The ABC Democratic Debate: An American Discrace!

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Viewers with an hour to kill before American Idol on Wed. night may have caught some of the debate on ABC. If so, they may now believe this election is about what Obama's pastor and some guy he knew in Chicago said, whether or not he will wear a flag pin, and whether either candidate will raise investor's capital gains taxes. After 7 years of the worst, most corrupt mismanagement this country has known, moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos chose those topics among the most pressing to put in front of the first network audience of this election.

Clearly the prime directive was to make the candidates squirm rather than conduct anything resembling a valid interview for the most powerful position in the world. There are a lot of things any and every candidate should be drilled on, especially if both parties had been represented. But the petty crap these two focused on makes me think this was brought to us by the producers of Desperate Housewives. If I was in charge at ABC and their questioning wasn't endorsed by the network, the next job for both of those assclowns would be scrapping gum from the underside of audience chairs at the Jimmy Kimmel Show.

Ironically, the theme of this debate was the Constitution. There is no meatier issue than the current assaults on our Constitution and who can restore it, however, ABC would have you believe the flag is the main course and our rights are the garnish on the plate.

The real theme of this debate was
"How Do You Respond to Every Bad Thing Republicans Say About You?"

The subtheme was
"Let's Hold the Black Guy to a Standard No Candidate Could Live Up To"
with an occasional redirection to
"Let's See If We Can Make Hillary More Menopausal Then She Already Is".

I found it particularly interesting that Obama didn't take the bait to pounce on Hillary after she admitted to lying about the sniper fire. Meanwhile, Hillary was relentless in following up on every Obama attack. (Memo to Obama: If you want to play hardball too and be done with this thing, run an ad noting that if she admits to lying now because she may "need more sleep" how is she's going to handle that 3am call as President.)

I'm sure a large chunk of viewers tuned out of "American Disgrace" on ABC when American Idol started and many of them will be sure to vote on which singer does a better job with a Mariah Carey song but will never see the inside of a voting booth when it comes to who would do a better job running this country.

Just when I was beginning to think cable news has really hit bottom, along comes this network news production. On my scorecard ABC is now DEF.

[Magi2]

Not surpizing to learn Stuffanappleupyerass (I stole that) is a Bilderberg member and as for Gibson or S, I will never trust them or ABC news ever!
What a disgrace! As well as Hillary by the way.

[Magi2]

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/a...anapoulos.html

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terrific article, Mag. Note that, like us, he describes the debate as a "disgrace". There is no more fitting a word. Here are more of his words:

Thursday, April 17, 2008
An open letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanapoulos
Dear Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos,

...a televised train wreck that my friend and colleague Greg Mitchell has already called, quite accurately, "a shameful night for the U.S. media." It's hard because -- like many other Americans -- I am still angry at what I just witnessed, so angry that it's hard to even type accurately because my hands are shaking.

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.
...
Here's a question for you, George. Is it true that yesterday you appeared on the radio with conservative talk radio host Sean Hannity, and that you said you were "taking notes" when he urged you to ask a question about Obama's supposed ties to a former member of the Weather Underground -- which in fact you did?
...
But I'm not ready to make nice. What I just watched was an outrage. As a journalist, you appeared to confirm all of the worst qualities that cause people to hold our profession in such low esteem, especially your obsession with cornering the candidates with lame "trick" questions and your complete lack of interest or concern about substance -- or about the American people, or the state of our nation. You embarassed some good people who work at ABC News ... and you embarassed yourselves. The millions of people who watched the debate were embarassed, too -- at the state of our political discourse, and what it has finally become, at long last.
...
Charlie, I'm going to sign off this letter the way that you always sign off the news, that "I hope you had a great day."

Because America just had a horrible night.

Posted by Will Bunch
(a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News)

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A quote from
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

... Gibson and Stephanopolous must have suspected that they might run out of irrelevant steam at some point, so, waiting in the can were taped irrelevancies straight from Booboisie Central, such as one lady's searing question posed to Sen. Obama: "I want to know if you believe in the American flag."

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't heard it with my own ears, and I have no idea how the Illinois senator suppressed what I would have found to be the unsuppressible urge to guffaw in disbelief. But that's just one of the many, many excellent reasons I would never in a sane moment even consider running for public office in this tribalistic freak show of a democracy...

[ababof]

Sorry to read that some medias are stealing this campaign to make the show and treat Dem candidates like Coke and Pepsi. Hope you won't have only a bitter tonic left.

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youtube has some of the lowlights here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s3vbklTXd0

you can sign the MoveOn petition here
http://pol.moveon.org/enoughdistractions/?rc=homepage