{"id":2557,"date":"2003-09-10T23:59:58","date_gmt":"2003-09-11T06:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/?p=2557"},"modified":"2003-09-10T23:59:58","modified_gmt":"2003-09-11T06:59:58","slug":"dem-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/2003\/09\/10\/dem-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Dem Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Didn’t see the Democratic debate Tuesday night? Yeah, me neither. But for some perverse reason I read the whole freakin’ transcript<\/a>. You could read it too, but I’ll save you some time and just tell you that most of the Q&A goes like this:<\/p>\n

Q<\/b>: Candidate X, what do you think about apples?<\/p>\n

A<\/b>: Well, that’s a good question. But another good question is, “What kind of audience reaction will I get to this unrelated but guaranteed laughter-and-applause-getting bumpersticker slogan?”<\/p>\n

[Laughter]<\/p>\n

[Applause]<\/p>\n

But to address your question. The thing we all need to remember is that apples have cores. And the core issue facing Americans today is oranges. But when it comes to oranges, the Bush administration has completely failed to … [remainder of time spent discussing oranges, apples never again mentioned]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also, if you saw last week’s debate or have seen the candidates on talk shows, you’ve pretty much heard everything they said during the debate. The participants were given 60 seconds to respond to questions, and, in nearly every case, they would spend the first 15 segueing from the actual question to some related issue that they already had a prepared response to, and the last 45 delivering their boilerplate rhetoric. Gephardt repeated his “miserable failure” bit a few more times; Howard Dean’s closing statement was a paragraph that I’d heard almost verbatim at his rally; when asked what their favorite songs were, most candidates just picked their campaign theme. Memo to John Edwards: Dude, nobody’s<\/i> favorite song is John Cougar Mellencamp’s, “Small Town.”<\/p>\n

(The journalist who asked the “what is your favorite song” question prefaced it by saying “this is for the Gen X crowd”. Hey, nice job there, using my entire generation as justification for your industry’s obsession with irrelevant and trivial hoohaw.)<\/p>\n

Best exchange of the night:<\/p>\n

Q<\/b>: Frankly there’s been some concern that because of the racial makeup of Vermont, about 0.5 percent black, that you will have a difficult time connecting and really understanding the concerns of minorities, in particular African Americans.<\/p>\n

Dean<\/b>: Well, if the percent of minorities that’s in your state has anything to do with how you can connect with African American voters, then Trent Lott would be Martin Luther King.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Second best exchange of the night:<\/p>\n

Q<\/b>: [Some guy] recently said that the way that the Democratic candidates are talking about President Bush and this administration amounts to hate language. And I wonder if you would agree that this is hateful, demagogic talk about the president of the United States.<\/p>\n

Sharpton<\/b>: It doesn’t matter if it is Republican or Democrat. If they’re wrong, we can call them out, not out of hate but out of love for justice and what’s good for the American people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Can I get an amen? Well, I<\/i> probably can’t. But Sharpton sure can when he’s in full-on rhetoric mode. Sharpton had a lot of great lines, actually. He has about as much a chance of becoming president as I do of becoming a gold medalist in the luge, but they should let him participate in all the debates, even the Republican ones.<\/p>\n

Of course, these aren’t really “debates” right now anyhow, not in the sense of there being any actual discussion of the issues. With nine people on stage, the best they can do it toss out broad questions and allow each person the opportunity to cough up some soundbites and catchphrases. And with some 70% of the populace unable to name a single democratic candidate, these debates are more American Idol than anything else: each contestation is belting out a few verses of a popular tune not to win, but just in the hope of making any impression whatsoever on the judges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Didn’t see the Democratic debate Tuesday night? Yeah, me neither. But for some perverse reason I read the whole freakin’ transcript. You could read it too, but I’ll save you some time and just tell you that most of the Q&A goes like this: Q: Candidate X, what do you think about apples? A: Well, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}