...is that she wasn't speaking to me: the gay Arab-American urbanite who used to work in the...ahem..."mainstream media" (the media that is, I suppose, in the mainstream of American thought, hence the name "mainstream media").
She wasn't speaking to me. I'm not interested in colloquial chat; I'm not impressed by winks or smiles. My head isn't turned when a candidate for the top ring of global governmental power gets right the names of world leaders.
I'm not going to make an important decision about someone because he or she can stand at a podium for 90 minutes and NOT make a huge glaring error. Nor, for that matter, am I going to decide against that person if they do make a verbal mistake.
How low can we set the bar? Sarah Palin, after days of briefing, managed to be conversant in the most basic tenets and events of American Foreign Policy. Oh joy! She managed NOT to sound like an idiot. Hooray! She was able to stay focused (though there were a decent number of platitudinous, non-sequiter filled, and sometimes falsehood spouting answers) and be "feisty". She managed to avoid the look of "deer, meet headlights". Congratulations!
But is that enough? Is that really enough?
I hate the televised debates, for all the candidates. They say so little; they are little more than a reality show for politicians. TV news is a lousy thing really for elections. And last night's debate shows why: the pre-game prognistication game; the determination that one candidate "came off" better than the other, hence "victory or loss".
Really, not once did I hear a discussion of the actual issues involved. It was a point-scoring rundown of Biden v Palin. Who managed to play offense and defense with the most effectiveness.
Maybe we oughta just let Howie and Terry and Deion and Madden do our political coverage. The transformation would then be complete.
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