Tonight’s republican debate
I forgot that this was on tonight and ended up flipping onto CNN to catch the last twenty minutes of the Youtube Republican debate. A couple of things that made this different:
1. Questions submitted from a broad sampling of people via YouTube. Some of the answers were very polished, as if some of the candidates had been practicing their answers for hours. I’m not sure if a list saying “THESE ARE THE DEBATE QUESTIONS” was available ahead of time, so I’d like to imagine Huckabee and Kucinich wading through thousands of youtube videos in a darkened office somewhere.
2. CNN had a very invasive metric of a moving linechart superimposed on the screen to gauge audience response. There was a blue line for men and a yellow line for women. It seemed like the blue line generally held steady and the yellow one would dip back and forth, sometimes matching the inflection of the speaker. It was funny to see the insta-poll ticker take a divebomb from both genders every time Mitt Romney opened his mouth.
3. Humor. Some of the videos were funny, such as an animated shotgun-brandishing Dick Cheney, or one video that basically mocked Giuliani’s SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 schtick. Also, we had a cameo from Chuck Norris, who I really think would make a decent running mate.
4. Advertising genius. I’ve never really tuned in for one of these before, but I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised to see that the sponsors for the debate included Coal, some sort of arthritis joint supplement, and a really lame campaign from Coors against underage drinking.
I flipped the channel to this just in time to catch a question about believing every word of the bible and I was sickened. I’m not sure if its more frightening that these candidates might have these beliefs, or that they would be willing to do the Bible is the true word of God dance on national television to court those that did. I was hoping one of the fat-chance candidates might go out there and say “it’s just a book, get over it”, but no dice.
I’m not sure if it’s just the local feed here or what, but there was this obnoxious Harlem Globetrotters thing that interrupted a question about the social security Ponzi scheme. Conspiracy or coincidence, you be the judge.