Thursday night, channeling Hiroaki Protagonist and perhaps a touch of Edward Murrow, I sat on my couch watching events unfold in St. Paul at the Republican National Convention.

Murrow started off in the old established media of the age, providing radio broadcasts from Europe during World War II. Yet many people remember him for his work in the new media, television, leading to the censure of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

So, like Hiro Protagonist, broke, but connected, I watched the old media, television this time. I’ve been television recording footage of the National Conventions for Remix America. Remix America provides the opportunity for participants to share footage, both old media television, as well as online videos from the new media, and mix them together to create an interesting and informative montage of country seen through various aspects of our media ecology. On the TV, and being recorded onto my hard disk, was Cindy Lou McCain , looking like the perfectly airbrushed Stepford wife talking about her life, a snapshot out of 1950s America.

At the same time, I was jacked into the new media. Across my screen Tweets from Twitter flickered. They provided information on the protests outside of the convention center, and links to live video of friends of mine citizen journalists, videographers, members of the new media, whatever you want to call it, as they tried to track the demonstrations and police response.

There were images of rows and rows of riot police, with their helmets, shields and batons, all looking the same, as if they were computer generated graphics of Star Wars Storm Troopers wearing black, or perhaps an outtake from the Matrix. There were reports of tear gas canisters exploding and protestors being rounded up. Friends huddled in their car as they gathered footage and tried to find a way to safety.

It was surreal; Cindy Lou, smiling inside the convention center and Chuckumentary being told by police to get out of the car and F**kin run. Images of Dhalgren came to mind.

This morning, I sit in my office in far away Woodbridge, Connecticut. It is sunny outside, but Weather.com shows a projected path of Tropical Storm headed towards the Carolinas for the weekend, with Hurricane Ike on a path to hit Florida in the middle of next week. Pandora.com has been playing a medley of Paul Simon tunes. ‘Mrs. Robinson’ fades into ‘American Tune’.

The old media makes no mention of the protests and the arrest of journalists, and it almost seems like a bad dream induced by reading too much science fiction, yet the footage remains.

Growing up, I learned that when you stage a coup, the first thing you do, is seize control of the media outlets. The corporate media has been consolidating, yet is it enough? People have commented that in 1960, Kennedy defeated Nixon through a better use of the emerging media, television, instead of relying on the fading old media of radio. Will the same happen this time with the Internet and television?

So, I write my blog post and head off “… to wound the autumnal city”.