appeared will surely revive some bitter emotions. And, it's too bad, America, but there's no way to avoid use of the word "chad." This production is essentially instant history, and the review of Florida ballots by journalists was far from complete when the program was assembled, so no attempt is made to offer a definitive explanation of what happened in Florida. And though it surely contains something to infuriate everyone, this is a good one-hour review of the 36-day debacle that riveted America. --Robert J. McNamara
A Solid Examination of Stupidity In this highly ambiguous, glossy, rewrite of the 2000 election, we witness the stupidity that is CNN. Whether you are to the left or right of the political spectrum, this recap will appall you. Especially if you have any respect for history; worse still if you favor detail.
This film jumps over events as if they never even happened. You will read history books, reading digests, etc., that will tell the events in the proper context of their import during this fateful election, yet the news, the actual news, will barely even mention them, if at all. Probably because it is as much their fault, as the actual perps.
CNN is a pathetic, empty, propaganda machine. And we can not do anything about it.
Pathetic film.
Review of "Election 2000 DVD CNN did a good job of staying in the middle of the road on this DVD.
Magnificent If you don't like politics steer clear of CNN -Election 2000, but if you are interested in politics the process and this important part of American political history get this DVD.
I thoroughly enjoyed the informative reflections of CNN anchors and felt that the program represented the situation fairly and without bias.
The DVD is worth far more than what Amazon is asking for, so even though America is an election and five years past this event, if you are interested in looking back in time to an extremely interesting point in American political history, you can't go past this title.
Completely misses the point Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't CNN supposed to be one of those "liberal" stations? If that's the case they're the worst liberal station ever because this is a terrible documentary that totally glosses over what happened in Florida.
There was absolutely nothing about the thousands of names that were wrongfully purged from Florida's voter lists. Next to no scrutiny of Katherine Harris and her role in the whole debacle. Nothing about Jeb Bush. They show angry republicans at board of election rooms, simply calling them "republicans." It implicitly implies that these were just concerned citizens when if fact they were republican congressional aides flown in from D.C.
CNN acts confused in this dvd, wondering "how could we have gotten this wrong?" when they leave out the fact that when George W. Bush's cousin at Fox news called the election for the family, CNN fell in line like a sheep. A spineless, pathetic sheep. Wolf Blitzer goes so far to say that the outcome was Gore's fault, because he didn't win his home state. Actually Wolf, the blame belongs to Bush and everyone who helped him steal an election.
Watch this dvd and also watch the Unprecedented dvd. You'll be disgusted.
CNN's strange "victory" lap This is a fairly mediocre recap of Election 2000 that is more about CNN and their talking heads, with the Florida Recount thrown in as an after-thought. Complete with gauzy interviews of their anchors and plenty of *gee whiz* music, CNN's approach is less informative than a rather forced nostalgic sense of "Remember when we all got together and had a wonderful time?" I was appalled.
I'm one of those people that stayed up until 4 in the morning after the 2000 election, so I got to see the media meltdown first-hand on all of the networks, and have no sympathy for CNN's "golly gee" approach to remembering what happened. All of them were operating on a herd-mentality, and both the Bush and Gore campaigns had every right to be furious, and Americans disgusted, not just for their miscalling Florida numerous times, but for their effect on voter turnout all across the country. I remember feeling malicious glee listening to Judy Woodruff babbling about the history of the Texas War Memorial thingy and Candy Crowley's canned Bush-victory report while on CBS Dan Rather finally got on the ball and called Florida properly as too close to call and within the recount percentage.
The CNN anchors deal with the exit-poll failure in a couple of throw away comments in the documentary, but to be fair Jeff Greenfield rightly called the media's handling of the election a failure. The documentary's approach to the Recount, however, is essentially a re-run of the media's failed coverage of it in 2000, where their focus was again on the artificial horse-race quality of media punditry--where their concern was along the lines of "How does this make Gore/Bush look" instead of on the more important question of "Who won? And how do we find out?"
Judy Woodruff's comments in the documentary resurrect the media's ennui, even telling us that polls showed Americans favored ending the recount, when polls actually showed Americans wanted an accurate count. In that period, what clearly developed in the media was a desire to end the process, for what was perceived then--as now--as for the good of the country. The image of Gore a sore loser was the dominant theme, alien to the actual question of "Who won?" That mentality persists today in their documentary, and questions of the legitimacy of such a mentality are not even considered.
This of course means that the scandal of voter disenfranchisement in Florida was ignored, the complicity of Secretary of State Katherine Harris and Governor Jeb Bush in manipulating voter rolls is not touched on, while Harris seems to get a "good soldier" pat on the back from CNN. The thug tactics of Republican lawyers and Hill staffers, and their effect on the process, are not acknowledged. Since they confine everything to election night, the recount, and court cases and judge everyone and everything from within that narrow time frame, what actually happened in Florida (and why) doesn't register at all in this documentary.
In the end, though, I agree that the Democrats fouled up legally and politically, and should have demanded a state-wide hand recount, and CNN is also right in pointing out that Gore's irresponsible campaigning lost not only Clinton's Arkansas, but his own home-state of Tennessee. That does not, however, excuse CNN's avid participation in the groupthink that that political reality in those other states justified their disastorous and mediocre coverage of the Florida Recount.
Now, the UNPRECEDENTED documentary clearly has its own agenda, even if you agree with it. But at least that documentary is actually *about* the political process and how it is abused, rather than CNN's self-congratulatory approach to the election, and the incestuous idea that somehow politics is measured, understood, and evaluated solely by CNN's own images and coverage.
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