Over 4,000 Americans have submitted video questions for the candidates who have been humiliated into participating this week in the entertainment marketing scam known officially as The CNN/YouTube Republican Debate. It's bad enough that presidential aspirants of both parties are so cowed by the networks that they have ceded their dignity, not to mention our democracy, to these degrading gongshows, complete with breathless postgame analyses by the same preening interlocutors who posed as neutral referees just moments before. But the faux populism of the YouTube format is an Orwellian leap even for CNN, where anchors are already required to i.d. correspondents as "part of the best political team on television." (Every time Wolf says that, an angel is lethally injected.)
Have you looked at the questions submitted on YouTube? An astonishing number of them are heartfelt inquiries about gayness in America. Lynn and Pat Mulder of Auburndale, Florida talk about their son Ryan, who was murdered in March because he was gay; they ask the candidates what they will do to make this the kind of country where that will not happen. Former Major League baseball player Billy Bean asks whether the GOP candidates will "stop embracing religion-based bigotry against gays and lesbians." If you flip through the posted videos, it seems as though every twenty questions there's the face of a teenager talking about being born gay, a twenty-something talking about being Christian and gay, a plea about LGBT hate crimes, about the Godliness of all human love, about the depression and suicide fostered by fundamentalist preachers and their political fellow-travelers.
You could fill the entire two hours of the CNN/YouTube debate with those questions. But if the New York Times' account of how the seven-person CNN team will select the winning questions is accurate, actually you won't see a single one of them during the televised debate. David Bohrman, CNN's Washington bureau chief and executive producer of the debate, told the Times' blog The Caucus that posts "asking the candidates to defend their opposition to gay marriage" are "'lobbying grenades' [that] would be disqualified by the CNN selection team... There are quite a few things you might describe as Democratic 'gotchas,' and we are weeding those out'... CNN wants to ensure that next Wednesday's Republican event is 'a debate of their party.'"
Not only is this stunningly disrespectful to the many Log Cabin and other self-described gay Republicans who submitted YouTube questions; it's also a telling reminder of the game that CNN is really playing. Sure, their Web site says "YOU ask the questions of the candidates" ("Be original... Be personal"). But if YOU don't fit the CNN profiling division's definition of a Republican, then no matter how personal your sexual orientation may be, no matter how original you are in the way you ask it, the CNN team will yank you from the questioner pool like cyber-crabgrass.
The notion that the CNN/YouTube debate represents a grass-roots triumph of the Internet age is laughable. The 4,000+ videos are pawns; the questioners are involuntary shills, deployed by the network producers in no less deliberate, calculating and manipulative a fashion as the words and stories fed by teleprompters into anchors' mouths. If you want to see what a legitimate grass-roots online debate looks like, have a gander at 10questions.com. At that site, it's not concealed network gatekeepers who decide what citizens' questions should be censored; it's the same community who submitted them in the first place that gets to vote. What's more, they also get to vote on whether the candidates adequately answered the questions. Apparently that's too much democracy for CNN. I guess it would be way too embarrassing if part of the best political team in America turned out not to be on television at all.
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
I've already decided it would be a waste of my time to watch the YouTube Debates based on the last spectacle. Debates are supposed to enlighten the voters on the candidates' positions but in recent times, the debates have turned into mere showcases for the frontrunners and big advertising for the networks showing them.
for the debate. But when it came time to do
the video, I had second thoughts. Its just an
advertising ploy for the local station. I would
rather be able to ask the question in person,
and without the candidate knowing ahead of time
what I was going to ask. Maybe we would get to
hear an un-rehearsed answer.
May I say as a Gay man..While your question is indeed valid...and Sad to even have to be asked in America 2007. You will never get a decent answer from any GOP Candidate...they will "sugar-coat" any answer you're expecting to hear. I Blame the GOP's "Demonizing & SCAPEGOATING" of our Nations LGBT citizens for the last 6-7yrs, that LEAD to the Death of your son...May You Both find Inner Peace! Rex
DEFINE LEADERSHIP. I'm serious.
Gemma
Instead of interviewing real people,who are bearing the brunt of our failed political system, they concentrate on celebrity personalities and their effect on the primary campaigns CNN is as Bogus as the Fox network and the lackeys who deliver Fox's right wing propaganda
As the questions are "PRESCREENED", and lack spontaneity nothing has changed.
They are still in CONTROL of the MESSAGE and the QUESTIONS.
It's a SCAM and should be exposed as such.
Sadly for our country and, more importantly, for our place in the world hierarchy and the history of this planet, the media has taken control of this campaign. It's directing its course with a passion that makes Cecil B. DeMille look like a rookie second assistant director.
The media has choreographed the field of both Democrats and Republican and more is the pity.
Example: Gov. Huckabee's "extraordinary" rise from the gray netherworld in which he conducts his public business to a leader in Iowa and a "looking good" in New Hampshire, is the direct result of the "free press" the media has accorded him -- while vastly more qualified individuals are left watching the parade from the media's cheap seats.
Example: In the recent Democratic Debate, Sen. Joe Biden, who is on a "personally knows" basis with world leaders and has 35 years of hands-on experience in government and politics, was shunted to the back of the pack until Mr. Blitzer threw a crumb of a question. Then it was back to the "blue ribbon" media-favored speakers.
Certainly those running for President in each party must know that, to the public at large, "media" has become a dirty, dirty word. Candidates must take back the campaign from the muckrakers who almost totally represent the media in this country -- and MUST DO IT NOW.
Only the candidates can make this campaign a serious full time debate on ALL questions that haunt the public consciousness.
Those who don't encourage a full debate AND fail to encourage the participation of each and every candidate do not deserve our consideration for our country's highest office.
While that may be accurate in some instances it's hardly fair to cast all questioners in that light.
Marty should have been more thoughtful than that, and I'd like to know the thought process behind choosing that particular word, if he indeed thought much at all. It seems to me both thought-less and rude.
Aside from that, I agree with much (but not all) of the substance of the article.
Still, a "valid" You Tube exercise would be to group the videos received by category and then ask the best 1-2 from each category of questions to fill the time alloted?
Maybe the questions would not be relevant to the greater masses, as with the gay questions, but afterall, its a YOU TUBE debate, and if that is important to YTubers, then that is what should be asked.
Atleast it would avoid the pearls vs diamonds BS prompted if not mandated by the talking heads.
Please let us know when the First You Tube debate is aired. I'd like to see it.
It is very easy to be a critic (especially before an event) but a great deal more difficult to actually do something. If you can do better than CNN then hold your own debate. By the way, I like the online debate idea maybe you could push that.