Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson will be moderating a conversation with President Obama next Wednesday evening about health care reform. ABC News says their goal is to include divergent viewpoints from audience members and experts alike, challenging the president to answer questions from various stakeholders who agree and disagree with his proposals.
To submit a question, click HERE. Leave your questions in the "comments" field. Digg up the questions you like and bury the ones that just don't cut it. Charlie and Diane will ask the president at least one of these submitted questions.
Tune in to ABC for “Questions for the President: Prescription for America” on Wednesday, June 24th at 10 pm ET, and “Nightline” at 11:30 pm ET.
Saying Thank You
Please read the article below from James Rainey of the LA Times. I appeciated this article so I sent him an email to express that. If you agree with this letter, please take a moment to send him a thank you email at
james.rainey@latimes.com
and cc the folllowing media outlets:
tblake@thepolitico.com, letters@newsweek.com, national@washpost.com, hardball@msnbc.com, thisweek@abc.com, scams@cbsnews.com, letters@msnbc.com, letters@time.com, 60M@cbsnews.com, newseditor@MAIL.CNN.COM, managing-editor@nytimes.com, missioncalendar@oprah.com, charlierose@pbs.org, public@nytimes.com, earlyshow@cbs.com, larry.king.live@cnn.com, NBC_MeetThePress_NewsMail@MSNBC.COM, Dateline@NBCUNI.com, joe@msnbc.com, crossfire@cnn.com, rachel@msnbc.com, evening@cbsnews.com, steve.capus@nbc.com, thedailyshow@comedycentral.com, mailings@mail.cnn.com, FNS@foxnews.com, me@glennbeck.com, loudobbs@mail.cnn.com, 2020@abc.com, phil.griffin@nbc.com, situationroom@mail.cnn.com, letters@usnews.com, dsaunders@sfchronicle.com, readers.rep@latimes.com, wnt@abcnews.com, weekends@cbsnews.com, abcboard@abc.virginia.gov, HeraldEd@miamiherald.com, ftn@cbsnews.com, netaudr@abc.com, executive-editor@nytimes.com, larryking@mail.cnn.com, KAC@cbsnews.com, colmes@foxnews.com, ombudsman@washpost.com, Comments@foxnews.com, casey.wian@turner.com, nightline@abcnews.com, dabrooks@nytimes.com, wnn@abcnews.com, bsmith@thepolitico.com, rachel@msnbc.com,
to say "thank you" for taking an honorable stance.
So often we express our anger when one does the wrong thing, and gloss over the opportunity to express gratitude when someone makes an honorable gesture.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Article:
Hiding Sarah Palin behind 'deference'
Media access to the Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee will be tightly controlled. Charles Gibson of ABC gets the first shot. There's a long list of questions he could start with. By JAMES
RAINEY, ON THE MEDIA September 9, 2008
John McCain's campaign essentially confirmed over the weekend what some had suspected: Media access to Sarah Palin, would-be vice president of the United States, will be tightly controlled. Troublemakers need not apply. And how will we know those troublemakers? They will be the ones unwilling to treat the governor of Alaska with what campaign manager Rick Davis called "some level of respect and deference." Deference? The dictionary definitions I find begin with "respectful submission" and "yielding." That might be the right approach for a reporter lucky enough to interview McCain's 96-year-old mother, Roberta. (If only our politicians were so plain-spoken.) But it would be wrong -- and, dare I say it, even sexist -- to suggest that Sarah Barracuda is too meek for a little back-and-forth with the denizens of the Fourth Estate. Early this year, voters (and a certain "Saturday Night Live" skit) rightly smacked news outlets for falling captive to the Barack Obama "rock star" narrative. They demanded to know more about the Democrat than that he had a knack for drawing big crowds and delivering inspiring speeches. Those complaints and a time-honored primary season tradition -- reporters boring in on candidates after they become front-runners -- helped spur a tougher look at Obama. Stories examined his fundraising, picking over his ties to shady fundraiser Antoin Rezko; detailed his apparent comfort in the bare-knuckle world of Chicago politics; and described his awkward attempts to downplay his opposition to the military "surge" in Iraq, even as it appeared to be having some success. The Alaska governor is helping McCain attract boisterous crowds. Her convention speech last week drew sparkling reviews, even from the mainstream media organizations that Republicans claim are so unfair. Plenty of TV talking heads say Palin revived McCain's maverick profile -- and that doesn't seem to be hurting his poll numbers. The sound you hear in the distance is the wailing of liberals, desperately afraid that Palin won't be forced to answer serious questions. Maybe. But I think the McCain-Palin camp can only play hide-the-candidate for so long before they'll look like they don't think their vice presidential pick is ready to lead on Day One. The first test of Palin, untethered (to the campaign or a prepared text), will come later this week when she sits down with ABC News anchor Charles Gibson for an interview in Alaska. It will air on Thursday's evening news. Gibson can't stand too much on deference, can he? He's the guy, after all, who at an April debate put Obama in a full-nelson. The crowd that night in Philadelphia groaned, and commentators torched Gibson and co-moderator George Stephanopoulos. But the debate did answer questions, as the TV men said, that were "out there" in the electorate. Obama was forced to discuss his association with a onetime member of the radical 1960s group the Weathermen; his statement that poor voters "bitter" about their lot turn to guns and religion for solace; and his failure to more quickly disassociate himself from the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his racially polarizing former pastor. Those issues "came in," as the lawyers like to say, because the people needed to know, Gibson told the Democrat. The ABC anchor, for example, asked Obama about his "bitter" comment, saying that Pennsylvanians "find that patronizing and think that you said actually what you meant." Gibson also aired a tape of a Latrobe, Pa., woman who asked Obama (who did not always wear a flag pin) about his patriotism: "I want to know if you believe in the American flag?" Gibson defended the question by pointing out that such queries were "all over the Internet." Even without that flimsy standard, Gibson should have no trouble finding the justification to ask Palin a few of these questions: * You have been skeptical that global warming is caused by humans. On what basis do you reject the scientific consensus that fossil fuels and human activity have contributed to climate change? * You asked the librarian in your town about the policy for banning books. Are there books you think should be kept from the public? * You have claimed credit for killing the "bridge to nowhere," the $398-million link between Ketchikan and Gravina Island. Didn't you support it until it was clear Congress was not willing to pay for the much-ridiculed project? * You have said students should be allowed to "debate both sides" of evolution. Should creationism be taught alongside evolution in the public schools? Do you believe in evolution? * What's at the root of the terrorist problem in Pakistan? And how would you make progress, which has eluded the Bush administration, in that dangerous country? * Your opponents claim you and McCain would just extend the Bush administration for another four years. Cite three instances in which you have differed with the president. That's just a start. I'm not sure how much time Gibson is going to have, but he can turn to his own viewers for other questions, posted by the hundreds on ABC's website. During that April debate, Gibson set another standard. He interrupted when he thought his question wasn't being answered. He called Obama out, for instance, when he thought he was not clear enough about gun control. Hardly deferential, but appropriate -- both for the Democratic star of the first half of the campaign season and the Republican star just stepping to center stage. james.rainey@latimes.com
"I don't know why she said what she said," Mrs. McCain explains in an interview with ABC News' Kate Snow airing on "Good Morning America" Thursday. "Everyone has their own experience. I don't know why she said what she said, all I know is that I have always been proud of my country." From ABC News: Link
"I don't know why she said what she said," Mrs. McCain explains in an interview with ABC News' Kate Snow airing on "Good Morning America" Thursday. "Everyone has their own experience. I don't know why she said what she said, all I know is that I have always been proud of my country."
From ABC News: Link
Seriously? This again? If the First Lady can give Michelle a break, then she can do the same! It's not hard. But considering that her husband is facing a defeat for the ages (according to some recent polls), I guess she's trying to keep him in the news.
It is in Cindy McCain's best interest to let this non-story die down.
I saw this item posted about an ABC News report concerning how many high school science teachers are committed to teaching creationism as an "alternative theory" to Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection. I won't dwell on the point of the article except to say that the creationists are getting a small hold in the public school science classes and all they have is an intelligent design concept not proved in any verifiable way. This is frightening to me.
I am posting excerpts from the article:
ABC News reports on the findings of a study that concluded 16% of U.S. science teachers are Creationists, and that, disturbingly, one in eight are teaching creationism as a valid science:
Despite a court-ordered ban on the teaching of creationism in U.S. schools, about one in eight high-school biology teachers still teach it as valid science, a survey reveals. And, although almost all teachers also taught evolution, those with less training in science -- and especially evolutionary biology -- tend to devote less class time to Darwinian principles... ...The researchers polled a random sample of nearly 2,000 high-school science teachers across the U.S. in 2007. Of the 939 who responded, 2 percent said they did not cover evolution at all, with the majority spending between 3 and 10 classroom hours on the subject.However, a quarter of the teachers also reported spending at least some time teaching about creationism or intelligent design. Of these, 48 percent -- about 12.5 percent of the total survey -- said they taught it as a "valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species".
...The researchers polled a random sample of nearly 2,000 high-school science teachers across the U.S. in 2007. Of the 939 who responded, 2 percent said they did not cover evolution at all, with the majority spending between 3 and 10 classroom hours on the subject.
However, a quarter of the teachers also reported spending at least some time teaching about creationism or intelligent design. Of these, 48 percent -- about 12.5 percent of the total survey -- said they taught it as a "valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species".
When, years from now, hindsight-benefited historians look back on the primary elections of 2008, especially during the weeks in April and early May, one thing will appear crystal clear: flag lapel pins didn’t matter.
Nor did bowling scores, nor renegade reverends, nor harsh adjectives used to describe the mood of small-town Americans harshly abandoned by big corporations and by big government.
No, flag lapel pins did not matter to voters, who agreed with and voted for the man who was not afraid to campaign in the patriotic nude, the man who eschewed the venerable American flag pin in favor of letting his words and deeds demonstrate his patriotism, rather than a two-cent chunk of recycled Chinese metal with a fresh paint job.
The Great Flag Lapel Pin Media Controversy began in October of 2007, when Senator Barack Obama, campaigning in Iowa, was asked why his lapel was shorn of patriotic jewelry.
“You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin,” Obama said. “Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq War, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest.
“Instead,” he said, “I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism. You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those who serve. And you show your patriotism by being true to your values and ideals. And that’s what we have to lead with, our values and ideals.”
The Controversy raged again in April, when a woman asked Senator Obama during a televised debate why he did not wear an American flag pin. She had been put up to the question by the debate moderators, George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson, who later said they thought the question was “appropriate and relevant.”
The media firestorm after each event was, naturally, intense. Pundits, rather than speculate on the merits and manner of the war itself, questioned how Senator Obama’s motives for shunning patriotic fashion accessories harmed our troops in Iraq.
Faux news broadcasters, ever in pursuit of fairness and balance, insinuated that flagless politicians were godless communists bent on subverting our youth and banning mom and apple pie.
But it turned out that in early May 2008 the citizens of Indiana and North Carolina proved neither to be so distractible, nor so gullible.
They understood that Obama was a senator in the Congress of the United States of America. They understood pretty clearly which nation he was standing behind. They knew all too well the damage done to our nation by those who hid behind flag lapel pins while abusing the very principles and ideals for which the flag stands.
After all, which is the greater insult to patriotism, to refuse to wear a pin, or to commit acts that are inherently unpatriotic? Extraordinary renditions, torture, and warrant-less wiretapping are all being done at the behest of men and women wearing American flag lapel pins.
Yet to say that flag pins are “substitutes for true patriotism” isn’t quite right. Not all who wear flag lapel pins are hypocrites or, worse, fake patriots. Some are, and some are not. Some who wear them love their country, have served their country, and are sincere in wanting to wear their pride in their country.
But the refusal to wear a flag lapel pin – while not necessarily making one a super patriot – should not be met with accusations of being unpatriotic, especially in a time of war. We got through World War II without FDR ever being photographed with a flag lapel pin. Other presidents have presided over our nation during wartime without benefit of kitschy lapel armament.
In fact, no presidents other than Richard Nixon and George W. Bush have regularly worn an American flag lapel pin. When you consider these two men and their legacies, what does that tell us?
Personally, I am not interested in candidates who flaunt bits of metal. I am interested only in candidates who in their daily work and action quietly display their love for country by striving to uphold and defend the ideals and principles upon which this nation was founded.
When the day comes that my nation, and its political leaders, truly live up to its founding ideals – rather than trumping them with greed, intolerance, and hubris – then I, too, will affix an American flag pin to my lapel.
Forrest Gump is "the story of a man with an IQ of 75 and his epic journey through life, meeting historical figures, influencing popular culture and experiencing first-hand historic events while largely unaware of their significance, due to his lower than average intelligence." (Wikipedia summary)
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and mainstream media heavyweights such as Charlie Gibson, George Stephanopoulos, and Tim Russert are on quite public "epic journeys" themselves these days, as the Democratic Party enters the final phase of the nomination contest for what I believe will be the most important election in modern history. As I said in my blog about Wednesday's debate, a Perfect Storm of national and global socioeconomic issues is coming ashore. For this reason, the American people must elect someone capable of breaking free of conventional thinking. And only heroic efforts on the part of our mainstream journalists will prevent voters from drowning in a sea of useless, trivial, or false information.
As management guru Peter Drucker used to say, "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
In a way, I'm happy that more than 10 million people watched Wednesday's debate; because all of those voters got to see "that which should not be done at all" being done very well.
They got to see stupid, "electability" questions being asked for the first hour, most of which had been adequately addressed by both candidates already. (And, in the case of Barack Obama's relationship to Rev. Wright, addressed in the form of a lengthy, celebrated-by-many speech on race relations in America in the very same building.)
I say "stupid, electability questions," because it takes so little intelligence to ask them. "Gotcha" is a game we all learned when we were little children. Any of us could moderate that kind of debate.
It also takes little intelligence to spend all your time wondering about the horse race side of the contest. Tim Russert spent his entire MSNBC show fixated on this electability issue. "How can Hillary win?" he kept asking his guests, as if all his brain could wrap itself around was the "unimaginable just last year" (in Tim's words) concept that Hillary Clinton could lose the Democratic nomination.
Asking Hillary and Barack -- or other pundits, in the case of Tim Russert -- about things like the torture memo written by John Yoo (which, according to the AP, the Justice Department is now investigating) would take some real intellectual firepower.
I also say "stupid," because you have to be a journalist with very little awareness of ordinary voters' concerns -- in other words, a journalist who doesn't know how to do his or her job -- to focus so intensely on who will win. The public has already expressed their feelings about this. In a recent poll, 67 percent of all Americans said they believe "traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news."
Finally, I say "stupid," because mainstream journalists are completely unaware of the transformational nature of the times in which we live. They keep saying "voters acted a particular way in the past, so that's how they will act this year as well," as if this year were not a unique moment... as if the American voters are not capable of learning and growing themselves.
I believe voters have. Like a woman who has tolerated being in an abusive relationship -- because her husband has said "I love and care about you" even as he has beaten her up on a regular basis -- but finally reaches a point where she sees the truth of the situation and leaves him for good, I believe this is the election where millions of voters want to get rid of politics as it's being played... they want to get out of this abusive political relationship.
This is the year that voters finally realize that "that which should not be done at all" -- including mainstream media coverage focused on the trivial -- is being done very well and needs to stop!
Which brings me to Hillary Clinton... and why her name is the most prominent of them all in the title of this essay.
When I read that Hillary said Barack Obama was complaining about how tough the questions were in Wednesday's debate... which is what SHE had been doing for months, going so far as to reference a Saturday Night Live sketch at one point and release a "piling on" video at another... I finally shook my head and realized "She's too stupid to see that her world of fighting over who will be the dominant force - the alpha female (in her case) -- is on the way out. She can't see that we are entering an age of interdependent living -- the only way we will solve the global warming and food crises -- which will require leaders who are skilled collaborators, not just "the smartest person in the room" types like Hillary.
Hillary can't see that her time -- the time of her world view on politics -- is coming to an end.
She can't see that this isn't personal. It's not about her and Barack at a personal level. It's about much larger sociological forces... forces that have been working here in America towards this shift from domination to collaboration since World War II.
Yes, World War II. That's when the need to build lots of weapons quickly and with very high quality helped give birth to the team-oriented management principles of organizational development leaders such as Peter Drucker, Joseph Juran, W. Edwards Deming, and Russell Ackoff.
Strange but true, "working together" is not some "Hippie concept" from the 1960s. It developed from efforts by our own government to figure out how to win WWII. We even exported this knowledge to the Japanese starting in the 1950's, which is why their products ultimately had the best quality in the world.
And to show you how far away from "Hippie-dom" this leadership approach is, the largest American program to teach this way of thinking in existence today was started by President Ronald Reagan: The Baldrige National Quality Program, run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and named after Malcolm Baldrige, President Reagan's Secretary of Commerce. That's right. Ronald Reagan thought this way of thinking deserved to be advocated and taught by the federal government. The Baldrige Program was launched in 1987.
As I've written before, Bill Clinton was a huge fan of Dr. Deming's team-based approach when he was governor of Arkansas. Unfortunately, Hillary never learned these lessons from Bill. If she had, she would have absorbed the related core principles of collaboration and innovation - including societal innovation - which is what the public is demanding now.
Barack Obama is offering voters a vision of collaboration and innovation in politics. Voters -- who are familiar with innovations in the kinds of products and services the private sector delivers -- have been thrilled at the prospect that a President Obama will bring that kind of thinking to the world of politics. To many (myself included, truth to tell given my organizational development background), this is a dream come true.
And that's why Hillary is losing.
Her inability to realize that we are in a transition time... that we are in a point of history where we are transforming to a much more interdependent world (one piece of evidence: China is financing a huge portion of our federal budget)... and that her world is rapidly becoming "the world of the past"... is why I'm calling her "stupid". Like Forrest Gump, she is a well meaning person who can only see what's in front of her from the perspective of the past. She cannot see the big picture of the transformation that is taking place.
Proof she cannot see this transformation is her talk of Barack Obama as being naive. Remember her sarcastic "The heavens will open up..." speech?) When people don't understand the significance of something new, they make fun of it... laugh it off as meaningless.
The inability to see something new as having real significance is a fatal flaw in a leader. Business school students study case histories of corporate leaders who failed to recognize a change in what customers were looking to buy... or who failed to recognize when a new technology was about to put them out of business... and whose companies suffer the consequences as a result.
We are now in a period in which innovation is finally coming to politics. And, given the Perfect Storm of problems we face, this is happening in the nick of time.
I just wish people like Charlie, George, Tim... and Hillary... were smart enough to recognize this period for what it is. Because then they would see the benefits this transformation will bring. And they would become "early adopters" of this way of solving our problems at a societal level, joining the ranks of those of us who are working to give birth to this new world.
We who are doing so know we have to watch our backs, because there's plenty of resistance by the old system to this transformational change. In the political world, people have become very rich and powerful from demonizing their opponents. (Hello. Can you say "Karl Rove"?)
But the time has come -- no matter what the risks -- to help society boldly go where it has never gone before.
I wish I could say that I think Hillary has the intelligence -- and I'm speaking of emotional intelligence here -- to break free of her past and be a constructive force to create this change. But from what I see, she just doesn't know how to stop fighting. She can't see that politics as "all fight all the time" is coming to an end.
As Forrest Gump said, "Stupid is as stupid does."
Calling for Boycott of ABC News
After watching the debate on April 16th, 2008 my mind was focused on was it just me or was ABC’s anchors George Stephanopoulos ' This Week' and Charlie Gibson ' World News Tonight' massively basis against Barack Obama. I know George Stephanopoulos worked for the Clinton administration as a press secretary but it looked as if he took a pay check last night. Then Charlie Gibson with too much focus on his taxes, I thought back and he did the same thing to John Kerry. So I went to ABC and downloaded the entire debate and watched it three times. It was like a triple tag team against Barack Obama. What I could not believe was that Charlie Gibson noted that the time was massively slanting towards Obama and apologized to Hilary Clinton. He was actually counting their time bashing Obama as his allotted time for the two hour debate. I mean this was the 21st debate and could have focused on real issues and covered a majority of them in some detail. ABC chose not to go that route and opted to act like Fox News. What I am calling for is the boycott of both This Week and World News Tonight. I think we can send a message to the higher ups at cooperate ABC and Buena Vista by going after their advertisement dollars. If we stop watching it, it will force a public apology and I think we deserve at least that much. The reason I believe it has come to this point is because the higher ups at ABC said they saw nothing wrong and waved off the 19,000 complaints as just people being deeply interested in this political season. I think this will cause them to take another look at how they acted and apologize for their antics. Larry H Harris
Last night, we witnessed the television journalism equivalent to FEMA's response to the Katrina disaster. And the faster we realize that's what happened, the faster we'll be able to save the socioeconomic fabric of our society.
The Katrina-level storm that is rocking America has only just started to come ashore. And saving the voting public - and, by extension, the rest of America - from drowning in a sea of irrelevant and, at times, false information is going to require that America's journalists be heroic in their efforts.
Regrettably, last night we did not see two heroic journalists in action. We saw two buffoons. The voting public was not served. It was played with. The National Enquirer meets the presidential election process. The insane concept of "policy discussion as food fight" - that Jon Stewart so memorably challenged with his "You are hurting America" comments to the hosts of Crossfire in October of 2004 - formed the central core in the minds of one of America's marquee news anchors and of the host of a major Sunday morning news show.
Yes, indeed. You did a heck of a job last night, Charlie and George.
Think my Katrina-level storm analogy is extreme? It's not. And I think the 80 plus percent of Americans who say our country is going in the wrong direction would agree with me.
Economically, we're now past the scenario in which people are losing their homes. As The New York Times reported on Tuesday, chains such as Zayles jewelry, Foot Locker, Ann Taylor and others are closing 100 or more stores in malls across the country. Sharper Image, Fortunoff, and Lillian Vernon are just three big businesses that have filed for bankruptcy. When you go to the mall, it's going to look very different in the months to come.
High oil prices are forcing food prices up across America, and growing corn as an alternative fuel source (rather than for food) is impacting food prices across the world. (By the way, in 2006 agricultural economist Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute predicted this would happen.)
Then there are the effects the Iraq War is having and will have on America. The readiness of our Army is so low, we can't handle a new military situation of any significant size. There is the Three Trillion Dollar cost of the war and how our economy will handle that.
There is much more... from how many kids are dropping out of high school... to the lack of funds for infrastructure repair... to our "broken" Constitution (thanks to the Bush administration's abuse of executive power).
Gee, you'd have thought that - given they were broadcasting from The National Constitution Center - either Charlie Gibson or George Stephanopoulos would have raised the subject of restoring the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches.
But I guess I should have known that wouldn't happen when Charlie started the evening by welcoming his audience to the "National Constitutional - not "Constitution" - Center".
When Charlie couldn't even get the name of where he was right, that should have clued us in to the quality of what we were about to hear.
Taken separately, each of these topics could have been the subject of an entire debate. But combined into an overlapping and interrelated whole, they make up the macro, "perfect storm" topic of the dangerous place in which America finds itself as it approaches one of the most critical elections ever.
But what came up instead was what was on Charlie and George's "Enquiring minds". Not what was on the minds of the voters.
The Rev. Wright, non-existing Bosnian snipers, "bittergate", will Barack and Hillary take Mario Cuomo's advice and run as a joint ticket... and let's not forget what Charlie Gibson thinks is "all over the internet": whether Barack Obama wears an American flag lapel pin! And then there was George Stephanopoulos's specific "right wing" moment: Asking Barack if - essentially - the fact that he has some sort of social contact with a former Weatherman (and now respected member of the Chicago civic community) somehow disqualifies him from being president.
By their performances last night, you'd think Charlie and George don't know that 67 percent of all Americans believe "traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news."
Or maybe they know but just don't care. After all, when you make the kinds of salaries they make, you can lose touch with the concerns of ordinary American.
Or maybe the march of time since corporate restructuring at ABC first forced its news department to make a profit (written about in a book by former CBS News reporter Tom Fenton ) has finally succeeded in dumbing down the skill level of the professionals such as Charlie and George to such an extent that this is all they were capable of producing.
If that's the case, then we have truly reached the "Heck of a job, Brownie" moment in television journalism. And it may be what's true.
I'll end this essay by saying that - as angry as I am - I know that every failure is an opportunity for renewal. From this catastrophe, television journalism can still - at least potentially - recapture its former greatness. Edward R. Murrow may no longer be with us, but there is still time for the heads of the major network news divisions to realize that this is a Katrina-like situation for America's civic landscape. There is still enough time for heroic measures to be taken.
For guidance, I would suggest they start with Al Gore's landmark book "The Assault On Reason". Richard Dreyfuss in preaching on the subject of civic education as well.
Perhaps a a coalition of American civic and journalism leaders could demand the creation of a bi-partisan, emergency effort to raise the standards of broadcast journalism.
Will this happen? I don't know. (Wal-Mart helped deliver drinking water to New Orleans, when FEMA was not able to do so. Maybe some business leader will rise to the challenge we face today in a similar way.)
But what I do know is that last night should be a huge wake up call for everyone who cares about America's future.
America was not served by what ABC News did last night.
And, in my opinion, American will not survive this Katrina-like, systemic crisis if the political reporting and debate moderating in the weeks and months ahead does not rise to the heroic standards that these times demand.
It is time for the buffoons to either change their ways or go.
Gibson and Stephanopulus should take a vacation from now until November... And of course, let's hope the powers that be won't let ABC News have another go at promoting themselves and shamelessly sticking in commercials instead of actually covering what could have been an important event.
This will all hopefully make our candidate stronger and continue to push superdelegates into our campaign...
Read TIME story here.
The Collapse Of The National Press: Some words for everyone to think about today if you are as irate and dejected about that farce called a "debate" last night. Deplorable. Keep your heads up though, this thing will be over soon. Kevin
After the first forty minutes of last night's Democratic debate, it was clear we were watching something historic. Not historic in a good way, mind you, but historic in the sense of being something so deeply embarrassing to the nation that it will be pointed to, in future books and documentary works, as a prime example of the collapse of the American media into utter and complete substanceless, into self-celebrated vapidity, and into a now-complete inability or unwillingness to cover the most important affairs of the nation to any but the most shallow of depths.
Congratulations are clearly in order. ABC had two hours of access to two of the three remaining candidates vying to lead the most powerful nation in the world, and spent the decided majority of that time mining what the press considers the true issues facing the republic. Bittergate; Rev. Wright; Bosnia; American flag lapel pins. That's what's important to the future of the country. What a contrast. Only a few weeks ago, we were presented with what was considered by many to be a historic speech by a presidential candidate on race in America -- historic for its substance, tone, delivery, and stark candor. Last night, we had an opposing, equally historic example -- and I sincerely mean that, I consider it to be every bit as significant as that word implies -- of the collapse of the political press into self-willed incompetence. You might as well pull any half-intelligent person off the street, and they would unquestionably have more difficult and significant questions for the two candidates.
It was not merely a momentarily bad performance, by ABC, it was a debate explicitly designed to be what it was, which is far more telling. It is certainly true that a case could be made that the moderators explicitly set out to frame even the supposedly "substantive" questions according to GOP designs. The implicit presumption of success in Iraq when, nearly an hour into the debate, the moderators finally deigned to mention the defining current event of this campaign. Gibson, as moderator, lied outright about the supposed effects of capital gains tax cuts, and dogged the candidates over it to a greater extent than any other economic issue: does he really believe that of all the economic challenges facing this nation, the most pressing of them is supplication towards a decade-long Republican bugaboo? Gun control? Affirmative action? These are the issues that are most compellingly on the minds of Democratic primary voters, in 2008? Or were the questions taken from a 1992 time capsule, insightful probes gathering dust for a decade and a half until they could find network moderators desperate enough to dig them up again? But even slanted questions could be forgiven, of the press; what was more inexplicable was the intentional wallowing in substanceless, meaningless "gaffe" politics.
It says something truly impressive about the press that a few statements by a presidential candidate's preacher bear far more weight to the future of our nation than the challenges of terrorism or war. It is truly a celebration of our own national collapse into idiocracy that we can furrow our brows and question the patriotism of a candidate, deeply probe their patriotism based on whether or not they regularly don a made-in-China American flag pin, but a substantive discussion of energy policy, or healthcare, or the deficit, or the housing crisis, or global climate change, or the government approval of torture, or trade issues, or the plight of one-industry small American towns, or the fight over domestic espionage and FISA, or the makeup of the Supreme Court -- those were of no significance, in comparison.
If a media organization set out to intentionally demonstrate themselves to be self absorbed and ignorant, they could not have accomplished it better. It was not just a tabloid debate, but the tittering of political kindergardeners making and lobbing mud pies. It was politics as game show. The moderators demonstrated that to them and their supposed "news" organization, the presidency of the United States of America is about the trivialities of_politics_, which were obsessed over ravenously, not about the challenges of American governance, which were fully ignored. Certainly, as mere citizens we could ask little of the network that unapologetically brought us The Path to 9/11, a fabricated conservative pseudo-documentary laying the blame for terrorism at the feet of everyone loathed by the far right. But it is not simply ABC that bears the blame: surely, one could expect similar drivel from any of the other networks or cable channels who have so successfully and self-importantly dimmed the national discourse, these past ten years.
For his part, the chairman of the written intellectual wisp, the New York Times' David Brooks, marveled at the "excellent" questions: We may not like it, but issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall. Remember how George H.W. Bush toured flag factories to expose Michael Dukakis. It’s legitimate to see how the candidates will respond to these sorts of symbolic issues. Indeed, how dare his peon readers whine about these things: this is how the political game is expected to be played by the grand masters of our discourse. Symbolic tours of flag factories! Checkmate! That is the elite idea of "issues" in our national debate. Piss on the war, and screw the economy -- somebody find a goddamn flag factory to tour! That is how our most elite media figures like to see political opponents "exposed" as... well, what exactly? What does touring a flag factory prove, other than the media in this country is so astonishingly gullible, tin-headed and shallow that you can actually tour a damn flag factory and get praised for it by our idiot press as being a bold, disarming move against your opponent?
Truly, we have become a nation led by the most lazy and ignorant. It seems impossible to mock or satirize just how shallowly the media considers the actual world ramifications of each election, how glancingly they explore the actual truth behind political assertion or rhetoric, or how gleefully they molest our discourse while praising themselves for those selfsame acts. And that, in turn, is precisely how we elected our current Idiot Boy King, a man who has the eloquent demeanor of a month-old Christmas tree and the nuance of a Saturday morning cartoon. It seems impossible, but we may yet have an election season in which we can be in a slogging, five-year-long war, and mention the fact only in glancing asides. We may yet have a series of Republican-Democratic debates in which the most pressing issues of the economy are entirely ignored, so that we can more adequately explore the "patriotism" of the candidates as expressed by their clothing. We may have yet another campaign season carefully orchestrated to leave all but the most glancing and hollow of themes untouched, while our press achieves multiple orgasms at every botched line, every refused cup of coffee, every peddled character assassination or character assassination-by-proxy peddled by the sleaziest of paid dregs. A campaign, in other words, perfectly suited to the bereft, rudderless, and substanceless self-pronounced guardians of our democracy.
Perhaps, if nothing else, it is time to take back the debate process and insist once again on moderators chosen for competence, expertise and neutrality, rather than network or cable network fame. The elites of our press have managed to botch the task time and time again; perhaps it should be left to someone with an actual interest in doing the job.
Are you kidding me? Charles Gibson and George Stephanopulus should be fired, because they did not do ABC any favors last night...
Let's hope the campaign teams in the general election boycott this circus and let the debates be handled by more professional organizations.
Tonight's event was not a debate, but rather a carefully orchestrated event designed to deliberately misrepresent Barack Obama. I have never seen anything more overt in my life.
So now they're trying to turn Sen. Obama into a weatherman? They say ..and you know the kind of things that "they" say... that its important as Sen. Obama attended a fund raising event at Bill Boyers house. ...That's "important."
One of the things that exhilerates me and frustrates me about the Obama campaign is the fact that they could have made any number of such "association" attacks on Hillary Clinton and haven't done so. They think that America is better than that, and gosh... I really want to believe it ...but then I go and read the blogosphere and hear the radio jockeys and see the MSM spew its hoodoo all over my eyeballs.
Hillary Clinton attended an event too.. It was called "Even 39" and it was all backed by a fellow named Peter Paul. Peter Paul was a convicted drug dealer and a con man. Hillary Clinton had no problem taking his money, before she kicked him to the curb. In the process her campaign broke FEC rules and were investigated and fined. The interesting thing is that this isn't something that has gone away as there is a pending case in California Court between Peter Paul, and Bill Clinton and his associates. Hillary Clinton has been exempted due to another California law that protects candidates from lawsuits ..but she still may be forced to testify.
At this point in the game, I know that the Obama camp isn't going to go to Hillary's kitchen sink mentality and bring this up. But as a person who has explored the details of this case, and so have some informed opinion about how messy it is, and how much it would be exploited by the Republicans should Hillary win the nomination, I marvel at the kind of standard the Obama campaign is maintaining. ...At the same time, I feel like they SHOULD get the story out there, because VOTERS HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW if the person that they are about to consider for the nation's highest office is involved with real crooks on a regular basis ...and further.... if they are willing to break the law in order to facilitate their shady dealings. Just what was determined by the FEC ..who was trying very hard to go easy on Clinton... indicates that this is indeed the case. So even if Barack Obama weren't running for president, Hillary Clinton shouldn't be the nominee of the Democratic party. It is a disaster in the making.
...Oh, and I'm done with ABC and Disney over this one. They really screwed up.
Also ...Howard Wolfson needs to brush his teeth. It was really hard to see him on Countdown, tonight. Maybe if they can get that Columbian trade deal through, he can take some of his share of the loot and go and see a dentist.
The Pennsylvania Democratic Psrty conducted up until this weekend a Presidential Online Poll of Voters who are Democrats in that state to see who they would vote for.
Now all the other Polling firms show Clinton in a double digit lead up and through the 15th of March.
In this Poll taken here is the breakdown Purple color was Obama The Gold Color was Votes for Clinton
Senator Barack Obama out of a 1,000 online votes got 71% and Senator Clinton 28 %.
Source;http://www.padems.com/
Now this goes against the other Polls in the State from other Polling people .
Remeber their is still time for people to go against the Machine in Pennsylvania .
No matter how many Democratic Mayors etc endorse Clinton betwen now and the Pennsylvania Primary its the people in the towns and communities and cities that hopefully will make up their own minds regardless of the Governor supporting Clinton.
Even if we lose Pennsylvania I believe we will win N.C. ,Indiana , and the other remaining States coming up.
Again this Poll goes against all the other Political Polls what I found interesting is that the Pennsylvania Democratic Party has someone they hired to conduct this first ever Poll for them.
Let everyone one know about this Poll including the Press I emailed this this morning to MsNBC after talking to someone in the News department by phone they were interested in this Poll.
All I can say finally to people in Pennsylvania is vote with your heart for what you want don't let any negative news decide your vote .
Thats about it for tonight.
In my very candid opinion, the week in review has not been bad for Obama at all. On the contrary, against all expectation and perhaps design this week has once more given Obama and the people’s movement for hope and change in America a very unique opportunity to display and manifest to the American people; Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike how accountable, responsible, transparent and patriotic he is.
ABC News had actually done a great deal of good to the candidacy of Obama for so many reasons. Firstly, it is now an established fact that Obama, contrary to speculation from some quarters is actually a Christian. Secondly, he has rise above all negativism and idiosyncratic factors that either by commission and or omission have been trying relentlessly to bring him down, by focusing on some very trivial issues rather than his ideology and conviction of the necessity for change in Washington, hope in the American dream and quick restoration of the battered Image of the country.
Obama emphatically denounced the comment of the Rev. Wright and show the American people by his words and action that, we can live in a community where you disagree with someone’s view but that does not exclude your friendship and relation to such an individual, as long as the person in question does not indoctrinate or influence your thinking and action. A typical example of a similar scenario in the Holy Scripture, the Bible is the story of the Prodigal Son. We must learn to recognize transgression either against an individual, institution and or country and make the necessary amend.
It is also very important to take into cognizance the era in which Rev. Wright was born into and those of Obama and the younger generation of Americans. The pastor’s life experience may reflect the stack reality of slavery, discrimination, lynching, the era of the KKK, and other forms of severe inhumanity perpetrated against the people of color. Finally on the issues that bothers on the pastor’s comments, while I am also joining Obama and the people’s movement for hope and peace in America to denounce those comments, it is however very important not to take it out of context. Is there any element of truth in what the pastor is saying? That will be left for the American people to decide.
Tony Rezko, the Chicago estate developer is facing indictment for some business transactions that have nothing to do with Obama directly, other than the fact that this business man has helped raised fund for the Obama campaign during his state and then national campaign. It will be absolutely illogical to classify Obama as guilty of Tony’s crime, rather than by association. Again, the point to note does your brother’s crime becomes yours?
Okay, so where do we stand going by all that have happened this week? Are we ready to move forward and begin to concentrate on issues of national importance, rather than the pertinence of a pastor or the nonentity of association with a business man? How many of the contending presidential candidates are excluded from one or more of these kinds of story? Again, the American people know better.
My suggestion is for all the media organizations, including the syndicated ones that exemplify nepotism to begin to articulate programs and news that will better position the American people to objectively choose who they want to be their leader!
Thank you for your time.
God bless USA
God bless Obama
I am always struck by the claim of “experience” by Hillary Clinton as she continues to increase her attacks against Obama - most likely out of fear as he is now ahead in the national polls. Do people not take a few minutes to actually look at her experience? How about the six years on the board of Walmart - the famous anti-union company that is the largest importer of oversee goods in the United States. As highlighted in the ABC news story , Hillary turned a blind eye or claimed no knowledge of the activity. When pressed on the issue recently she said, “she no longer agrees with the policies of Walmart.” You mean when she was on the board taking their money she did agree?
She is quoted in the Huffington Post article as saying Walmart should pay for its workers health-care. Although the self proclaimed champion of health-care made little effort to help the workers when on the board, now she thinks it is a good idea? Maybe that is why so many newspapersand unions continue to endorse Obama.
Watch this video clip of undecided N.H. voters, the majority which felt Obama was stronger in the N.H. presidential debate than Clinton
Cross-posted at my main blog
Wow, there are some tenacious Dennis Kucinich supporters out there. It seems that a few of them have taken to running up his numbers in ABC New's online poll on the winner of the debate held in Iowa yesterday morning. If you are skeptical of this result, you are right to be so.
Of course, the fact that this is an online poll disqualifies any real significance it has in showing viewer sentiment. Considering that Kucinich did not get much air time, and of the air time he got, a significant portion was devoted to complaining about how he didn't get much air time, I have a hard time seeing him as a "winner" of this debate (but then again, the debate format makes an actual "win" difficult).
Of course, the real issue is that this is an online poll which counts previous voters with cookies, packets of information sites send to visitors that can be used for identification later. The funny thing is, if you delete the cookies sent by abcnews.go.com after voting, you can vote again, and this is exactly what these tenacious Kucinich voters have been doing. Look at the data after the break.
