April 18, 2008 5:30 AM

This is what happens when Presidential politics gets confused with Entertainment Tonight

So this is the sewer that our political dialogue has sunk into? Instead of lucid, rational, and informed discussions of issues such as Iraq, health care, the economy, and the continued erosion of our civil rights, we get a "gotcha debate" about trivia and meaningless horse$#!&. Instead seriously debating the issues the next President will have to wrestle with, we get questions regarding of and "serious" discussions/circle jerks surrounding (among other topics):

  • flag pins

  • Rev Jeremiah Wright

  • the Weather Underground

  • whether Sen. Barack Obama's pastor truly loves America, and

  • whether Sen. Hillary Clinton is a closet Lesbian

OK, so the "fact" that Sen. Clinton is a lipstick Lesbian never actually came up, but from what I've seen, it was about the only ridiculous question left unasked. Lord knows the topic of the leader of Hamas taking over the church bulletin at Sen. Obama's church was raised as if it was a serious, substantive issue. WTF??

In the interest of honesty, I must confess to not having watched Wednesday's debate. I was frankly far more interested in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Really; after 20 debates, is there really any new ground to be broken? Judging by the fact that the first serious question wasn't asked until 45 minutes into the debate, the answer to that questions would seem to be a resounding "NO!"

ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked a question give to him by Sean Hannity. The reviews of the debate contained words like "shoddy", "despicable", and "unmitigated travesty". Yet no one at ABC seems overly concerned that this was more parody and shoveling horse$#!& then an intelligent, worthwhile debate.

I'd like to say that this travesty was an exception, but going into the general campaign, tripe like this will likely become the rule as Republicans ratchet up the "gotcha" factor. That being the case, how about we make sure that Sen. John McCain gets treated to the same sort of ambush debate questions? I think John Aravosis at AMERICAblog has the questions nailed. I know that I'd like an answer to the question of whether McCain requires his mistresses to wear American flag pins.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on April 18, 2008 5:30 AM.

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