Where there’s a Will
Will Rogers did it 75 years ago, and now I’m trying to reclaim the op-ed page as entertainment. Think of it as a Bill Mahr monologue without Bill, or an attempt to let some hot air out of the editorial. The first of these I wrote last fall when the debate season was starting to lurch into gear. It seems whenever I’m at home on a weekday, the television is locked onto MSNBC for Hardball with Chris Matthews, Tucker, who remains annoyingly smug even after ditching his bowtie, and Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
Watch enough of this stuff, and it begins to seep out of every pore and, eventually, onto the computer screen…
The Not-So-Great Debates
The major presidential contenders have been squaring off in televised debates for months now, but with the Iowa caucuses looming, many of us are only beginning to pay attention.
And there’s a reason we haven’t been tuning in – which it has nothing to do with distractions from Britney, Harry Potter, his gay headmaster, Dumbledore, or how many shopping days we have left this season. We’re not stupid, and we understand that in this era of 24-hour news cycles, editors and producers are scrambling for something to catch our attention and the ad dollars that come with it. The candidates, most of whom can use all the exposure they can get, are only too willing to show up in Des Moines, Saratoga or on the banks of the Ganges if it means they’ll be in front of a national audience long enough to “look presidential.”
But so far this campaign season, what we’ve gotten is less information and more posturing soundbites. It’s as though the race for the White House is our newest reality show. It was never the best program on the tube, but now that the Hollywood writers’ strike is in full swing, it may soon be the only show in town not in reruns.
Why is it that media pundits seem more focused on handicapping the contestants than in addressing the issues? If you’re going to treat candidates for the highest office in the land like contestants on Project Runway or Survivor, let me suggest we simply start challenging them in the same way. Who can wrap him or herself in the flag most attractively? Can the frontrunner beat the opposition in an actual footrace? Who wins immunity this week? Who’s being voted off the dais? We can send newscasters back to their TelePrompTers, and let Heidi Klum strut out to tell Democrats and Republicans alike: In the world of politics, one day you’re in; the next day, you’re out. Auf Weidersehen, darling.
Why so cynical? Well, look at the fireworks produced by the debates so far: In an early debate on the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani made Ron Paul look like a naïve schoolboy who failed to appreciate our role in the War On Terror. Congressman Paul suggested that the fanatics who flew planes into our buildings must have been angry at something, and that if we really wanted to disarm the terrorists, we might consider the possibility of attacking their motivations instead of their relatives.
Then two weeks ago, Hillary Clinton created so much of a firestorm with her equivocating response to a question on immigration that viewers scarcely noticed what moderator Tim Russert did to poor Dennis Kucinich. Here’s Kucinich, a serious presidential contender – someone earnest in his pursuit of the nation’s highest office, and a man present to answer questions about where he would lead the country – quizzed about his encounter with a UFO.
Kucinich is a gentleman, and answered the question as asked. That’s too bad, because it displayed him at best as a fringe candidate, and at worst as a complete crackpot. Had someone asked me, I’d have said, “You know, a few days before he died, Abraham Lincoln dreamt people in the White House were mourning the assassination of the president – something which had never happened up to that point in American history. Was he mentally unstable?
“Now, do you have a policy question for me on one of those little flashcards of yours?”
It’d be nice if the moderators held themselves to the same standard of gravitas they set for Democrats and Republicans alike. And, if not, let’s just abandon any pretense of solving the country’s problems and install hidden catapults behind the lecterns so that we can ask questions like, “What’s the airspeed velocity of an unladen African swallow?” as the gatekeeper does in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Or imagine the fun when Joe Biden or Tom Tancredo mistakenly reveals his favorite color to be… “Blue. No… Green!” “ARRRRGHHHH!”
Hell, I’d TiVo that.
