This is Part 1 in a series:
Wednesday night's debate in
It also confirmed that George Stephanopoulos and ABC News are part of the reason
If these numbskulls had the decency to focus on real issues and not on Al Gore seeming "mean" in his first debate against George W. Bush in 2000 or the "flip-flopping" or "Swiftboating" of John Kerry in 2004 we most likely would never have needed to deal with Bush in the first place, or at least we could have gotten rid of him when we had the chance to.
A full 51 minutes into the debate not a single question about policy was asked. Sen. Obama made repeated efforts to change the subject to more substantive issues, but instead, moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson chose to ask the candidates about flag lapels, Obama's "bitter" comment and his neighbor in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago while cramming in as many commercials as possible.
The debate looked like nothing more than a reasonably produced college of journalism production at some conservative university where the students all strived to one day sit in Sean Hannity's anchor chair at FOX news.
To begin with, the network recorded the "live" bug in the lower left hand corner of the screen. This is amateur television 101. It was visible for the duration of the West Coast feed which began at
In addition to the bug, the camera work was awkward and at times inexplicable.
The show even began on an awkward note. Right off the bat ABC went with a tight shot of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton already standing at their podiums. I'm certain I was not the only viewer who thought "Whoa! Ok, I guess we're getting started here."
The awkwardness continued as several times the producer chose to cut away from or change their shots of the candidates at very strange moments and with a sporadic pace, including some confusing camera and production work during the candidate's short opening statements.
They also showed
I suppose it is possible that Michelle just opened the door of the minivan and as Barack got out to head into the Kimmel Theatre she yelled "good luck honey" as she zoomed off to Bennigan's with David Plouffe, Bob Casey, David Axelrod and the girls, but I don't think it went down like that.
The bizarre timing and the large number of commercials were also a major irritant. Most of the cable news networks have featured either no commercials or very limited commercials. CNN's last debate between Obama and Clinton was 90 minutes long, broken up by a single short set of commercials roughly 45 minutes in.
CNN's commercial break seemed more like an effort to make the pace of the debate comfortable and less drawn out rather than an attempt to squeeze as much ad revenue out as possible.
ABC's decision to include enough commercials to fill roughly 20% of their air time in two hours was a slap in the face to the American public for whom this debate was supposed to be a public service.
Making the sporadic commercial breaks even worse was the fact that four of the six breaks included a return to the debate marked by an announcer with a movie-trailer voice reading some supposedly relevant (to the debate) portion of the U.S. constitution. This tactic cheapened both the debate and our constitution. It was the FOXification or American Idolization of a very important and serious matter.
The abominable performances by the moderators however trumped all of the other amateur mistakes ABC made in the
The performance was so bad that I found myself actually whole-heartedly agreeing with comments made by Pat Buchanan after the debate. When Pat and I come together on any issue something is very wrong.
Find out what that issue is in Part 2 coming soon.
