I had noticed Steve Lawrence is out at The Line, KNME’s Friday night New Mexican round-table discussion, but I hadn’t seen the show since before our two week camping trip.

Gene Grant has taken over duties as host and that is an improvement over Lawrence (who must be having a bad year with the end of Crosswinds and losing his show).

There have been other changes that may be Gene’s influence. The overly simple inter-segment title cards have been replaced by a flat panel monitor behind Gene — a little more TV-ish, alá NOW. In the final minutes, there is a timer on screen to indicate there is only a minute of discussion of some topics. While I think that’s a bad idea in many respects, it does reassure the attention-deficit that we’ll be moving on real soon (and gives them something to watch in the meantime). At the least, it shows concern for keeping things moving. And there’s a teaser to get people to go to the online forum.

I still have mixed feelings about Margaret Montoya. I appreciate her perspective, I just can’t stand all those uh’s — UNM has several ToastMasters groups, Professor Montoya.

In spite of myself, I may warm to Whitney Cheshire, a very New Mexican conservative, which is to say non-fire-breathing (though, one must recall Dimdahl is a native New Mexican). She conveys a sense of “this is what Republicans think, but I know you don’t care, so that’s OK.” More mellow, less bellow than we’ve come to expect of the Right.

And, in a more enlightened age, this would not matter, but it was great to see 3 women, 2 men; 3 minorities, 2 Anglos; and not a middle-aged white guy in the bunch. I hear what middle-aged white guys think every time I open my mouth — I don’t need to hear more of that. (Well, I’m in the minority within the majority, but my cohort has held the stage long enough.) mjh