(The name of a great song by Dave Edmunds and Rockpile, by the way...).
I don't have anything particularly brilliant to add to what many, many other bloggers have said so very well (posts here and here by Will Bunch are particularly outstanding, and kudos to Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher for being the first to label's last night's cringingly awful chapter in the erosion of our democracy for what it really was).
However, this is why I gave up on watching any debate whatsoever from start to finish unless it was moderated by the League of Women Voters (Bunch notes today how important it is that they be allowed to call the shots, and if last night isn't proof positive of that, then I don't know what is). They will ensure that the questions aren't insulting to a four-year-old child and provide for follow up when the answers a candidate provides are utter nonsense (and it will be harder for candidates to do that when the original question reflects a bare minimum of thought).
Do what I do; don't watch these childish exercises in utterly bastardizing what is supposed to be a participatory democracy. All our corporate media cares about is ratings. When they're not getting them any more, they'll drop these things, and then something approximating integrity will be restored to our debates.
Update: Matt Stoller has some good ideas here.
2 comments:
Great title - that song is on my MP3 player - it sums up my earlier years so well!
Your post is spot-on. I just cannot watch this stuff anymore. The MSM insists on turning every current event into a charade of irrelevant trivia or personal attacks, and tries to make what should be political discourse about critical issues into an episode of "Survivor". I'm done.
I think you made a good point as well about how our corporate media cousins view exercises like the debates as some weird hybrid of reality TV (“Hillary Clinton, the tribe has spoken. It’s time for you to go,” as her torch is extinguished) and the trademark “gotcha” faux “reporting” emblematic of so many (including Chris Matthews, who as I noted yesterday was eviscerated so thoroughly by Mark Leibovich of the NY Times).
I’ll just tell you something about myself, and I’ll try to make it brief. I said this awhile ago, but I’ll mention it again; I was graduated with a degree in journalism as the media consolidation in this country was barely beginning (Paddy Chayefsky, God rest him, nailed all of this in “Network” years before it happened). Filthy, naïve, unkempt liberal blogger that I am, I actually enjoyed writing and (for a little while) the exercise of reporting, and I felt I could make a difference somehow and get paid at the same time (not a lot of money, but enough; I was in the wrong business if I expected to get rich, and I knew it – the fact that Matthews makes $5 mil a year tells you about the “devil’s bargain” in which he and many others participate). And I was privileged in that I was taught by esteemed individuals who recognized journalism as the craft that it truly is. I swear, I never set out to “nail” someone; I usually found that the truth of their misdeeds was incriminating enough when it was reported properly.
This has something to do with why I beat up on the Inquirer, even though it makes for boring and repetitive posts from time to time, I’m sure. And I think it’s actually good news (looking REALLY hard for a silver lining here) that so many people are as out-and-out angry as they are over the utter contemptible fraud foisted on us by ABC by last night. If this is what it takes to make as many people as possible in this country and the world realize the total uselessness of our news “gatekeepers” and their self-inflicted irrelevance, then maybe it’s a good thing they put on this shameless exhibition after all.
Thanks for the comment.
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