Per Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, moments after the ABC-sponsored Democratic debate concluded just now.
Maybe Olbermann’s just peeved that ABC is restricting his use of clips?
Actually, Olbermann’s characterization sounds about right to me. It was pretty much all gotcha or gaffe from debate moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos for the first hour.
Put another way: “[B]asically debate by gotcha line with basically no discussion of any of the big questions the election is turning on,” writes Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall.
And there’s even this from Jonah Goldberg over at National Review’s The Corner blog:
I’m no leftwing blogger, but I can only imagine how furious they must be with the debate so far. Nothing on any issues. Just a lot of box-checking on how the candidates will respond to various Republican talking points come the fall. Now I think a lot of those Republican talking points are valid and legitimate. But if I were a “fighting Dem” who thinks all of these topics are despicable distractions from the “real issues,” I would find this debate to be nothing but Republican water-carrying.
I've been an Olbermann fan in the past, but I'm pretty reluctantly moving away from him. It started for me when he didn't make Chris Matthews "Worst Person in the World" for saying that Hillary wouldn't be where she is but for her husband's fooling around.
It continued when I watched him chuckling about Hillary's "mistakes" with Matthews on their post-debate shows. They were so patently unfair and so utterly stupid, I had to wonder how old those boys actually were.
(I am not a big Hillary fan, by the way, but fair is fair.)
And now this: I watched Keith's discussion last night with the great Rachel Maddow and the often astute Pat Buchanan about the "Gotcha" questions from the ABC moderators, and I really had to laugh at the double-standard there. Have they all forgotten the downright silly questions coming from Chris Matthews and Tim Russert when they were debate moderators? Apparently so, because I kept waiting for the obvious comparison that never came.
I am truly sick of the emphasis on silly stuff when the entire country is falling apart at the seams. There isn't a segment of our society today that doesn't need radical surgery in order to stave off the inevitable flat-line, but we seem to think we can laugh it all away.
It's a calculated myth that Americans don't want hard news and information. Spend a week listening to "Washington Journal" on C-span and you'll be astonished at the depth of frustration and outrage the callers from all across the country feel about the abuses perpetrated by this government. Almost always, the second part of the gripe is against the media for the unconscionable lack of coverage that could and should bring those abuses to light.
Posted by monicalee
on Thu 17 Apr 2008 at 08:36 AM