It was a debate for the ages - or at least that's how long it seemed to last. An audience drugged with Thorazine and NyQuil combined with a Floridacentric thrust and inane questions led to two painfully long hours. I cannot say with certainty that those in attendance were opening their veins in the lobby as they brutally bashed their own heads with mallets to escape the pervasive boredom, but it is almost an inescapable image in which I found refuge while suffering through NBC's vacuous version of a political debate.
I "do" politics like some other junkies do heroin and even I had reached my limit well within the first hour as I began to wonder if I would OD on the ceaseless droning of Brian Williams's voice. The drip, drip, drip of uninspired syllables forming uninspired questions began to feel like undergoing Chinese Water Torture on amphetamines. My skin was beginning to crawl as I was rescued by the first commercial break.
Attention, you addlepated, lizard-hearted, makers of television: The all-sizzle and no-steak formula may work for advertising but it does not work for theater or for informing the populace of anything greater than 30-seconds from Vince the Pitchman on why the world will collapse if we don't all own a Shticky within a fortnight - or maybe it's 3 Shtickies, who the Hell knows. At least Vince knows his audience and has some passion for his product, two things clearly absent from last night's floor show.
Substance was the victim last night. While there were questions about sugar cane, Cuba, Terri Schiavo's death in 2005, English as the official language of the United States and Florida tourism thrust upon us, most us were wondering about the 170 billion barrels of oil (700,000 barrels per day if the Keystone XL Pipeline is ever completed) that president Obama had declined and how quickly Canada would sell those many years' worth of petroleum reserves to our economic rivals, the Chinese.
While NBC wanted to know hypothetical, and frankly delusional, questions about the death of Fidel Castro possibly causing hundreds of thousands of Cubans to flood into the United States, I sat open-mouthed wondering quite a few things. Once I got past the diminished mental capacity of the question's author - Why would people flee Cuba at the death of their tyrant? Would they not be more likely to celebrate and reclaim their country? - I wondered why NBC did not ask a more logical, and thought-provoking hypothetical: As President, what would you do if Iran furnished missiles to Cuba? Shades of Democrat demigod Jack Kennedy! That would have awakened the comatose crowd in the slumbering Sunshine State. Yet, it was not to be.
I am grateful we avoided questions about the University of Miami football season, orange growing and potential Great White Shark attacks. I was actually happy to see a space-related question even if it was brought about because Cape Canaveral is in Florida. Yet, I would have swapped it for a single, good question about jobs and unemployment.
Don't get me wrong; I'm happy that the people of Florida got some questions with a local slant, but Florida's unemployment rate was still at 10.0% at the end of 2011. Don't you think that at least ten percent of Floridians might have appreciated some questions about solving the unemployment problem?
I'm sure if debates are held in Georgia, there will be the all-consuming question about Brunswick Stew: English peas or no English peas, Governor Romney? Or perhaps it will be: Mr. Gingrich, a decade ago there was a controversy over the Georgia state flag. As a Georgian, what was your take on that racially divisive topic?
The pitiful truth is that NBC and the remainder of the MSM are either willfully ignorant of what Republicans seek in a President or they refuse to break from their left-leaning ideologies and prejudices long enough to ask pertinent questions. Meanwhile conservatives want appropriate questions that will lead us to select the next American President.
If the MSM can't do any better than this, then there are alternatives. How many Slap Chops and Shtickies would we have to buy to get Vince Shlomi to host the debate? Apparently he's reformed and is not punching tongue-biting hookers in the face these days. If he's available, I'd prefer him to last night's vain vigil of peninsula pandering and progressive pablum.
Written by Ken Carroll
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| NBC tugged Fidel Castro into the GOP debate Image via Wikipedia |
I "do" politics like some other junkies do heroin and even I had reached my limit well within the first hour as I began to wonder if I would OD on the ceaseless droning of Brian Williams's voice. The drip, drip, drip of uninspired syllables forming uninspired questions began to feel like undergoing Chinese Water Torture on amphetamines. My skin was beginning to crawl as I was rescued by the first commercial break.
Attention, you addlepated, lizard-hearted, makers of television: The all-sizzle and no-steak formula may work for advertising but it does not work for theater or for informing the populace of anything greater than 30-seconds from Vince the Pitchman on why the world will collapse if we don't all own a Shticky within a fortnight - or maybe it's 3 Shtickies, who the Hell knows. At least Vince knows his audience and has some passion for his product, two things clearly absent from last night's floor show.
Substance was the victim last night. While there were questions about sugar cane, Cuba, Terri Schiavo's death in 2005, English as the official language of the United States and Florida tourism thrust upon us, most us were wondering about the 170 billion barrels of oil (700,000 barrels per day if the Keystone XL Pipeline is ever completed) that president Obama had declined and how quickly Canada would sell those many years' worth of petroleum reserves to our economic rivals, the Chinese.
While NBC wanted to know hypothetical, and frankly delusional, questions about the death of Fidel Castro possibly causing hundreds of thousands of Cubans to flood into the United States, I sat open-mouthed wondering quite a few things. Once I got past the diminished mental capacity of the question's author - Why would people flee Cuba at the death of their tyrant? Would they not be more likely to celebrate and reclaim their country? - I wondered why NBC did not ask a more logical, and thought-provoking hypothetical: As President, what would you do if Iran furnished missiles to Cuba? Shades of Democrat demigod Jack Kennedy! That would have awakened the comatose crowd in the slumbering Sunshine State. Yet, it was not to be.
I am grateful we avoided questions about the University of Miami football season, orange growing and potential Great White Shark attacks. I was actually happy to see a space-related question even if it was brought about because Cape Canaveral is in Florida. Yet, I would have swapped it for a single, good question about jobs and unemployment.
Don't get me wrong; I'm happy that the people of Florida got some questions with a local slant, but Florida's unemployment rate was still at 10.0% at the end of 2011. Don't you think that at least ten percent of Floridians might have appreciated some questions about solving the unemployment problem?
I'm sure if debates are held in Georgia, there will be the all-consuming question about Brunswick Stew: English peas or no English peas, Governor Romney? Or perhaps it will be: Mr. Gingrich, a decade ago there was a controversy over the Georgia state flag. As a Georgian, what was your take on that racially divisive topic?
The pitiful truth is that NBC and the remainder of the MSM are either willfully ignorant of what Republicans seek in a President or they refuse to break from their left-leaning ideologies and prejudices long enough to ask pertinent questions. Meanwhile conservatives want appropriate questions that will lead us to select the next American President.
If the MSM can't do any better than this, then there are alternatives. How many Slap Chops and Shtickies would we have to buy to get Vince Shlomi to host the debate? Apparently he's reformed and is not punching tongue-biting hookers in the face these days. If he's available, I'd prefer him to last night's vain vigil of peninsula pandering and progressive pablum.
Written by Ken Carroll
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