Presidential Debate
- October 8, 2008
I was watching the town hall-style presidential debate last night, and as per usual, it reeked of stupidity. Not Obama or McCain themselves, mind you; for the first time in a long time, I find both candidates generally admirable. Everything surrounding the event, though, strikes me as just plain dumb.
First, I hate the whole town-hall debate concept, one of the things pushed for by Bill Clinton in 1992 before he started pushing chubby interns across his desk. Why do so many people like this format? Do we really need to see the candidates walking around with a mike like Jerry Springer? C'mon, they're not there to interview anorexic male/fat female redneck couples. Why the need to see candidate's legs? When they stand behind podiums during traditional debates, are viewers suspicious that they're legless Disney animatrons with plans to dominate Earth?
Tom Brokaw moderated, having been brought out of retirement to appeal to folks nostalgic for incoherent speech patterns. His frequent bitching at both candidates for going over their one-minute time limits became nearly as annoying as his difficulty pronouncing the letter "L". Why the fuss about time? Every four years we see, hear and read journalists moan about how the candidates aren't focused on issues. Finally, here's our chance to hear the issues and take notes on all the things that the President-elect will neglect to do come January. Instead, moderators only give the candidates enough time to repeat their vague patriotic nonsense, before we actually get to any specifics.
Why do we have to keep the debates short? Could you imagine some douchebag journalist cutting short the Super Bowl in the third quarter? Are people on the East Coast that hungry for their lame local newscast? I can do it in one sentence: Someone got shot, someone got raped or mugged, the stock market blows, your local team sucks, partly cloudy tomorrow, good night and stay tuned for the occasionally funny talk show coming next. There you go, now its out of the way.
Meanwhile in other time zones there're still prime-time TV shows to get to. Is that why we need to keep tabs on how long the debate runs? Is there viewer pressure to run the 'very special episode' of According to Jim that promises something humorous might actually happen? If so, people would suck almost as much as televised debates do.
- Richie, 10/08/08
