Debate Overkill
I give some of the last words on UFOs and Presidential candidates to Ed Morrissey:
No, the big news from the debate is that MSNBC thinks UFOs are so important that it has to ask about them in a presidential debate. Had they simply wanted to confirm Kucinich’s supposed sighting of one, the network could have just asked for an interview. Instead, rather than asking a question about policy in a tight time frame, the network of Keith Olbermann decided that flying saucers and little green men took priority over trade policy with Columbia, AIDS assistance in Africa, the proper size of the American Navy, the Law of the Sea Treaty, and so on.
Brian Williams and Tim Russert tried passing the question around the room, only to get shot down by Barack Obama, who preferred to talk about life on Earth. At least someone on the stage understood how ridiculous MSNBC has become. However, with the tragic collapse of the Weekly World News, someone has to cater to the seven people in the nation who took it seriously.
This question clearly indicates we’ve run out of gas for these debates. We have nothing left to ask, or no one wants to ask anything of substance. “Sighting the UFOs” can now replace the hoary “jumping the shark” in the lexicon of American pop culture, and both apply to MSNBC’s political coverage.
UFOs and snowmen. That’s how we can summarize the debates. In theory having lots of debates meant candidates would get plenty of time to explain their positions on issues and engage with each other. How it’s turned out is too many candidates stand on stage with moderators resorting to inane questions about UFOs. A way to fix some of this is to split the candidate mass into more manageable sizes. Instead of eight or nine people on a stage, how about four to five? We’d learn a lot more about each candidate. The moral: quality, not quantity.
“How To Tell We Have Had Too Many Debates“
