“IF YOU WERE ONE OF THE FOUR HORSEMEN WHICH ONE WOULD YOU BE…”
Dr. W.R. Marshall
July 26, 2007
This is how I know the Apocalypse is right around the corner, and any day now one of the Four Horsemen is going to knock on my door and tell me I’m in his parking place: there are floods in England, volcanic eruptions in Hawaii, Dick Cheney served as President for two and a half hours last Saturday while the President was getting a colonoscopy (not that Dubya doesn’t deserve a little of what he’s been giving the rest of us, but Cheney in the big chair, not worth the trade-off), and here’s what opened the Seventh Seal—I got a press credential for last Monday night’s Democratic Debate.
I was sure CNN wasn’t going to grant me a credential, and almost as sure if they did I wouldn’t go. After all, I am to journalism what Ann Coulter is to kindness, and no matter how “radical” this debate was going to be, what with the questions coming from “us” (I’m opting out of “us”—reasons to follow), we all know the candidate’s answers would more of the same.
But the email telling me I got the credential, also mentioned a press snack room and a big dinner buffet and I’d been dreaming about those little hotdogs wrapped in puff pastry, and what better place to find them then at a Democratic Debate at the Citadel Military College in Charleston, South Carolina. (You can see why I lay no claim to journalistic instincts.)
Free food is free food, so I went.
CNN made everything easy; parking, getting the press pass, the rooms they set up for the media complete with reserved seating and little reporter doodads like pens and notebooks, and proximity to the snack room which was sponsored by Google and had pretty much everything but those little hotdogs wrapped in puff pastry.
I shunted aside my disappointment, grabbed a hand full of raisinettes, and before things started, wandered around campus.
The Citadel is beautiful, and logistically a perfect choice for a debate; it’s small and gated, making security easy, but someone should have done an irony sweep before choosing it.
On the walls of every barracks, just as you enter, there hangs a large brass plaque which reads: “A CADET DOES NOT LIE CHEAT OR STEAL NOR TOLERATE THOSE WHO DO.” It’s obvious why the Republicans chose another site, but the Democrats are still struggling with what “is” is, so I can see how they might have missed it.
No reporters were allowed into the actual debate, except CNN, we all watched it on TV, just like you. (And, just like you, none of us would have stuck around past 8:00 pm if “Heroes” wasn’t on summer hiatus.)
We sat there, the journalists and me, eating free yogurt covered pretzels and pulled pork (not on the same bun), some took notes, some were live online, some just watched, and some just looked at their watches. I can’t tell you what any one person saw staring at the big monitors that were set up all over the room. All I can tell you is there were plenty of people watching, and all of them had press badges hanging around their necks. I was in the same room with The New York Times, MSNBC, and some guy whose website extols the virtues of the Third Reich (I think he talks mostly about exercise)—and there were three more rooms full of other people with press badges around their necks. What this means is, if you do just a little bit of looking, you’ll find exactly the news you want exactly the way you want it—which means it probably isn’t news at all.
But they work hard to make it news.
In the post-debate euphoria of talking heads all talking about this seed change in Presidential talking because “we, the people” got to talk, no one brought up what Bill Richardson had just talked about when he talked to…anyone…anyone…and said he was trying to “provoke a debate.”
Actual debating at a debate, what’s next George Bush actually governing?
The questions themselves were questions we’ve heard dozens of times but we usually hear them from people slightly better dressed than the You Tubers. And the answers… well, the answers were the answers.
The news of the night was the You Tubers. These are the same folks who are bringing you the End of Days, so if you want to learn to water ski or visit Paris, you should do it soon. Yes, there were some serious and sad questions about loss and sickness, war and healthcare, and then there were the others:
A guy who played a taxed guitar
A Reverend who wants to be a star
The cute Starbucks coffee chic
The Snowman who wants the polar ice thick
Them two crackers from Tennessee
That man from Philly annoyed the hell out of me
The guy at the end who wanted them all to hug
And the assault rifle looney, who the FBI’s got to bug
Everyone in the room wondered how, in this most democratic of Democratic debates, out of a reported 3,000 questions, these were the ones chosen. Anderson Cooper briefly explained it at the beginning of the evening; they didn’t care for costumes, (you have to wonder why that whole “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” look at me I’m wearing a jet pilot costume got so much coverage), didn’t entertain any questions from kids, they filtered out the questions they deemed inappropriate, but the criteria is still unclear. We are left to assume that what we saw was the best of the bunch.
If that’s the best the nation has, it’s obvious we simply cannot allow these people to vote. Look at the mess we’re in now and this You Tube thing is just getting of the ground. Can you imagine what it will be like in 2012 or 2016 when everyone is jacked in?
It makes me kind of wish George Washington would have said yes when they offered him the job of King.
I was sure CNN wasn’t going to grant me a credential, and almost as sure if they did I wouldn’t go. After all, I am to journalism what Ann Coulter is to kindness, and no matter how “radical” this debate was going to be, what with the questions coming from “us” (I’m opting out of “us”—reasons to follow), we all know the candidate’s answers would more of the same.
But the email telling me I got the credential, also mentioned a press snack room and a big dinner buffet and I’d been dreaming about those little hotdogs wrapped in puff pastry, and what better place to find them then at a Democratic Debate at the Citadel Military College in Charleston, South Carolina. (You can see why I lay no claim to journalistic instincts.)
Free food is free food, so I went.
CNN made everything easy; parking, getting the press pass, the rooms they set up for the media complete with reserved seating and little reporter doodads like pens and notebooks, and proximity to the snack room which was sponsored by Google and had pretty much everything but those little hotdogs wrapped in puff pastry.
I shunted aside my disappointment, grabbed a hand full of raisinettes, and before things started, wandered around campus.
The Citadel is beautiful, and logistically a perfect choice for a debate; it’s small and gated, making security easy, but someone should have done an irony sweep before choosing it.
On the walls of every barracks, just as you enter, there hangs a large brass plaque which reads: “A CADET DOES NOT LIE CHEAT OR STEAL NOR TOLERATE THOSE WHO DO.” It’s obvious why the Republicans chose another site, but the Democrats are still struggling with what “is” is, so I can see how they might have missed it.
No reporters were allowed into the actual debate, except CNN, we all watched it on TV, just like you. (And, just like you, none of us would have stuck around past 8:00 pm if “Heroes” wasn’t on summer hiatus.)
We sat there, the journalists and me, eating free yogurt covered pretzels and pulled pork (not on the same bun), some took notes, some were live online, some just watched, and some just looked at their watches. I can’t tell you what any one person saw staring at the big monitors that were set up all over the room. All I can tell you is there were plenty of people watching, and all of them had press badges hanging around their necks. I was in the same room with The New York Times, MSNBC, and some guy whose website extols the virtues of the Third Reich (I think he talks mostly about exercise)—and there were three more rooms full of other people with press badges around their necks. What this means is, if you do just a little bit of looking, you’ll find exactly the news you want exactly the way you want it—which means it probably isn’t news at all.
But they work hard to make it news.
In the post-debate euphoria of talking heads all talking about this seed change in Presidential talking because “we, the people” got to talk, no one brought up what Bill Richardson had just talked about when he talked to…anyone…anyone…and said he was trying to “provoke a debate.”
Actual debating at a debate, what’s next George Bush actually governing?
The questions themselves were questions we’ve heard dozens of times but we usually hear them from people slightly better dressed than the You Tubers. And the answers… well, the answers were the answers.
The news of the night was the You Tubers. These are the same folks who are bringing you the End of Days, so if you want to learn to water ski or visit Paris, you should do it soon. Yes, there were some serious and sad questions about loss and sickness, war and healthcare, and then there were the others:
A guy who played a taxed guitar
A Reverend who wants to be a star
The cute Starbucks coffee chic
The Snowman who wants the polar ice thick
Them two crackers from Tennessee
That man from Philly annoyed the hell out of me
The guy at the end who wanted them all to hug
And the assault rifle looney, who the FBI’s got to bug
Everyone in the room wondered how, in this most democratic of Democratic debates, out of a reported 3,000 questions, these were the ones chosen. Anderson Cooper briefly explained it at the beginning of the evening; they didn’t care for costumes, (you have to wonder why that whole “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” look at me I’m wearing a jet pilot costume got so much coverage), didn’t entertain any questions from kids, they filtered out the questions they deemed inappropriate, but the criteria is still unclear. We are left to assume that what we saw was the best of the bunch.
If that’s the best the nation has, it’s obvious we simply cannot allow these people to vote. Look at the mess we’re in now and this You Tube thing is just getting of the ground. Can you imagine what it will be like in 2012 or 2016 when everyone is jacked in?
It makes me kind of wish George Washington would have said yes when they offered him the job of King.
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