C'mon, did you really think the Clintons wouldn't get to Stephanopoulos? And the Weather Underground question that George asked came right from Sean Hannity!
I'm done with the debates. I voted for Barack in the primary, and even the people I know who voted for Clinton back on CA Primary day have now changed their minds.
And so have a lot of people who voted for her.
It's over for me. If you really need to know what's going on, though, the last thing you need to do it watch another debate, especially one like this one last night.
Here's what Tom Shales said in the Wash Post (with a hat tip to Americablog):
The fact is, cable networks CNN and MSNBC both did better jobs with earlier candidate debates. Also, neither of those cable networks, if memory serves, rushed to a commercial break just five minutes into the proceedings, after giving each candidate a tiny, token moment to make an opening statement. Cable news is indeed taking over from network news, and merely by being competent.
Gibson sat there peering down at the candidates over glasses perched on the end of his nose, looking prosecutorial and at times portraying himself as a spokesman for the working class. Blunderingly he addressed an early question, about whether each would be willing to serve as the other's running mate, "to both of you," which is simple ineptitude or bad manners. It was his job to indicate which candidate should answer first. When, understandably, both waited politely for the other to talk, Gibson said snidely, "Don't all speak at once."
For that matter, the running-mate question that Gibson made such a big deal over was decidedly not a big deal -- especially since Wolf Blitzer asked it during a previous debate televised and produced by CNN.
Who decided that it would be a good idea to have a f0rmer Clinton aide be a part of this at all?
Remember when there were actual debates and not this shit that the news divisions are using to make money?
Need to know about the candidates? The machine you're sitting in front of right now can do that for you without the he said she said and muck and bullshit. But you gotta know where to look. And you gotta be willing to do the work. I know TV is easy, but picking your next president should never be easy.
UPDATE: And here's more, an open letter to Gibby and Steph from Will Bunch in the Philly Daily News:
With your performance tonight -- your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane "issue" questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters -- you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it's even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to "export democracy," and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, "no thank you." Because that was no way to promote democracy.
Don't watch any more debates.
Period.
My hero, Bill Moyers, still relevant, still doing the best newsmagazine on television (take that 60 Minutes!) and probably the only guy out there who is qualified to talk to this man about the remarks in question.
