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TechnoratiIt was LaShannon Spencer's lucky night. She'd been picked, you see, to ask a question at yesterday's Democratic presidential debate. And she had a good one. "We constantly hear healthcare questions and questions pertaining to the war," she observed, "but we don't hear questions pertaining to the supreme court justices or education." Consequently, she wanted to use her question-asking opportunity to learn about the candidates' approach to the judiciary: "If you are elected president, what qualities must the appointee possess?"
Spencer was right. I can't recall having heard anything about judges from the major contenders. And presidents have, historically, taken a variety of different approaches to judicial appointments. So it'd be interesting to hear what the candidates think about this.
Not interesting, though, to CNN's Suzanne Malveaux, who decided that she would direct the question to Chris Dodd with a proviso "in answering that question, also tell us whether or not you would require your nominees to support abortion rights."
That's not an interesting question. Nobody who follows politics closely enough to be sitting at home watching a primary debate on television could possibly experience uncertainty as to whether or not the leading Democrats would appoint pro-choice supreme court justices. Nevertheless, it's considered impolitic to have a publicly stated litmus test for your judicial nominees. But any Democrat who, when directly asked, refused to commit to appointing pro-choice justices would be in hot water with feminist and reproductive-rights groups. Hence, while Spencer's question prompted some interesting responses - Chris Dodd said he wants people with a record in the judiciary, Joe Biden called for a return to the days of nominating people with experience in elective office, and Barack Obama riffed on the judicial branch's unique responsibility to secure the interests of those who lack "clout" in the political process - Malveaux's prompted nothing but tedious verbal footwork.
And the crazy thing about it is that she almost certainly asked it in order to prompt nothing but tedious tip-toeing. Earlier, before the real people were allowed to ask their questions, moderator Wolf Blitzer decided to take up the candidates' time asking them about driving licences for illegal immigrants, even though this isn't a very important issue, isn't really a question the president has the constitutional authority to deal with, and was discussed in the previous debate and ad nauseum in the period between the debates.
In response, almost every Democrat tried to explain to Blitzer that to understand their position on this issue you had to understand their position on the larger question of immigration policy. Blitzer clearly regarded these efforts as a shameful dodge. Explaining that he wanted "to make sure the viewers and those of us who are here fully understand all of your positions on this" he then demanded a reductive answer to the question: "barring, avoiding, assuring there isn't going to be comprehensive immigration reform, do you support or oppose driver's licences for illegal immigrants?" This, however, is the reverse of helping viewers fully understand the candidates' positions on the topic. By refusing to let them discuss their complete take on the immigration issue, Blitzer was ensuring that the audience would walk away with a partial and distorted view of where the contenders stand.
And he was doing it, of course, by design. As with the abortion question, the narrow framing of the immigration issue around driving licences forced the Democrats to choose between saying something that will piss off Latino groups (no licences) and something that polls badly with voters (licences for illegals). That the Democrats might have an answer that makes both groups happy - comprehensive reform - isn't something the media is interested in, even if the voters might be.
The pattern is consistent. Spencer wasn't quite right, for example, to say that the candidates never get asked about education policy. Earlier in the evening, for example, Blitzer asked a preposterously loaded question: "What is wrong with rewarding a teacher who excels at the job that they're doing by paying them more than an average teacher would make?" This has little to do with the federal government's role in education policy and reflects a pretty question-begging approach to the issue, since it simply assumes the existence of a solid metric of teacher performance. It does, however, set up a squeeze play between teacher's unions and what the press thinks the general public wants to hear, and that's good enough for Blitzer.
CNN's moderators, in short, following the example set by Tim Russert in the last debate, just decided that they weren't really interested in producing a debate that would inform the public about where the candidates stand on important issues. Instead, they locked horns in a sophomoric battle of wits in which they tried - and overwhelmingly failed - to trip someone up with a question that put them in an awkward position, even if it meant focusing their questions on trivia or even scolding candidates for trying to put their answers in context. Ordinary people, by contrast, wanted to get information about under-discussed issues. Aside from the supreme court question, one man did want to hear the candidates' general thoughts on immigration, a woman asked about Iran policy and another asked about the disparity in compensation between soldiers and mercenaries. The only really dumb question from the audience was about whether Hillary Clinton preferred pearls or diamonds, and the questioner says CNN forced her to ask it instead of a question about issues.
The professionals, by contrast, asked almost nothing but dumb questions that often - I think of Blitzer asking whether human rights is more important than national security - seem to deliberately have been framed poorly, specifically because doing so is more likely to produce an awkward moment. This, it seems, is what helps television personalities climb the greasy pole of vapid press cynicism, but it's a gross abdication of the press's responsibility to try to help people understand the world.
Matthew Yglesias is staff writer at the American Prospect.
© 2007 The Guardian
33 Comments so far
Show Allstarofthesea -
you're right. showing what we all know - that the debate process has collapsed into pre-packaged BS - isn't the same as explaining why.
Why has the public allowed it?
Why doesn't the public even SEE IT?
These really deeper questions get into mass psychology: Why don't [enough] people see any number of similar things that are ruining their lives....?
For generations, the US public's been drenched in the increasing, reality-distorting BS of commercial advertizing (for commercial products), so that now, there's not only no moral compass left in our society due to normalization of such Ad-lying, there's not even a 'fact' compass left for most people to tell up from down.. Now, most Americans easily agree to 'buy' political candidates no differently than they buy the phoney differences between toothpaste brands.
Americans have become accustomed -- inured is a better word - to Bull Shit As Truth, at almost ever level of perception you can name.
Government uses the same Madison Ave information techniques as Madison Ave itself.
You'd think the average person's common sense instincts would see the craziness in all this --but their instincts have apparently been successfullly 'rewired' to accept BS, just by a constant repetition of smaller Reality lies in day-to-day life; the motive for which is always: somebody wants to sell you something you don't need, so they can profit personally, etc., etc.
But the effect of this process goes deeper still, as your good inquiring brain obviously knows.
As another poster noted somewhere on CD: How this kind of instinctual Reality corruption takes fatal hold on a mass scale, has never been well publicized in the US (...guess why!)
If you can get past all the academic verbiage of those who have studied it, Herbert Marcuse's writings on this subject are one of the best sources for more-developed insights.
M's analysis is like an intellectual's description of the movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, applied to American mass psychology.
There's no way to enjoy reading and contemplating such stuff. It's scary and depressing. But it rings truer about the Why than most anything else you're likely to encounter.
These debates are as farcical as our voting system. I sincerely do not understand why Kucinich needs to stick with the Democratic party. He clearly, has nothing in common with the Democratic platform which seems stoneageish (I made up that word) compared to his ideas.
It is also interesting to hear the media talk about no-gooders such as Biden, Dodd and Richardson who have extremely low poll numbers instead of Kucinich who comes in 4th in almost every poll. I even called in to my local radio program in Atlanta who were discussing how Richardson and Dodd might do well after the debate after discussing at large about the top three. The media purposely makes sure Kucinich does not get any airtime because of the fear of change that he might bring about that will rattle their own establishments.
Its saddening to see the state of affairs in this country. People like Wolf Blitzer do not deserve to be called journalists, let alone running Presidential debates. SITUATION ROOM MY ASS!
Kucinich will fold like a sheet of tracing paper come the convention and "support the nominee of our party"--just like he did last time. History hurts. It happens every time. There is always one Dem ritually appointed to confuse the electorate to real choices, who talks the "progressive" talk and who then leads the sheep back into the fold until, another four years later, the same shit happens. I have seen it happen since 1968. It´ll happen again and again until USAmericans dump the Dems. Wake up people!
Yeah, Dennis coudda said this and shudda done that. But if you take what he did with his 6 minutes and put it together, he really shines. This was done by someone and posted on U-tube. Go to kucinich.us and follow the lead, watch it, and feel the glow.
Kucinich was awesome in Las Vegas. Too bad that the surrounding clutter of political garbage dulled the impact so. But he's out there, battling, planting ideas, providing a stunning contrast to politics as usual. And he's creeping up in the polls. At some point his campaign can reach the threshold for takeoff, cross the potential barrier, spark a movement that could spread like a firestorm through a thoroughly angry and disaffected population whose core beliefs and interests he represents.
JP, the issue is as you see it "worthy of support". Well I see it a bit differently. You don´t have to write anybody in. Anybody who isn´t a Dem or a Rep is "worthy. Why? Because that really registers a note of protest.
Not voting ensures those who mobilize their people always win. (And you know who is good at mobilizing their people. The Reps and Dems--and the most regressive groups of both, by and large) If you can´t mobilize enough to get your own on the ballot, and you can´t write in, then still, most likely, and in most states, there will be a CP-USA, or Socialist, or Libertarian, or Green on the ballot. Take your pick.
Don´t confuse the election with the "sham" way the process is controlled by two parties. Don´t like the process? Don´t vote for either of those two parties. Ever. But vote so that it is seen that people don´t like the choices of Reps or Dems.
The Dems ran all over the place trying to pick up a growing Socialist movements votes in the 1930´s and it did move the Dems "leftward." Why? Because more and more people were excited about Socialist alternatives and voting that way. Debs got a million votes when he was in jail! (Had he been out of jail he would have changed US history. What is needed are tons of non Dems and Reps in Congress and the Senate so that real electoral reform can pass and allow more parties access to the system. Once that happens, my prediction is that 35% of USAmericans would still be Reps, about 35-40% would still be Dems (for a while at least) and the rest divided by Greens, Libertarians, Constitionalists and so-called Independents. That would be a great start and those numbers would shift every election as parties competed and won or lost according to their representation in the public. And THAT would be closer to a real democracy.
FV HORN: Love your game show analogy, tragically it IS apt.
LITTLE BROTHER: The movement towards the artificial had much to do with a few dovetailing events: Barnum's realization that "there's a sucker born every minute," aided and abeted by the MSM and the power of advertising to seduce. In my view, one of the greatest trespasses against the natural, placing the manmade into a false position of "improved status" was artificial baby milk to replace the stuff Nature intended from the mother's breast. When people can be convinced that science, the manmade, does it better than the Great Mother, you can sell anyone anything. THAT was the litmus test! From there, bombs make us safer, lying leaders hold integrity, and the list goes on.
Siouxrose said:
"When people can be convinced that science, the manmade, does it better than the Great Mother, you can sell anyone anything."
Hi Siouxrose. But isn't science the best way to understand the Great Mother? Scientists are too often dependent on businessmen motivated by profit at any cost who use science for evil purposes like making artificial baby milk and bombs for Mammon. But the only manmade thing about science is that it's a tool, a method of understanding nature that like fire, can be used to cook or to kill. The late Professor Shoemaker's "Small is Beautiful" talks about the healthy use of science as "appropriate technology".
nodozejoze,
I agree with you when that is a possibility. Here in Virginia write-ins are not an option in presidential elections. If there is an alternative worthy of support on the ballot then vote for him/her. Otherwise it's a blank ballot that says, "I took the time to come to the polls but cannot support either candidate."
There is also the issue of saying, "This election is a meaningless sham" and denying it legitimacy by opting out via the blank ballot.
JadedProle,
A far simpler solution than opting out (which about 50% of the USAmerican electorate do anyway every four years, the lowest rates of any industrialized Western country bby the way) is to simply vote for someone other than the Dems or Reps.
Most CD readers are liberal-progressive and thus voting for a Green say, will send a far more powerful message than not voting and ensuring that the regressive troglodytes in both parties who WILL turn out get their candidate in.
Vote for Sheehan and beat Pelosi for ex. That will get the attention of the MSM real quick. Get rid of Feinstein or Lieberman. Bottom line is you can´t get the system you want by always voting for people who don´t want your system.
Or not voting at all.
Glad to see such awareness and good analysis all around. The phony election spectacle is a nauseating sham. We should get as many people as possible to LOUDLY opt out and boycott it by staying home or casting blank ballots while making public statements as to why.
Maybe we could organize and set up alternative voting tables outside the polls with a list of candidates. Voters could write their choice and their name on paper and put it into a box and we could tally them to a central online site thus having an actual legitimately elected alternative president to challenge the corporate plant. It would take some organizing but it could be done.
PR firms package a product and sell it as a politician.
And I think the corporate media wants the public to tune out on the "debates". That just makes it easier for them. The less "reality" exposure for candidates, the better to market them.
Funny how people judge a candidate by looks instead of by substance. That's how we got Reagan and Bush isn't it?
Matthew Yglesias said it very well. I was disgusted with Tim Russert's "gotcha" questions in the last debate, and CNN's similar "gotcha" approach this time out. They seem to think that a tough question is something along the lines of "are you still beating your wife?".
Reporters who ask these meaningless questions are, like President Bush, clever but not smart. All it proves is what hapless reporters they are.
On the security vs. human rights question, I thought it was pretty interesting, but rightfully it should have been security vs. liberty, as Ben Franklin posed it, and they could have had a roundtable discussion of only that issue for 45-60 minutes.
I don't mind Gravel being disinvited; I couldn't help but cringe at his Pacino-like rants. But Dennis is definitely being pushed out of the picture by the media, and he's a sitting congressman! He is campaigning in a dignified way; he deserves at least the dignity of his office.
And if it's true that CNN fed the "diamonds or pearls" question to that one audience member, how can CNN find fault with Hillary's staff for doing the same thing? Or better yet, how much of this sort of phony press-conferencing is going on, considering also the FEMA fake media event and Bush's many media plants?
jason34---excellent input providing deeper understanding of the process. Still, it doesn't answer my question---why? Why has it become like this? Is it the expressed intention to turn us off with such superficial drivel so we won't even wonder what any candidate really stands for? If this is about profits, surely it would make for much more interesting theater to have some unexpected, thought-provoking questions with one follow-up allowed from real people. What is their viewership as things are now? Who bothers to tune in anymore? I can't imagine why anyone would---it's boring and insulting to our intelligence.
RichM---Sure it would have been nice, and in a perfect world, he might have, but in the current world he would join Mike Gavel in the "box" for the rest of the game. A twelve month penalty. I don't know how he stands it, myself, but I suppose he hopes if he gets to say a sentence or two each time, it might penetrate the white noise being generated to drown out his message. With Gavel gone, DK is the only real voice we have, and since he has no money to get his voice heard anywhere else....he has to take any venue he can get.
celebrity----Right, nice fantasy---trouble is, the camera operator would be instructed to cut away quick, and there would be no one outside interviewing him as to why he abruptly left the stage. The live audience would probably assume he was contacted by the mothership and wandered off to meet it. I can just hear the pundits after the debate, if they addressed his walk off at all. They'd probablt assume no one would notice since he hardly ever gets a chance to talk.
Look, the MSM has all but completed their hatchet job on Kucinich. I respect that he just keeps getting up and doing his thing everytime. A brave man and a real patriot!
The TV debates constitute one of the few remaining -- and maybe the ony remaining system-traditional, public venue where the fraud of our rigged candidate selection system is still vulernable to easy exposure and potentially remediable by citizen demands for direct dialogue between candidates and voters in a national setting..
3 or 4 presidental election cycle ago, there was still enough marginal honesty (flexibility?) left in the system to structure presidential debates in a way tha allowed most of the questions to come from a citizen audience, with these citizen questioners allowed at least one follow-up question.
Citizen audience questions at that time were rule-vetted pretty reasonably, and mostly restricted according to presentational wording, not conceptual content. But with reasonable restrictions/precautions against off-the-wall, ad hominem stuff like: Aren't you, candidate X, a paid agent of the Jewish state?, etc.
At that time, the otherwise conceptually-free, reasonably-vetted questions' wordings were, by pre-agreement with the questioner, printed-out on an index card for the citizen questioner, and only cut off by the moderator if the questioner obviously departed from his/her agreed-upon wording. This was an arguably reasonable precaution against suddenly sprung, tendentious speechs or clearly nut case queries, on live TV, 7-second delays notwithstanding.
Not an optimum format, but functional and defensible by half way reasonable standards.
This not-so-long-ago US format has given way to something more-resembling the erstwhile USSR's system of Democratic Centralism - wherein no anonymous citizen gets to ask a public question of those who hold or seek power, unless the political correctness of the question has been vetted by those who already hold power.
That America's candidate/issue veting and public debate system has now come to resemble that of the USSR's, ought to be obvious to US voters.
But it's not.
And this means that those of us who see what's happened -- have to try to make it obvious.
There is no politics left in this country. Taking its place is one endless and tedious and irrelevant Reality Show, as one by one the contestants are kicked off the island. I's also a show made only for TV, of course, and perhaps unlike real reality shows ( there's a thought! )the fix is in from day one.
RichM said "The notion that these TV spectacles are "debates" is ludicrous. They are fake, degrading, antidemocratic insults to our collective intelligence."
I'd go further and say that the notion that we have legitimate national elections is ludicrous.
Where does AIPAC end and the MSM begin? AIPAC, the Jerusalem Post, then CNN anchor. What more do we need to know about CNN and Wolf Blitzer?
Creepy 1989 clip of Blitzer defending Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-8aTGnjHnI
In the next (cough) "debate" I would love to see D.K. walk quietly off the stage and out the door. If there is ANY integrity left in journalism, he would be met outside and questioned as to his reasons for leaving. At that time he could lay it all out and FINALLY get some freakin' media attention on himself AND the insanity of a "produced" extravaganza by corporate shill moderators, lack of "ISSUE content, and out of balance time to speak.
Jason34 raises a good point (as has everyone on this thread). Specifically, why didn't Kucinich object when Blitzer committed his many assaults on the public's intelligence? When he asked a phony packaged question, Kucinich could have challenged him. Or when he cut Kucinich off, when the latter tried to bring up the subject of impeachment, Kucinich could have had a quick verbal riff prepared, to force Blitzer to allow him to speak. He could have said, for example,
"Excuse me, Wolf, but I am one of the candidates here, and YOU ARE NOT -- and I am speaking of blatant violations of the US Constitution. I demand that you allow me to finish my thought, which is far more important to the public interest than anything you have to say."
I think the audience would probably have cheered wildly for that -- and even if they didn't, it should have been said.
Outrageous circus!--This kind of manipulation and control won't end well...
"The only really dumb question from the audience was about whether Hillary Clinton preferred pearls or diamonds, and the questioner says CNN forced her to ask it instead of a question about issues."
--
Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred "diamonds or pearls" at last night's debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
"Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN," Luisa writes. "I was asked to submit questions including "lighthearted/fun" questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance."
The (Democrat) debates could be useful if
1- average people were 'allowed' to ask questions from the audience
2- honest candidates, like Kucinich and Gravel, objected to the proceedings each time a blatantly pre-packaged, phoney question was asked.
It's my understanding that the groundrules for these TV debates are re-negotiated in each case and set by an agreement between the candidates and the sponsoring news media.
The bullshitting candidates - greasy sophists like Hillary -- apparently dominate the pre-debate format negotiations, easily colluding with MSM moderators who, like her, want to make sure that nothing too real or too challenging of the status quo gets asked or pursued in debate.
Kucinich and Gravel have (reportedly) objected again and again to these absurd groundrules, but have been voted down just as often in pre-event negotiations.
The only way this circus show might change, is if enough average viewers began objecting loudly to the debate groundrules -- the progressive news media then amplifying these objections -- and so possibly empowering the hand of groundrule reformers, like Kucinich and Gravel.
The present debate formats are a fraud and an insult to voters' intelligence.
Little Brother, RichM, and FVHorn, Dichterfreund--thanks for some brilliant analysis. Best in Show, indeed!
None of this comes as a shock to me. My "disgust-meter" no longer registers---broken from too many spikes.
I threw out my TV ten years ago---on occasion, will see something at a relative's house. I end up feeling enraged by the contrast between what passes for TV News and what I find online. I keep begging my family members to turn off the "news" and watch Democracy Now or Keith Olbermann. I have had some limited success.
Reading on a couple of sites last night a fairly good run down on the Vegas event, just reinforced my stand against the MSM propaganda game. Is it just my imagination that sees an escalation in the scope/obviousness of their terrible productions of propaganda? Almost as if they can't be bothered anymore to disguise their intent.
The only solution is for people in this country to tune out, but I doubt we'll see it anytime soon. Still the growing popularity of KO's Countdown, Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report tell us that growing numbers are starting to "get it." Then again, these shows also qualify as infotainment, but of a different stripe.
Blitzer is a first class jackass from everything I read about him---never watched him, never will. But he is just a highly paid stooge---not the real problem which is unseen but pulling the strings every minute of airtime.
And here's how CNN's producers decide to produce a 'debate' --
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111707Y.shtml
" Most observers feel that Hillary Clinton aced the "diamonds or pearls" question at last night's Las Vegas debate, and many feel that the question was "frivolous," "trivial," and "sexist." Now the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder tells us that "Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred 'diamonds or pearls' at last night's debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository."
Thanks for the compliment, BeForKids. Alas, I understand the concept of brevity, but remain unable to apply it.
But FVHorn's excellent comment moves me to add that when I flipped through the early-morning corporate news after the debate, there seemed to be a consensus that Hillary had made a "strong comeback" and was the "winner", or at least the most winnerish.
And this expression immediately popped into my disaffected mind: Best in Show.
RichM,
"CNN had marketed the debate as "The Night that Hillary Sews it Up," and they just weren't going to have it any other way."
I switched off Ketih Olbermann in disgust when he went with the "Boy, Hillary took it to them" script, when it was plain that the audience had been packed by Hillary's staffers to cheer her and boo her opponents.
What a complete charade, with these market-test moderators and the whole format, which looks like nothing but "Who Wants to Be a President?" game show.
They should just make the whole thing a reality show, and let us vote people off the campaign until one's left. That's the substance of American politics at the moment.
RichM:
You are correct in your assumption that we live in a corporate dictatorship, a system which is also known as fascism. I think it is pretty clear to the world that we are now officially a fascist state.
It now appears that the corporate masters and their well-paid-off big-media hacks have decreed that the selection of the President of the United States shall be decided in a game-show format.
After all, the Prez is just a frontman for the real controllers behind the facade, that want to stay secret and obscured in order to work their evil upon the nation (see Cheney, Dick). Like the owners of casinos that design mind-numbing interiors, they want to dazzle that dumbocracy with thinking they have a real choice/chance when in fact, like Ralph Nader says, it is a choice between Coke or Pepsi, with no chance at all for real change.
The Presidency is become just the Grand Prize of A GAME. Which, for example, is why Hillary "NAFTA-Citibank-AIPAC" Clinton thinks (with her limitless, unbounded selfishness and ego) that she is the best contestant, oops, candidate. No matter that she knows that she will split the nation (Rush Limburger is salivating already), and that she will obey the corporate masters with their flacks in the DLC. She is already good at the non-answer answer and different-question answer that served her hubby so well. And she is becoming a master of cynical politics, slyly playing the gender card and calling any criticism of her 'mudslinging' while sneeringly proposing criticism of her positions comes solely, she asserts, because she is 'ahead.'
Next, watch for:
'Wheel o' Questions'/bikinied girls holding signs with the number of the question /swivel boxes with answers to which the contestant-candidate has to give a response phrased in the form of a question /the contestant-candidate must pedal onto the Acting Stage on a little toy trike wearing a clown outfit "of their own choosing" /bells and whistles (whoops, got that) /the Master of Ceremonies in a pompous, ruling, controlling, overarching position (whoops, got that) /a gameshow garish Las Vegas-style setting (whoops, got that) /a "lighning round" (whoops, got that) /no time to elaborate (whoops, got that) /right or wrong answer decision made according to MC (whoops, got that) /a cheering, whooping, booing mob/audience (whoops, got that) - trivia questions of no substance (whoops, got that) /et al.
Yes, our corporate masters have made the election of the American President A BIG JOKE. And the joke is on the American people. How much treason does it take to call it treason? You won't hear that from the players who strut upon the Stupid Stage, to grab for that brass ring held by their big-money masters. Yes, none of these dare call it treason. Or they will be marginalized and shit-canned, like the vast majority of the American people.
MY, are you just discovering now that CNN are cheerleaders for the Republicans? As their ratings are directly connected to a state of war, they obviously support the War Party.
Also re Blitzer: keep reminding yourself that he was a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post.
So does Little Brother with his iced tea analogy. Also, although lengthy, he makes it very clear what is being done to us.
These "debates" are really just corporate infomercials to manipulate the public view of candidates. There is no reality here.
RichM has it right.
I again commend the consistently incisive RichM for taking care of bidness here while I annoyed people with long-winded and sarcastic posts on yesterday's Gregory piece on Paul Tibbets and Brauchli's post on Hillary.
One of most irksome aspects in our warped and pathological "culture" is how the fake drives out the real. A while back, a friend and I discovered a common experience when we were kids: our "homemaker" mothers stopped making real iced tea during the summertime after instant iced tea came out. It turns out that in both families, we kids at first hated the instant iced tea.
Can't blame the poor moms for switching, and encouraging the kids to enjoy it instead of returning to the time-consuming chore of making real iced tea by the gallons for their thirsty broods-- or simply insisting that we make it ourselves. But the salient aspect of this switch is that indeed, in time we kids did get used to the instant iced tea. However, unlike the adults, we persisted in affirming that it wasn't as good as, much less the same as real iced tea.
And when we grew up, we made real iced tea. We remembered the difference.
Rather than expanding this concept with a similar history of real vs. artificial Christmas trees, I'll only note that "presidential debates" fall under this category. It's arguable that the famous Kennedy-Nixon debate qualified as a "real" debate, insofar as it presented two opposing candidates who argued over issues. But the modern tricked-out, infotainwhore-moderated beauty pageants featuring a gaggle of primary candidates are pure show-biz. (If they were instant iced tea, they'd be too vile to swallow.)
Yet, over time the term "debate" still sticks, with the entire chorus of the corporate media reinforcing the absurd notion that these really are substantive proceedings worthy of being called "debates". Like the grown-ups whose palates and sensibilities weren't so discriminating-- and who had ulterior reasons for claiming that the fake product was acceptable, even superior-- they "can't taste the difference". And over time, the fake eventually nullifies and annihilates memory of the real.
And finally come the "pragmatists", who will note with resignation that nobody makes real iced tea any more, and that one must move with the times, accept the perverse and nihilistic status quo, and root for the least evil candidate to "win".
Good post RichM
The notion that these TV spectacles are "debates" is ludicrous. They are fake, degrading, antidemocratic insults to our collective intelligence.
Look what they did to Gravel. He's the ONLY Democrat who has anything to say that's the slightest bit worth hearing, except for Kucinich -- and CNN made him an unperson. He was arbitrarily banned by the TV company, with no public input whatsoever, & with no explicit comment from the other candidates. Now everyone is pretending that he never existed. (Amusingly, this is just what happened under Stalin -- who we're supposed to be so much "better" than.)
Blitzer should be drawn & quartered for what he did the other night. Who the h*ll is he, that we should endure listening to him for 16 minutes, while someone like Kucinich gets 5 minutes? Kucinich tried to talk about impeachment, and Blitzer cut him off. Anytime anyone tried to go outside the standard frames desired by the corporate oligarchy, Blitzer cut them off. Blitzer was allowed to glower disapprovingly at anyone who didn't say just what he wanted them to say (mostly Kucinich). Why should such an inadequate twit as Blitzer have such power over matters of the public interest?
CNN had marketed the debate as "The Night that Hillary Sews it Up," and they just weren't going to have it any other way.
The article above accurately mentions a few of the hideous deficiencies of the "debate," yet only scratches the surface. If monstrous conglomerates like CNN are allowed to run these debates, it simply means we're slaves in a corporate dictatorship.