Where Is the League of Women Voters When We Need Them?
Would someone please get the networks out of the presidential debate business?
The networks and the national press love their gotchas, their -gates, their "controversies," their heat. They, alas, are not the grownups in the political process. The grownups are the voters, who -- lamely, in the mind of the political class -- are troubled by the war, the economy and boring stuff like that. Stuff that networks think make for lousy television.
I don't blame news producers for doing what they think their job is, which is scoring bragworthy Nielsens. I don't blame political talking heads for being infatuated with the narratives that they themselves create and market. Blaming them would be like blaming babies for banging their spoons on their highchairs, or addicts for wanting their fix.
But I do blame the candidates, the campaigns and the parties for being complicit with the corporate politainment circus. The first ten people in the phone book could do a better job of asking candidates questions that voters care about. There is no freaking reason in the world to grant the networks a rotating monopoly on staffing and broadcasting these debates. The whole media political system we now suffer from is tilted entirely toward trivial combat, pathetic niggling over words, ridiculous sideshows, and inside baseball. Now that we know how awful it can be, are we really powerless to stop it from continuing to waste our time and turning our political process into a third-rate version of a condescending reality show?
Sorry, I've just got to get a grip on this bitter thing.
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
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I'm thinking after the absolute travesty of the debates this season and especially after last night, there is not an effort - a demand that the LWV do the debates now.
It's obvious the media is too incompetent and stupid to handle this kind of thing.
It was obvious ABC was planning a shallow and trivial debate geared to help out Clinton because of Steph. hanging around wingnuts like Hannity to get ideas for questions.
I mean when you try to smear a candidate because he was on the board with someone who was part of the radical left 40 years ago is ridiculous.
Not to mention all the time spent on the burning issue of flag pins.
This whole questioning of Obama's patriotism is stupid. The man is a US Senator running for president and they question his patriotism. How silly is that? And the voters are sick to death of the rightwings definition of patriotism. Give it up already.
Maybe it was because Obama had the audacity to make the press look like the fools they are over their manufactured controversy this past week by the voters not buying it and still supporting Obama.
Maybe it was because the press is so totally clueless they still think the 90s style of politics and following the failed conventional wisdom no longer applies and Obama delights in defying these things.
Either way, the cable news is desperately trying to spin this as a failure for Obama and not for ABC. huh? They are now all focusing on those shallow questions today and obsessing on things like whether the Wright thing, flag pins, ect. today and if it will kill Obama's candidacy. They never learn.
Thank you for making a point that desperately, unequivocably, needs to be made.
The MSM, apparently with the cooperation of the two political parties, have been broadcasting a travesty. If the rules are made up by the parties, then it is difficult to see how progress can be made.
At any rate, I really long for the days when the debates, or whatever one wishes to call them, were done sensibly. What happened last night was embarrasing to both the candidates and the nation.
The moderators should be embarrased as well, but some how I don't think they are. More's the pity.
Whatever excitement and hope I had at the beginning of this campaign has waned considerably. I thought perhaps there might be a chance to turn the country around after the travesty of the last 8 years. The pitiful excuse for a debate on "critical" issues last night has caused me to want to opt out of participating in this election at all. Where will it all end?
Thank you for bringing up the LWV The right wing has gotten so much control that even a bipartisan group such as LWV seems almost radical and this scares the media. Part of that right wing control is that people are afraid to ask questions. The League sees asking hard questions as being patriotic. Imagine that. You are right, the debates need to go bak to the LWV!!!
Huzzah!
Where's some wise folk when ya need 'em?
Agreed. I've been wondering for many months - as the "debates" continued to be anything but genuine debates - whatever happened to the League's sponsorship of debates. They were non-partisan, and the moderators selected for them at least appeared to be interested in having a good debate rather than preening themselves.
Too bad. Fake debates sponsored by partisan media are part of the country's election process now, and just like so many other things designed to further splinter us as a country, they're worse than no debates. I'd rather read about the candidates in the newspaper - except that my local newspaper is so partisan that it didn't even mention the last Democratic convention. -sigh-
Hmmm.... wait a minute.... it's obvious that the current situation of for-profit "debates" and for-profit candidate slugfests is indeed helping to fracture the US. I've got it! It's a plot by the Arabs! THEY want to make sure that the US falls apart!
The shameful thing about this farce of a debate, is that people are suffering. We're on the verge of a recession, that will probably top anything we've seen since WWII. There are no easy answers, no magic bullet that will get us out of this.
Yet Charles Gibson swans around on $7 million per year, apparently oblivious to people's pain. George Steph, too, though his kind of money, is more in the small water fowl bracket, but still....
The irony, is that they are giving Obama all of this grief for being "elitist", when they are obviously the ones that are living in the stratosphere for so long, they don't have a clue.
The debate was so bad, it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
When the debates come on, JUST SAY NO. It's that button at the top corner of your remote. If everyone tuned out, the shit would have to stop because the sponsors would smack the Gibsons et al upside the head and order them to get it right or take a hike.
Peter Jennings is rolling over in his grave. And Ted Koppel must feel like jumping in with him.
Debate? It was more like a set-up or ambush to embarass Democrats. I didn't learn much about important issues but I know more about the candidates' sartorial habits - who does or doesn't wear a flag pin.
It's too bad the audience didn't have rotten tomatoes or cabbages to throw at those two so-called "moderators," who, at times, debated with the candidates.
ABC has joined the world of tabloid journalism.
My sentiments exactly. Get MSM out of political campaigns. They are propagandists who do not serve the people but themselves. Gibson is a joke. He is as mediocre as O'Reilley, Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest of them, as is that little Greco.
the good news men and women are all gone all we have is actors and mind control freaks who think poor whites and black and brown people are stupid and belive we go for any thing they tell us you what to know who the elitist are the rich folks at fox news the rich folks at msnbc cnn all who have thier kids in ivy league schools and do not know were a poor nighbor hood is why dont we ask them how many of them grow up poor and how the hell do they know what real people think and how many of thier kids are in the wars they are becoming like robots that they rich bosses control newsmen no this are a bunch of punks not men becuase men dont let anyone use them like puppets and what is real rich they are the first ones that says i love my god give me a break.
Three words for what's wrong with this picture: Follow the money.
You said it. This was not merely a farce, it reeked of corruption.
Thanks for bringing it up. I've been wishing the same thing for years. Debates used to be serious discussions about policy matters that the public needed to hear if they were going to vote. Tonight I learned that men who call themselves serious journalists can make asses of themselves on National television by exhibiting their need for ratings over content. They will come to rue the day that they participated in this fiasco. Broadcast Hall of Fame? I doubt it.
It reminded me of the Nightline, originally late nights of serious discussion that gradually devolved into a spin-fest of rude and ruder until Koppel finally walked off in disgust.
Much like a McDonald's milk shake, which contains no milk, television has become tabloid filler to get people to consume advertising. I would prefer a real debate.
Give the candidates a list of questions and tell them to debate them in whatever order that they prefer and give them each a clock allotting sixty minutes each. When their time runs out their mike is silenced. They can use the time as they wish.
Our country is becoming a laughing stock, thanks to the juvenile media.
What an embarassment that debate was.
You are correct about the embarassme
and the Supreme Court as well.
A once proud and honourable nation has become a third world shit hole.
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