Thursday, April 17, 2008

Weapons of Mass Distraction, or "When did you stop beating your wife, Mr. Obama?"

Would that old trick question have been any worse than George "The Hair" Stephanopoulos's "Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?"?

Last night's telecast on ABC was especially awful for those of us who don't own cable or satellite connections and have limited opportunities to watch a debate in full over our old rabbit-eared and soon-to-be-obsolete sets.
I was looking forward to seeing a debate on some substantive issues, not an attack on the two candidates by Charlie "My Reading Glasses Make Me Look Wise" Gibson and George S. using an unoriginal and overplayed rehash of verbal gaffes and guilts by association. More than half the questions that I saw seemed designed merely to elicit an embarassing soundbite or a tax pledge that could not be kept.
ABC should be ashamed, but maybe they should just give up and get Don Imus and Howard Stern to "moderate" the next "debate". That might really be "entertaining".
(MoveOn.org is collecting signatures on a petition to ABC News here: http://pol.moveon.org/enoughdistractions/).