CNN cleans up while Fox plays to empty room

On CNN's extended election pundit special The Situation Room, all the usual suspects were present: Former Clinton advisor David Gergen, Texan political strategist Paul Begala, Republican commentator Alex Castellanos, radio host and prominent Obama cheerleader  Roland Martin, and Jimmy 'the ragin Cajun' Carville, a Democrat spindoctor bald as Brando's Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.

As if the election itself weren't exciting enough, CNN had created a huge computer generated White House and Senate which would appear now and again in the centre of the studio, and from inside which the faces of prospective congressmen would emerge on giant virtual flying-carpet-cum-playing-cards, sweeping up at intervals to present a peacock's fan of players.
 
On another screen at the back of the cavernous room, the exit polls were arranged as though in a chest of drawers of the type they use in expensive lingerie shops. Just press the narrow drawer marked WHITE EVANGELICAL MALE and out silkily-slid the statistics: pie charts, previous election results, projected readings, comparative analysis. But all this was nothing in the face of the prize: CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin reporting from Chicago via hologram.

‘Jessica is not actually in New York with us! She is a hologram’

Like Princess Leia, she stood in front of the Situation Room anchorman Wolf Blitzer, flickering, and ever so slightly smaller than she usually is. "I am currently inside a tent with 35 high definition cameras ringing me, shooting my body at different angles," she explained. "My cameras in Chicago are talking to the cameras there and so I am with you in NYC!" Blitzer shook his head in wonder. "Jessica" he breathed, "you make a terrific hologram. Doesn't she make a terrific hologram? People, listen up – Jessica is not actually in New York with us! She is a hologram."
 
At seven o'clock Kentucky came in for McCain and some counties of Virginia too, with half a neon green bar running along the bottom of the screen giving the impression that the state was downloading and had got stuck. Painful minutes passed with no change or further information. Blitzer turned to Gergen to find him uncharacteristically ratty. "Why bother with exit polls!" Gergen snapped, his face suddenly slim and young, as though he were actively shedding weight and time with the sheer quantity of feeling pulsing through him. In an attempt to keep things ticking over, the indomitable Blitzer boomed "I just love these new microphones of ours! These new microphones are good. I am hearing everyone clearly here!" But his complexion was the ochre shade of a strip of bacon left uncovered in the fridge.

Anderson Cooper is a human being designed by Bose

And yet the very moment Anderson Cooper took the helm, the tables turned for the better. Anderson. Charcoal suit, moon-grey tie, ears slightly pointed, super-alert, and everything else very smooth and pared back. You can't even see Anderson Cooper's microphone. I suspect it is built into his very person. If there were ever a human being designed by Bose, then it is surely him.

At the Flatiron bar in New York City, upstairs a McCain party watched Fox News and downstairs it was the Obamites and CNN - and those that weren't watching were filming others watching, on iPhones and videocams, interviewing each other about their thoughts and feelings, their best moments of the election so far and how much they would miss it, the bar itself a guerilla television studio dedicated to the rapture of commemoration, demonstrating the intense need for connection in America, the need to be unashamed, to be happy.

I thought, if he wins it's because there was too strong a desire here not to be unhappy. As the words CNN declare Obama President elect flashed up in yellow, 300 cameraphones were raised to capture the moment on the screen. Gergen's comb-over fell forward to suggest a quiff, Roland Martin burst into tears, and Paul Begala said, "There is nowhere I would rather be than on this set tonight."

The possibility that all this could in fact be a computer game crossed my mind, in much the same way it it did the time my tyre blew on the M40, flipping the Nissan Micra I'd just rented over twice and propelling it backwards across two lanes in the direction of oncoming traffic. Only in a really good way.

David Gergen’s comb-over fell into a quiff, Roland Martin burst into tears

Upstairs Fox was broadcasting to an emptying room, showing Obama giving his speech referencing Lincoln and Martin Luther King, the Gettysburg address and the Declaration of Independence, reaching into himself and plucking out these things in the way some people do with Shakespeare. How the camera loves his face! Odd, really, since his head is actually quite small for the biggest star in the world, which he is.

The most famous person ever. FDR and JFK had it easy in comparison. And Churchill and Napoleon too. And I'd be quite worried if it weren't so obvious that he is for real, and understands the crucial thing: that America is not foremost a nation or a race, but an idea. As Fox was switched off upstairs and the sound turned up on Cooper in the bar below - now broadcasting to the biggest cable audience in world history - a Republican putting on his coat at the door asked to kiss my hand. "Erm, ok," I said, "and commiserations." "Fuck you," he said back, before politely leaving the bar, and hailing a cab.

PS. "Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!" Walt Whitman, Song of Myself. ·