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Shoddy! Tawdry! A Televised Train Wreck!
"THE crowd is turning on me," said Charles Gibson, the ABC anchor, when the audience jeered him in the final moments of Wednesday night's face-off between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
I can't remember a debate in which the only memorable moment was the audience's heckling of a moderator. Then again, I can't remember a debate that became such an instant national gag, earning reviews more appropriate to a slasher movie like "Prom Night" than a civic event held in Philadelphia's National Constitution Center:
"Shoddy, despicable!" - The Washington Post
"A tawdry affair!" - The Boston Globe
"A televised train wreck!" - The Philadelphia Daily News
And those were the polite ones. Let's not even go to the blogosphere.
Of course, Obama fans were angry because of the barrage of McCarthyesque guilt-by-association charges against their candidate, portraying him as a fellow traveler of bomb-throwing, America-hating, flag-denigrating terrorists. The debate's co-moderator, George Stephanopoulos, second to no journalist in his firsthand knowledge of the Clinton White House, could have easily rectified the imbalance. All he had to do was draw on his expertise to ask similar questions about Bill Clinton's check-bearing business and foundation associates circling a potential new Clinton administration. He did not.
But viewers of all political persuasions were affronted by the moderators' failure to ask about the mortgage crisis, health care, the environment, torture, education, China policy, the pending G.I. bill to aid veterans, or the war we're losing in Afghanistan. Those minutes were devoted not just to recycling the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bosnian sniper fire and another lame question about a possible "dream ticket" but to the unseemly number of intrusive commercials and network promos that prompted the jeering at the end. The trashiest ads often bumped directly into an ABC announcer's periodic recitations of quotations from the Constitution. Such defacing of American values is to be expected, I guess, from a network whose debate moderators refuse to wear flag pins.
Ludicrous as the whole spectacle was, ABC would not have been so widely pilloried had it not tapped into a larger national discontent with news media fatuousness. The debate didn't happen in a vacuum; it was the culmination of the orgy of press hysteria over Mr. Obama's remarks about "bitter" small-town voters. For nearly a week, you couldn't change channels without hearing how Mr. Obama had destroyed his campaign with this single slip at a San Francisco fund-raiser. By Wednesday night, the public was overdosing.
Mr. Obama did sound condescending, an unappealing trait that was even more naked in his "You're likable enough, Hillary" gibe many debates ago. But the overreaction to this latest gaffe backfired on the media more than it damaged him. For all the racket about "Bittergate" - and breathless intimations of imminent poll swings and superdelegate stampedes - the earth did not move. The polls hardly budged, and superdelegates continued to migrate mainly in Mr. Obama's direction.
Thus did another overhyped 2008 story line go embarrassingly bust, like such predecessors as the death of the John McCain campaign and the organizational and financial invincibility of the Clinton political machine against a rookie senator from Illinois. Not the least of the reasons that the Beltway has gotten so much wrong this year is that it believes that 2008 is still 1988. It sees the country in its own image - static - instead of as a dynamic society whose culture and demographics are changing by the day.
In this one-size-fits-all analysis, Mr. Obama must be the new Dukakis, sure to be rejected by white guys easily manipulated by Lee Atwater-style campaigns exploiting race and class. But some voters who lived through 1988 have changed, and quite a few others are dead. In 2008, they are supplanted in part by an energized African-American electorate and the young voters of all economic strata who fueled the Obama movement that many pundits didn't take seriously before Iowa. And that some still don't. Cokie Roberts of ABC predicted in February that young voters probably won't show up in November because "they never have before" and "they'll be tired."
However out of touch Mr. Obama is with "ordinary Americans," many Americans, ordinary and not, have concluded that the talking heads blathering about blue-collar men, religion, guns and those incomprehensible "YouTube young people" are even more condescending and out of touch. When a Washington doyenne like Mary Matalin, freighted with jewelry, starts railing about elitists on "Meet the Press," as she did last Sunday, it's pure farce. It's typical of the syndrome that the man who plays a raging populist on CNN, Lou Dobbs, dismissed Mr. Obama last week by saying "we don't need another Ivy League-educated knucklehead." Mr. Dobbs must know whereof he speaks, since he's Harvard '67.
The most revealing moment in Wednesday's debate was a striking example of this media-populace disconnect. In Mr. Gibson's only passionate query of the night, he tried to strong-arm both Democrats into forgoing any increases in the capital gains tax. The capital gains tax! That's just the priority Americans are focusing on as they lose their houses and jobs, and as gas prices reach $4 a gallon (a subject that merited only a brief mention, in a lightning round of final questions). And this in a debate that took place on the same day we learned that the top 50 hedge fund managers made a total of $29 billion in 2007, some of them by betting against the mortgage market.
At least Mr. Gibson is consistent. In the ABC debate in January, he upbraided Mrs. Clinton by suggesting that a typical New Hampshire "family of two professors" with a joint income "in the $200,000 category" would be unjustly penalized by her plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. He seemed oblivious not merely to typical academic salaries but to the fact that his hypothetical household would be among America's wealthiest (only 3.4 percent earn more).
Next to such knuckleheaded obtuseness, Mr. Obama's pratfall may strike many voters as a misdemeanor. He was probably rescued as well by the typical Clinton campaign overkill that followed his mistake. Not content merely to piously feign shock about Mr. Obama's San Francisco soliloquy (and the operative political buzzword here is San Francisco, which stands for you-know-what), Mrs. Clinton couldn't resist presenting herself as an unambiguously macho, beer-swilling hunting enthusiast. This is as condescending as it gets, topping even Mitt Romney's last-ditch effort to repackage himself to laid-off union workers as the love child of Joe Hill and Norma Rae.
The video of Mrs. Clinton knocking back drinks in an Indiana bar drowned out the scratchy audio of Mr. Obama's wispy words in San Francisco. Her campaign didn't seem to recognize that among the many consequences of the Bush backlash is a revulsion against such play acting. Americans belatedly learned the hard way that the brush-clearing cowboy of the Crawford "ranch" (it's a country house, not a working ranch) was in reality an entitled Andover-Yale-Harvard oil brat whose arrogance has left us where we are now. Voters don't want a rerun from a Wellesley-Yale alumna who served on the board of Wal-Mart.
Privileged though they are, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama do want to shape policy to help the less well-heeled. Mr. McCain, who had a far more elite upbringing than either of them and whose wife's estimated fortune exceeds the Clintons', is not just condescending to working Americans but trying to hoodwink them. Next week, in a replay of the 2000 Bush campaign's "compassionate conservative" photo ops among black schoolchildren, he will show he's a "different kind of Republican" by visiting what he calls the "forgotten" America of Alabama's "black belt" and the old steel town of Youngstown, Ohio. What he wants voters to forget is the inequity of his new economic plan.
That plan's incoherent smorgasbord of items includes a cut from 35 percent to 25 percent in the corporate tax rate. For noncorporate taxpayers, Mr. McCain offers such thin gruel as a battle against federal pork (the notorious Alaskan "bridge to nowhere," earmarked for $223 million in federal highway money, costs less than a day of the war in Iraq) and a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax (a saving of some $2.75 per 15-gallon tank). Now there's a reason for voters to be bitter - assuming bloviators start publicizing and parsing Mr. McCain's words as relentlessly as they do the Democrats'.
That may be a big assumption. At an Associated Press luncheon for newspaper editors in Washington last week, Mr. McCain was given a standing ovation. (The other candidate who appeared, Mr. Obama, was not.) Cindy McCain, whose tax returns remain under wraps, has not received remotely the same scrutiny as Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton, except for her plagiarized recipes. The most damning proof of the press's tilt toward Mr. McCain, though, is the lack of clamor for his complete health records, especially in the wake of his baffling serial factual confusions about Iraq, his No. 1 issue.
But that remains on hold while we resolve whether Mr. Obama lost Wednesday's debate with his defensive stumbling, or whether Mrs. Clinton lost it with her ceaseless parroting of right-wing attacks. The unequivocally good news is that ABC's debacle had the largest audience of any debate in this campaign. That's a lot of viewers who are now mad as hell and won't take it anymore.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
79 Comments so far
Show AllIf the ABC "debate" had any value at all, it lies in the widespread criticisms it provoked.
Greater willingness to critique the media can only be a positive trend for the U.S. given its steady rightward drift, regular elevation of entertainment over substantive content, and corporate control.
It remains to be seen, however, whether this discontent will be able to transform itself into something more useful (such as a movement for real change in the way the media operates, the creation of alternative media outlets, etc.) or whether it will merely fester and occasionally lead to people shutting off the TV.
Actually I thought Mr. Obama looked more like Gulliver in the Land of the Lilliputians than Dukakis. While HRC, Georgie, Charles, Fox, CNN, MSNBC et.al. might tie him down for a sound bite debate, like Gulliver, he and the people are now shedding the ropes of pettiness. You keep moving forward Barack. We got your back.
The debate was about nothing. This article is about the debate, which means it's about nothing. That, maybe, is the point: American politics are about feeding Americans nothing while trying to convince them they're being fed a full meal, and Americans are getting sick of this.
And they're starting to get hungry, too.
I'm getting hungry for the smell of the pines on the banks of the Little Blackfoot River in western Montana, where I hope to spend this long, hot summer far from the campaign news.
I haven't watched a debate since the first one when I discovered that it really wasn't a debate at all. The networks have made the term 'debate' obsolete. The moderators are simple the same as 'judges' in a spectacular political idol series. The debates are deliberately designed to denegrate the contestants with hope of gaining a better network rating. Somehow they have missed their own boat, sort of a self induced 'swiftboating.'
That was well-said, annabelle!
I too didn't watch Wednesday's "debate," glad I didn't waste my time.
The last debate I watched was the California Obama-Clinton match, seems like three years ago. Will this primary season ever end?
Hillary had her slime and smear tactics validated by George (what do the Clintons have on him?) Stephanopoulos. This is the kind of thing you expect in Putin's Russia but then again I am sure Clinton would enjoy Putin's Russia.
The American corporate "media" is not only incompetent but criminal.
They were complicit in deliberately designing bogus WMD lies and the rush to war.
As conspirators they should be tried as war criminals along with many others !
This is a great piece and I'm glad the NY Times printed it (did they?), since this is all about how the media manipulates us, and wastes our time talking about nonsense rather than the real issues. How about an in-depth analysis of our financial system and how our government allowed unsrupulous lenders to hoodwink ordinary working-class Americans who simply wanted a home of their own. Instead of elitists such as John McCain who has said we should not bail out people who make unwise choices (easy for him to say, since he can buy 8 homes), how about some real concern for the working-class stiffs the media seems so concerned about, but actually treats as if they were children - amusing them with entertaining fluff, but assuming they don't have the intellectual capabilities to comprehend real issues. But really, it is that the media does not want us to understand the real issues - they want to continue to distract us. What the debate proved is that we are no longer willing to be distracted, and Obama is at the forefront of delivering that message. We want to talk about the issues, and our number one issue is not lapel pins!
The empire is gasping its last breaths and getting desperate.
americans are gonna get about 500 dollars on average soon a tax rebate this is half of billion dollars..
now if we went back to franklin roosevelts progressive tax system that helped america to have the biggest middle class ever.. if we taxed the net wealth of 400 billionaires tax them half of their wealth.. their net wealth is 1.6 trillion... 800 billion dollars coming back as tax rebates to americans instead of that half of billion.... this would mean 400,000 instead of the 500 dollars coming in may and june...
now what would happen to americans as a whole if they received 400,000??
this is the amount that the robber barons stolled from the WE THE PEOPLE...
FDR had 90% tax rate on the highest incomes and now that is 35% that is the reason americas middle class is sufferring in slavery now...
There was no debate. There was no discussion of the issues which concern all of us. Just another dump load of media crap that confirmed for me what I've known for years. We no longer have honest journalism in this country. Once again we will be voting for the guy who looks best regardless of his track record or viewpoints. This is why McCain will win in a landslide. He looks like a president is supposed to look: venerable, kindly, compassionate, wise. The rest doesn't matter, though it helps that he's filthy rich and owns the media.
I didn't watch the debate. Washington will not and cannot fix things. The architecture of change in Washington is 18th Century. Those who believe that 18th Century Washington can solve 21st Century problems should probably also invest in a lettuce mine.
If you go to an actual prostitute you at least get something for your money - sex or a communicable disease. If you go to a prostitute from the MSM you think Marilyn Monroe is licking you in the ear when really it's just your dog. No offense to dogs who are far more noble beings than any slutty street walkers like Stephanopoulos or Gibson. Whoa, the crowd's turning on me!
Americans have been "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore" for about 30 years now. Curiously, we seem to just keep taking it even as we declare loudly how we're not taking it anymore. Gas can go up to $10/gal., health care can get annually worse, along with education, jobs can keep being offshored and outsourced, CEO salaries can triple from their already obscene levels, presidents can start two or three more unprovoked wars, the dollar can become worth less than the ruble--and we'll keep hearing about how Americans are mad as hell and not going to take anymore. And if history is any guide, we'll keep taking it and taking it, since nothing is more forbidden in this conformist society than any sort of organized rebellion. Revolution? What are you, a commie?
Your "limited hangout" post was right on, RichM. Once it becomes embarrassingly apparent that a corporate swindle hasn't fooled the masses, the corporation trots out a straw man who pretends to "fight for the people." Interestingly, this is the same thing the pope just did. Now that the decades-old sex abuse scandal has been totally outed and the RCC has no credible deniability, the pope apologizes and says steps will be taken. Why didn't the RCC fix the problem and apologize for it half a century ago when it first knew about the problem?
"Actually I thought Mr. Obama looked more like Gulliver in the Land of the Lilliputians than Dukakis."
Tim really hit on something here. Obama's discomfort at the debate has been interpreted as a lot of things, but it seemed to me to be mostly about an intelligent, logical, reasonable man who is thrust into an entirely different and dysfunctional world based on emotion, illogic, contempt for the truth, contempt for intelligence, touchy aggression, seemingness instead of reality, and hostile projection. The sort of immersion that makes you want to take a shower afterwards. People who think that this environment is the real one and Obama's is the false reality, have missed it by a lightyear.
What bothers me so much is how Hillary delights and revels in that reality.
To Rich M. 12:25 pm: "He doesn't speak of American war crimes." and Trollwiththepunches 11:01 am: "Is it really necessary to run columns by this establishment centrist corporate media buffoon?"
Wrong.
Please read the start of this Frank Rich article from
The New York Times
October 14, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
The 'Good Germans' Among Us
By FRANK RICH
"BUSH lies" doesn't cut it anymore. It's time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.
Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: "This government does not torture people." Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of "torture" is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.
By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America's "enhanced interrogation" techniques have a grotesque provenance: "Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the 'third degree.' It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation."
Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled "politics." We turn the page.
There has been scarcely more response to the similarly recurrent story of apparent war crimes committed by our contractors in Iraq. Call me cynical, but when Laura Bush spoke up last week about the human rights atrocities in Burma, it seemed less an act of selfless humanitarianism than another administration maneuver to change the subject from its own abuses.
As Mrs. Bush spoke, two women, both Armenian Christians, were gunned down in Baghdad by contractors underwritten by American taxpayers. On this matter, the White House has been silent. That incident followed the Sept. 16 massacre in Baghdad's Nisour Square, where 17 Iraqis were killed by security forces from Blackwater USA, which had already been implicated in nearly 200 other shooting incidents since 2005. There has been no accountability. The State Department, Blackwater's sugar daddy for most of its billion dollars in contracts, won't even share its investigative findings with the United States military and the Iraqi government, both of which have deemed the killings criminal...
[continued]
Frank alluded to the larger need for a deposing of tis cultural oligarchy of Judas goats who think of their own aggrandizement before they think of the common good.
Talk about elitists: they'd stab us in the back for their own personal advantage and then give us sermonizing apologetic and sermons of their ethics. They've sold their souls out, and in the process htey've sold us out and the national interest and culture in the process.
ABC just showed the degeneration of the media that was hallowed by Ed Murrow but is as despised now as Goebbel's propaganda ministry.
Bugsy,
Abagad-diablo@excite.com
Thank you, hamster.
When I saw that the article is by Frank Rich I immediately wanted to read it, as I have found his writings and media appearances to be pretty much on target and, for the most part, missing from the mainstream media.
Admittedly, the debate was a bad joke, but as many have stated, the general election will be much worse. McSame is too much like Bu$h, and as such, he will not hesitate to throw punches below the belt. Obama does have a lot of skeletons in the closet, especially those in regards to his affiliation with Tony Rezko the slum lord and the extremely corrupt world of Illinois and Chicago politics. McSame will not leave any stone unturned in regards to Obama's affiliation with Rezko and the criminal figures associated with him.
Admittedly, all three candidates have a lot of skeletons to hide...McSame was tied to the criminal activty associated with the S&L crisis of the late 80's, and Clinton has her ties to the Rose Law Firm and being involved with Walmart's union busting and Monsanto's rigged marketing of genetically altered foods and bovine growth hormone in our milk. This fall is gonna be nasty, and we have a truly pathetic trio with which to chose our next "leader" from. Personally, I see Obama as the lesser of the three evils, which isn't really saying much. May the best man win.
Yes, Annabelle, none of the 'debates' were in fact debates. Sadly, this last one may have killed millions of people's appetites for 'debates', even though these 'pseudo-so-called debate/cum-game shows' aren't what debates are. Just like Clear Skies and Healthy Forests really aren't at all about clear skies and healthy forests.
The MainStreamMedia are completely contaminated by the NeoCon Corporate-PR-Spin Republicans, as they are now completely contaminated by big predator corporations that directly contol and own their hides (was the movie NETWORK a documentary?) This debate-event was more MSM dismantling of the checks and balances of a true free press, and more MSM degradation of the political conversation in America, degraded even more by all the teevee commercials. Gotta pay for Charlie and George, after all.
But this last one was so egregiously bad. Two celebrity-talking-heads, who make millions of dollars with their ridiculous teleprompter blather most of the time, are shown to be the boobs they really are, in a sort of White House PR-ess Conference but with only two junior clueless 'reporters' allowed to ask questions. So even worse than the already atrocious WH PRess conferences.
And mcmacle, who thinks it was a good 'debate' in that it 'exposed' Obama as 'hollow', well, which of the three candidates left is the better, let me ask you, for it has come down to these three.
Are you then voting for McCain, that boozing, ultra-wealthy, kingpin-drug-pusher(yes, alcohol is a drug);
he who is now corrupt(Bush hug!)and has always been totally corrupt (reference his role in the Reagan-era savings-and-loan swindle on the American people, which is even now being far outdone by the bank, mortgage and stock market swindles, once again on the American people);
he who has just announced a totally-corrupt "no-new-taxes-but-instead-even-far-fewer-taxes-for-corporations-and-the-rich" tax plan;
he who is a SELF-proclaimed economic idiot (clear for any disinterested person to see anyuway);
he who ranks a Zero for his pro-environmental votes (and THIS is the 'environmentalist' on the Republican side?);
he who is a Zionist-controlled (witness puppetmaster Lieberman) Utter Warmonger;
he who in public called his wife/ex-mistress a cunt;
he who is that dementia-addled, hypocritical liar, hot-tempered egotistical blockhead called McCain?
If you are, you are voting FOR the Official NeoCon Military-Industrial Complex Candidate that even Eisenhower warned of in his last official communication with the American People.
Or, are you voting for the woman who didn't or wouldn't see the adulterer right next to her in the White House, Bill 'I feel-up your pain' Clinton, and would not take action to jettison the serially-untrustworthy and self-servingly-untruthful person from herself, because she was herself unconcerned with morals or ethics in her own egotistical and selfish pursuit of the big prize of power for herself;
she who when Bill was running his first time made no mention of the need for a lot of DC experience, but who is apparently most concerned with it now;
she who after New Hampshire gave her the opportunity to make a fresh start in setting out her case positively, went back to her natural shrill head-bobbing finger-pointing attack mode, with the full Clintonista Posse flaming the other candidate with spiteful attacks on the flimsiest of subjects -sat in a building with so-and-so when they said such-and-such, or said truths that can be twisted into so-called 'insults' to the voters - pure mercenary degenerate hypocritical political strategies, worthy of the kind Rove plays - it's all 'just a game', winning is everything;
she who has 'earned' with her husband over a hundred million dollars during the Bush years (Bush been good to them!), mainly in corporate 'payback' speeches and other indirect paybacks for their prior work (NAFTA, Telecom Act, Deregulations, DLC etc) as secret mole-NeoCons on behalf of corporations- and even now Bill is a paid-lobbyist FOR the Columbia Free Trade Bill, while Hill at the same time says she was always against NAFTA - the Clintons take the people for fools;
she who served on the board of WalMart (the posterchild for corporate greed, hearlessness, and treason) aiding and abetting this master coporate criminal;
she who wants more Greenspan- and Rubin-style 'fixes' to the nation's economy, from the guys who are the very architects of the current disasters... so some change and wisdom, huh?;
she who voted to give up Constitutional authority time and time again to George Bush (of all people) in the grave matters of war and torture and domestic spying and right-wing judges and the general drift into fascism by America time and time again;
she who is that pure shifty political animal, Hillary Clinton?
If so, you are voting for the continuation of the Corporate Fascist Agenda, of "free" trade and 'flat-world' and rule by the rich, a place where the most corrupt float, like turds in a toilet, to the top of the power heap.
A vote for her is, like a vote for McCain, a vote for more of the same, more Vegas-style America, holding to the 'free'-market axiom of (even if done by lying, murdering, cheating and stealing) 'let the Winners win'... which means of course, 'let the Losers lose!' And boy, like Vegas, there just has to be an AWFUL lot of losers in this 'game'!
How far we have fallen from the hopes of the founders of our nation.
So when people see Obama with a 'halo', and crowds come to hear him, and the young are all for him, it is because he IS THE BEST HOPE WE HAVE in the current circumstances. Not because he is the best we could dream of, nor are miracles expected of him. He at the very least represents change in a very tangible way, the only real change possible as of now.
The Clintonistas and the McSames are the vey ones who got us into the messes we are in. And god bless 'em, most of the American people are trying at least to hope and vote for the best for the future of their planet, their country, and their children, and that means the fresh change of Obama.
The others are watching Fox News. And on its command they will vote to go down with the ship, taking all with them.
As for the 'debate', well, most thinking American people have the good sense to be repulsed by that debacle, which consisted mainly of political-hack-moderator monkeys throwing their own shit around, as monkeys are wont to do.
Obama undoubtedly sees the gutter politics he's facing to be extremely distasteful. He's going to have to quickly and deftly rebut the nasty attacks while not completely ignoring them or getting caught up in them, and try to lift the discourse to more important topics. Most Americans will respond favorably to that, though there is a small contingent that wants WWF smackdown type politics. Including the media, who invented that sort of circus.
This "Debate" was our way of showing the world how a Democracy works. No wonder the rest of the has
lost all respect for us.
Despite McCain's hollow vow to keep it clean, he's already descended into the muck and mire of Karl Rove/Lee Atwater-style politicking, by sending a fundraising email declaring that Hamas has endorsed Obama for President.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/18/mccain-hamas-endorsement_n_97469.html
(Remember Bin Laden's comment about Kerry right before the 2004 election?) The irony is that Hamas likes Obama because he has "a vision to change America." Nothing wrong with that. But this fact will be lost upon those who will simply say: well, if the terrorists like him, he must be a terrorist sympathizer.
The United States is hopelessly decadent after eight years of Reagan, four of Bush senior, eight of Clinton, and a disastrous finale of eight years of Bush Jr. The sooner we radicals face up to the fact the the United States as an entity is beyond redemption, the sooner we can get on to the task of planning the breakup of the country into several smaller countries without nuclear weapons and incapable of imposing themselves on the rest of the planet. The experiment with the 18th century enlightenment constitution has failed, and its time to think about what might follow after the final and inevitable collapse comes. Lets just hope that the US doesn't take out the rest of the world in a nuclear armageddon before we can act.
I'd like to suggest to you that the moderators asked what they should. I believe that those that support Obama are going to support him. More than likely he will be our nominee.
The problem is that the people that he needs to win, don't know him and so far he isn't answering their qwuestions. Till he does, we got a problem.
Don't confuse our primary with a general election.
By any measurement the media has given him a pass so far, it won't be that way in a general. Generalities won't suffice. "don't agree" is not the same as condemn. Real questions are not gutter politics.
Throw what you like, but at the moment a victory with Senator Obama in November looks iffy to me.
That, maybe, is the point: American politics are about feeding Americans nothing while trying to convince them they're being fed a full meal, and Americans are getting sick of this.
And they're starting to get hungry, too."
No , Americans are not "sick or hungry" , they are stupid and lazy to watch that farce ; if they were truly sick , hungry but most of all , smart they would turn the TV set off by the millions .
"an entirely different and dysfunctional world based on emotion, illogic, contempt for the truth, contempt for intelligence, touchy aggression, seemingness instead of reality, and hostile projection."
that's the democrat party in a nutshell!
I recently read a very important book. Political Fictions by Joan Didion is the best discussion of this aspect of our political disaster I've ever seen. It was written before the 2000 "election" and really makes sense of this mess.
It mostly covers the events of the Clinton administration. It has a really perceptive take on what was going on with the impeachment and shows how it worked as a political distraction but it also shows how Clinton used the same sort of tactics.
Reading this book is strange because it seems so prophetic. I haven't seen anything else that makes this much sense of events like that "debate" and this whole stupid mess in general.
The first five comments are so ludicrous that I almost didn't bother reading the rest--glad I persevered. People who think Frank Rich is just another conformist journalist have either never really read his articles, or have an IQ so far below the norm that they can't understand him. Rich gives us a consistently accurate analysis and critique of contemporary media culture. These debates were a sham, and Americans should not put up with this garbage. We're constantly told that we have a "free" press in this country. Well, what good is it if it's also the dumbest media going!
As I watched the debate I felt overwhelmingly embarrassed by how Senator Obama was being treated. Utterly disgraceful without justification. (including we just need to see how he would handle himself with the 'hard' questions). Why would anyone want to run for president in these cicumstances? We should honor our statesmen and listen to what they have to offer for bringing this country back on course. How many times must did Obama say we need to move on to the important issues that concern Americans? Corporate media is too corrupt to be the moderators of these debates.
You're right, Ephraim. Americans have put up with a lot. As pointed out by Thomas Jefferson-
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government...
Although many Americans live in poverty, it hasn't been too bad. Most have food and shelter. It can, and probably will, get worse.
I think that when it does, they want to have Hilary in the White House. This "debate" was a way of providing justification for the disposal of Barack Obama, who, although signaling madly that he is willing to go along with the ruling class, is too much of an unknown for them to set the voting machines to elect him.
Although you may think that "everybody" sees through the corporate media, unfortunately, not everyone does. Think of the 10% who refused to go along with the 9-11 hype and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq hype. The ones who refuse to vote for one of the two corporate candidates we get every 4 years. They, joined by a certain percent that takes a while to catch on, are likely still not more than 30% of the population. Remember that 29% still support Bush!! There are a lot of people out there who still believe what the media tells them.
The U.S. Income Tax was originally a tax on "unearned income", money made from money. The threshold was set at a level which was well above the income of wage earners (working people), therefore not requiring them to pay taxes on their income.
Yes Frank Rich is a relative standout in the corporate media.
He was one of the first corporate media types to criticize Bush.
He has been a stalwart critic of Bush but I wouldn't exactly point to him as a shining example of progressivism. In fact I submit that he is part of the problem and not to be trusted. The enemy of my enemies is not necessarily my friend.
His analysis all too often falls within the rubric of narrow establishment political viewpoints and at times he does his own part to propagate right wing memes with the best of 'em. Did any of you manage to read his column where he took Obama and Hillary to task for allegedly "distorting" McCain's 100 Years quote? Utter rubbish.
Anyone who wants to read his columns should do so. I happen to read them as well. At the NYTimes. Have you ever heard of the NY Times? It is often referred to as the "paper of record" and is one of the widely read, influential papers in America if not the only one. He is no longer "behind the wall" of paid subscription. Anyone who is interested in reading his latest screed can do so for free.
I happen to enjoy Krugman's and Bob Herbert's columns and read them there as well. But why do they have to be excerpted here at Common Dreams?
What I like most about Common Dreams is that it offers a compendium of progressive ideas that, in many cases, are originate on more obscure platforms.
Writing from Quito, Ecuador. The US' problem is a problem of mentality. Americans don't willingly wear blinkers to reality. Rather they have been conditioned (brainwashed) over many, many decades to passively accept whatever corporate fascist American elites care to force on them. Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew, pioneered the techniques of brainwashing for both the government and corporations back in the 1920's. Those techniques worked marvelously and still work. Americans, unlike almost everyone else on the planet, lack healthy skepticism about power and the those who wield power. Of course I'm not talking about dissidents within the US who mostly talk to each other but are unable to find the language to communicate to the brainwashed majority. Americans in general are deeply confused about the condition of the country and their own personal condition. Too many of them blame themselves for their problems (living as debtors) when they have been encouraged by the system to get into the fix they are in. Instead of becoming outraged Americans get depressed and take pills. I call that cultural zombification, and it is very widespread in the US. There is no hope for the US under current conditions. The rest of the world is moving ahead while we flounder.
I'd like to put up an idea. Get rid of the Presidential Branch altogether! Why?
Nearly eight years of Bush of course proves the complete uselessness of having a President who can over-ride the Parliament elected by the people. It also proves again that ultimate power corrupts.
As well, nearly six months of the farcical voting process for the next President shows clearly that no one person has the qualities or the cleverness to handle such an important job.
It's time Americans faced the reality about their flawed political system and changed it.
Dangerous Creation.
Not only was the debacle on ABC not in anyway akin to any
semblance to a debate, but it was an insult to the intelligence of any one whoose IQ is above their body temp.
I never watch ABC, which BTW is owned by Disney. I have no
idea what Walt Disney's politics were. No matter his politics, I'll bet he's turning in his grave just now.
As others have said here today and before, it's way past time to start ignoring the NYT until it goes away. They helped cheney/bush steal the election, they were one of the main enablers of the illegal Iraq invasion and occupation, and, on top of all the other sins, they withheld the truth about massive illegal government spying from We The People for over a year - because, like the rest of Big Corp Media:
They. Do. What. They. Are. Told. To. Do.
The fact the NYT has a couple of "liberals" who squawk a couple of times a week is not relevant - Philip Morris has a "how to quit smoking" page, but that doesn't mean their product doesn't kill.
Anyone who's ever watched a politician of even moderate skill levels knows that a politician does not have to talk about the topic of a question. The moderator asks a question, then the politician gets two minutes of air time to talk to the American people.
If the debate didn't touch on serious issues, don't blame the moderators.
Here is a question I would like to ask Senator McCain during a debate against Billary or Barack:
Senator, during your 5.5 year time as a POW in Vietnam, why did you fail to tell the American people that instead of giving your name, rank, and serial number, which is standard military protocol, you gave the name of the aircraft carrier, how many pilots had been shot down, the name of the aircraft carrier and its location? Furthermore Senator, why did you neglect to reveal that for three years you were an informant for the North Vietnamese in return for receiving medical treatment and permission not to be tortured?
Source: Alexander Cockburn "'Hero' John McCain as Phony and Collaborator: What Really Happened When he was POW"
Anyone who's ever watched a politician of even moderate skill levels knows that a politician does not have to talk about the topic of a question. The moderator asks a question, then the politician gets two minutes of air time to talk to the American people.
If the debate didn't touch on serious issues, don't blame the moderators.
And what, pray tell, do you think would have been the media's reaction if Obama refused to address that moron's question about the flag pin? Or if Hillary decided to use the Bosnia question as a springboard for a 10 point discussion about her healthcare plan.
We are talking about politics here.
What are you talking about?
Frank Rich rocks.
Trollwiththepunches: Yes I did read the Rich column you referred to. I think in wishing to castigate Rich as a piece of the corporate media, you missed the point of the column... namely, that McCain has a lot more to pick on than the "100 years" comment. Here are 2 excerpts:
1. "For him, this sideshow is a political lifeline, allowing him to skate away from his many other, far more worrying canards about Iraq. If anything, that misused quote may be one of his more benign fairy tales."
2. " 'We're succeeding,' Mr. McCain said after his last trip to Iraq. 'I don't care what anybody says.' Again, it's the last sentence that's accurate.
I for one am glad Common Dreams doesn't reject columns out of hand that come from major media sources.
No , Americans are not "sick or hungry" , they are stupid and lazy to watch that farce ; if they were truly sick , hungry but most of all , smart they would turn the TV set off by the millions .
I agree. People are more tuned into today's reality shows than they are with real reality: massive foreclosures, skyrocketing health care, fuel and food costs, a dollar that has, for all intents and purposes, been reduced to a Third World currency, offshoring of jobs, increasing economic inequality, two wars with no hope of an end in sight, and basically a country that has been left in ruins by an arrogant, careless administration that is just biding its time to return to their respective "ranchettes" in Wyoming and Texas, knowing that they have nothing to worry about economically while the rest of us struggle to figure out how we're going to pay our bills month to month.
If more people cared enough about the mess this country has been left in, they'd be getting their oversized arses off of their sofas, turning off their oversized TV's and marching in the streets for a return of our country to the people, but it seems that not enough people really care that they are willing to do this. As long as they have their 52" plasma TV's with DishNetwork and their gas guzzling SUV's in their driveway, they could care less about what's going on in this country. Heck, most people haven't got a clue where Iraq and Afghanistan are in the world and they couldn't care less about it.
To most folks, the old adage remains true, "Ignorance is bliss". I see this first hand at my job at a library. The reading material that most folks want to read (if, that is, they read at all) is what I generally refer to as "bubblegum/bathtub reading", as in, mindless drivel that you don't have to think about, a predictable story where you know what is going to happen and how it's all going to end. Pure escapism, no thought involved in it whatsoever. But most people check out armloads of DVD's and do nothing but veg out in front of their oversized TV's watching movie after movie after movie, munching down bags of chips or popcorn in the process, all the while gaining more and more weight until they become a burden on society because of their numerous weight related health ills.
So, yeah, if they were truly sick and tired of all of the media drivel, they'd turn off their TV's and march in the streets for an impeachment of this criminal administration and a restoration of our country and its Consitution. But that ain't likely to happen, unfortunately. Just think how many people watch shows like "American Idol" or "Dancing with the Stars" and could care less about what is going on in their own country. It's staggering to think how many people fit this very description. Too many. And that's a very sad statement about the apathy and oblivion that so many people embrace these days as a way to deal with the harsh reality of the times in which we live.
There is no factual news in the broadcasts from ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN or Fox. They make Pravda look objective by comparison.
The first question should have been this:
Why do both of you oppose the popular single payer proposal that would reduce ineffiencies in the system and insure every single American at an adequate level of coverage?
A question for Obama should have been: why do you continue to insist on trying the failed policy of merit pay for teachers instead of actually challenging America to pay teachers better salaries across the board, comensurate with what other similarly educated professionals get?
A question for Hillary: why do you continue to insist on using the failed, and illegal, economic sanctions policy against Cuba?
In a literate, informed society with activated, civic minded voters these would have been the types of questions asked.
There would have been exactly zero political questions.
No Hamster, I'm not missing the point.
Instead of debunking as preposterous conservative claims that Clinton-Obama were speaking falsely about McCain's comment and calling them on their bullshit didn't. Instead he chose to parse McCain's wording and give undue prominence to the caveat "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."
Granted, he does attack McCain and point out the fact that the press has coddled him. And, as you point out, he does offer other lines of attack.
But why criticize Clinton-Obama for stating what McCain said?
Let me give you two samples from the same piece:
1. REALLY, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of themselves for libeling John McCain. As a growing chorus reiterates, their refrains that Mr. McCain is "willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq" (as Mr. Obama said) or "willing to keep this war going for 100 years" (per Mrs. Clinton) are flat-out wrong.
2. The Democrats should also stop repeating their 100-years-war calumny against Mr. McCain. There's too much at stake for America for them to add their own petty distortions to an epic tragedy that only a long-overdue national reckoning with hard truths can bring to an end.
Here is the McCain quote in its full context:
Questioner: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for fifty years…
McCain: Maybe a hundred. Make it one hundred. We've been in South Korea, we've been in Japan for sixty years. We've been in South Korea for fifty years or so. That'd be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it's fine with me. I would hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.
Perhaps I am less enlightened by Frank Rich and can only see this through a partisan lens but I fail to see how Clinton-Obama's claims that "McCain wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years" are distortions.
He. does.
He wants us to have permanent military bases there. He does not want to withdraw. He wants America to be in Iraq for 100 years.
Why is Frank Rich making such a great effort to point out this "petty distortion"?
LIBEL is a pretty serious word, Hamster.
He's not accusing Clinton-Obama of "stretching the truth" or taking McCain's words out of context. He uses the very loaded word "libel"
The Bubble Sting
The FIRE fling and bubble sting
of leveraged debt and paupers sweat
is cresting like the tsunami mother of all juggernauts
while a foamy orgy of puts wells up in the trough
as barkers call there's still more to ride
and bankers warn there's still more to hide
The pundits cheered
while puppet leaders veered
first right then left
the maneuvers were so deft
the public scarcely noticed
that they were left bereft
Trollwiththepunches,
I appreciate your engaging with me.
"Why is Frank Rich making such a great effort to point out this "petty distortion"?"
I think it's because the "100 years of war" has been used over and over and over by progressives, liberal, and Democrats alike, and it can be deflated somewhat by just going back to the original McCain quote you gave above.
The McCain line you cited doesn't say "100 years of war" as both Hillary and Obama said.
Rich is trying to broaden the argument beyond the overused "100 years" comment to the many other damning things,many of which he points out are even worse, that McCain has said over the years on his attitude toward the Middle East situation.
His fantasy about "victory" (adopted from Bush/Cheney) is much more damaging than the idea of "maintaining a presence" in Iraq for 100 years, exactly because the U.S. has maintained a presence in many countries for 50 or 100 years (however much you and I may disagree with that policy).