Blogger Injury

How were we hurt? Well you see, doc, it's like this....

We were at home, quietly working on this little essay for our blog. It was all about how George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson turned last week's ABC presidential primary debate into a travesty by devoting the first fifty minutes to inconsequential minutia. How that demeaned the candidates as well as the audience. And, indeed, the entire democratic process.

You know what we mean, doc? Asking Barack and Hillary why they dress like they do. Like, "Where's the flag in your lapel, boy?" Or, "Hey, honey! Isn't that a bit too much cleavage?"

And more questions like these: "Who did you befriend three decades ago? The despicable Mark Penn? The former Weather Underground organizer Bill Ayres?"

Or, even, "How do you spend your free time, candidates? Listening to angry Sunday sermons? Hearing your spouse confess his infidelities?"

Y'see, doc, we thought Stephanopoulos and Gibson had reached a new low. ABC should be deeply ashamed. They were treating two candidates for the highest office in the land like some two-bit entertainers who didn't have a serious thought in their heads. It was as if they'd been brought into the ring at the Roman Coliseum for the ABC lions to eat, just for our entertainment.

Why, the very foundation of democracy in the digital age might be hanging in the balance, we wrote.

It was a pretty good piece, even if we do say so our self. We wrapped it up with a ringing series of rhetorical but penetrating questions. Questions like, "Is commercial TV determined to turn everyone in America into a bunch of dopes so they can sell us more stuff we don't need, like drugs that put our legs to sleep and vaginal spray deodorant?"

No! we wrote. Say it ain't so!

Presidential elections are a serious business. Lives are at stake. The nation's safety. The world's future. The media should treat all the candidates with the highest degree of respect and seriousness, not just the Republican all the reporters want to win. Etc., etc., etc.

At last we were done. We reached for the mouse, ready to click it and publish. But then this email alert flashed up on our screen. It was from someone known as WWE.

"News from the campaign trail," it said. "Watch the video now."

And that's when we were injured. By a slap to the forehead. The mouse was still in our hand.

Take a look, doc. You'll see. Just be sure you aren't holding anything hard in your hand.

ABC-TV Covers the Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Obsidian Wings has the scoop:

LINCOLN: Thank you very much, Charlie and George, and thanks to all in the audience and who are out there. I appear before you today for the purpose of discussing the leading political topics which now agitate the public mind.

We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m sorry to interrupt, but do you think Mr. Douglas loves America as much you do?

LINCOLN: Sure I do.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But who loves America more?

LINCOLN: I’d prefer to get on with my opening statement George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: If your love for America were eight apples, how many apples would Senator Douglas’s love be?

And there's more hilarity...

Diminishing Democracy

"Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, though a bit more extreme and really more transparent... in just how vapid they are, were really doing what the establishment media does pretty much without exception, in terms of how it covers our political culture."

Glenn Greenwald, interviewed on Democracy Now! by Amy Goodman:

From the transcript:

Now, leave aside the question as to whether or not journalists holding themselves out as political journalists have an obligation to focus on the more substantive matters, independent of what they can do in order to generate as high ratings as possible, even if you assume that political journalism ought to simply feed the public whatever the public wants, there’s no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the American public is more interested in Barack Obama’s bowling score or whether he wears a lapel pin than they are in how our political leaders are going to address the grave economic insecurity that the country faces or extricate ourselves from the debacle in Iraq that’s becoming increasingly savage and brutal without any end in sight. This is a fiction, an invention on the part of political journalists to justify their never-ending coverage of trash.

And in fact there’s much evidence to suggest—and you can ask any political elected official—that when they go back to their district, what they hear continuously are grave complaints from their constituents and others about just how ridiculous and inane political coverage is and how dominated it is by matters that have nothing to do with their lives and with the problems that they face. And these journalists believe that they’re sort of spokespeople for the people in the heartland and speak for them and patronizingly say that they’re interested in these insipid issues and that’s why they’re covered. The reality is there’s no connection between the establishment journalistic class and the people whom they claim to represent, and the reason they cover those issues is because they, the journalists, want to cover them, not because the people want to hear them.