The Mental Masturbator

Debate Debacle

What was with that debate last night? I thought CNN was bad, but wow ABC takes the cake for most terrible news network (Fox isn’t a news network). Or at least worst debate moderation ever. Right off the bat they asked Obama about the bitter remark. After beating that one into the ground for ten minutes, they brought up Rev. Wright. Aren’t we past that one already? But ABC had a new take on it: “do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”[nyt] What, the fuck, is that? That’s not really an answerable question. How does George Stephanopoilous even pretend he’s a journalist? Other “important” issues ABC raised:

• Why doesn’t Obama wear a flag pin?
• Is he friends with William Ayers of the Weather Underground?
• Why they want to raise taxes when clearly that hurts everything

They were really adamant that raising the capital gains tax is clearly bad for the country. I didn’t think the news was supposed to take that kind of partisan position. And what do a bunch of out of work factory workers in PA care about the capital gains tax anyway?

In the second half there were more policy questions, but I found they were often given in an antagonistic tone. Overall I’d say it was 60/40 worthless-gossip questions to real policy questions. Terrible ratio, more than half that debate was worthless and stupid. The candidates should stick to holding their own rallies and q&a sessions. Or what if prominent Democrats moderated the Democratic debate? They would probably be less dickish to their colleagues. I’d like to close this with something Obama said in the debate:

What the American people want are not distractions. They want to figure out, how are we actually going to deliver on health care; how are we going to deliver better jobs for people; how are we going to improve their incomes; how are we going to send them to college?[nyt]