After watching the last round of Democratic debates which fittingly took place in Las Vegas, the capital of intrigue, excess and illusion, I round myself wanting to waterboard Wolf Blitzer.
Whether I talk with Democrats or Republicans neither of them has anything nice to say about the debates, which they view as not merely a farce but a rigged one at that. The media have always found themselves accused of turning elections into a horse race, but this year members of both parties are wondering if the race isn’t a crooked one.
In both parties, the major complaint seems to be that the so-called debates virtually ignore people that the aforementioned media have designated as minor candidates while favoring the ones they have picked as front runners. One the Democratic side that means most of the camera time goes to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with an occasional nod to John Edwards, while on the Republican side it has meant we see a lot of Mitt Romney and Rudolf Giuliani with an occasional nod to John McCain.
That media decide how much “head time” to give each candidate is unprecedented in American politics. But if you want to really understand the bias, watch the next debate with sound turned off–I’m serious. After all, by now if you don’t know what questions are going to be asked and what each candidate is going to say, you’ve been watching too many football games or too many old movies.
When you turn the sound off, you really see how the media favor the front runners by choosing to show them nine times out of ten in what are known as the “reaction shots.” Have you ever seen the camera focus on, say, Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul when they are not directly answering a question? But we see more than our share of reaction shots of Hillary and Rudy, both of whom have perfected a look that would get them to the finals of the World Series of Poker.
The media control of the debates even extends to the questions themselves, which have to be screened by the broadcasters. So when it looks like Mrs. Grant wants to ask a spontaneous question about whether the candidates are willing to take an anti-tax pledge, the person shoving the microphone in her face already knows the question that is going to be asked and who is going to ask it. This led to some embarrassing moments in the Democrat’s Las Vegas debate when at least more than one questioner had trouble remembering exactly the question they were supposed to ask, like a bad actor flubbing their lines.
I predict it will not be long before the questioners are chosen just like the contestants on Jeopardy, who have to go through a rigid screen test as demanding as that of any Hollywood casting call before they are allowed on the air, a process that focuses as much on their looks and personalities as it does on their intelligence. In a sense, the debates are already doing that.
Watching with the sound off, you begin to note how the questioners are beginning to fit into a casting script written by CNN. There will be at least one Iraq vet or better yet as in Las Vegas an Iraq vet and his mother. There will be a Latino who is vexed about immigration. There will be at least one African American to ask a question about health care or some other social policy. There will be a matronly questioner to ask about abortion.
Even the Price is Right does a better job and frankly, before his retirement, Bob Barker was a much better host than the Beast of Bombast, Tim Russert, or the Earl of Earnestness, Blitzer. Unlike Barker, who always knew the focus should be on the guests and never was above making himself the punch line of his own joke; these debate hosts exude their self-declared role as President-makers.
THEY are going to serve as the voice of the American people, as the ultimate arbiter of political justice. In 2000 Americans of all political stripes were none to happy that the election was decided by the Supreme Court. But little did we know that eight years’ later the election would be decided by those who bring you The People’s Court and Judge Judy. But that is what we have come to.
The media have become a self-declared Presidential Screening Committee without the public having any say in the matter. Of course, these days we don’t seem to have much of a say in anything, but even more inexplicable is that both the Republican and Democratic Parties seem to have allowed this to happen with scarcely a word of objection. The two national party offices have been noticeably quiet and Congress which wants to investigate everything from bridges to nowhere in Alaska to the besmirching of General Petraeus’ good name, has shown little inclination to delve into the travesty of the debates.
As my son pointed out to me, a major travesty lies in the fact that the debates appear only on cable or satellite television. This essentially shuts out of the political process those who either do not have access, cannot afford or simply choose not to subscribe to cable television. According to a November 14th report issued by the Federal Communications Commission, only 56% of Americans have cable television, which means almost half the country is missing the debates, hearing about them only through the soundbites that appear on the networks or in the newspapers.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism describes the typical audience member for cable television news:
The regular cable news viewer can be personified as a married, middle-aged man who has at least 14 years of education. He earns well, with a median income of $62,000, and tends to live in the suburbs.
According to the Census Bureau, median income for 2006 was $49, 100. In other words, those who are able to watch the debates are more educated, make more money and live in the suburbs. Maybe that audience has something to do with why there are so few questions about equity and poverty.
The control of the media over the Presidential selection process goes beyond even scripting the questions and the questioners, beyond their obvious favoritism for certain candidates over others, it goes to the very substance of the questions they ask. I say, “They ask,” because, as we have seen, they screen the questions.
Besides being as predictable as Gilligan screwing up another scheme to escape the island, the questions largely focus around what-ifs, fluffy personal inquiries or crude attempts to play “gotcha!” What would you do if Borat managed to paint the White House green in the middle of the night? Would you bomb Kazakhstan? What is your favorite Bible verse? Please explain how America can possibly trust having your finger on the nuclear trigger, when you got into a fight on the school playground when you were twelve years old?
There have been very few questions about principles or values. So the candidates who tend to be leading in both parties– surprise, surprise–tend to be those who are good at giving seemingly detailed answers that when you play them back amount to nothing. The two front runners, Clinton and Giuliani, are masters at this (is there something about New York politics that breeds this ability) and God help us if the media get the contest they seem to be doing their best to rig between the two of them. They will have to provide us with interpreters to explain what they said.
Actually, it would not be a bad idea to take the microphones away from Bitzer, Russert and their colleagues and give them to those who know how to call a sports contest like Al Michaels. Give John Madden his telestrator to show us the intricacies of Hillary’s nonanswers. Add a few of Keith Jackson’s country witticisms liven up the occasion. Let Suzy Kolber roam the audience like she roams the sidelines.
Everyone remembers the immortal line from the movie Network where the half-crazed anchor tells everyone to throw open their windows and shout, “We’re not going to take it anymore.” Maybe it’s time America did that with the debates.
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