Having done my civic duty, and worn a hairshirt for a day in the desert to atone for my vote for a truly bad president, I keep trying now to ignore the idiocy that passes for an election campaign in these United States.
But when Bishop Willard Romney refuses to withhold his endorsements of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, he reaffirms one of the many reasons why we simply cannot allow this man to become President of the United States.
Only a sick mind could come up with the kinds of obscene distortions about women and rape that Akin and, most recently, Mourdock have uttered in campaign appearances and never really recanted. It is a sickness that seems to infect only Republicans: various pieces of legislation in GOP-controlled state legislatures, most recently Pennsylvania's, reflect the same kind of sociopathic ignorance. Of course, the Bishop's tolerance of such obscenity comes as no surprise, given his own church's attitude toward women. Mormon belief holds, in effect, that they should be kept barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
Bishop Romney's own ignorance of geography ought to raise warning signals for those voters who care about foreign policy. This guy thinks Iran's access to the sea is via Syria! (Iran in fact has both northern and southern seacoasts, and there's a hunk of land called Iraq between it and Syria.)
Since I still cling to the quaint Jeffersonian idea of separation of church and state, I consider it supremely unwise for any nation aspiring to be a democratic republic to even consider allowing a bishop of any religion to be its president. But then I also think the founders were dead serious when they wrote the first ten amendments to their own Constitution, the ones we now call the Bill of Rights. The current President and his predecessor both seem to have repealed those amendments by presidential fiat. Who knows what further mischief would be done to them under the presidency of a bishop born to a CEO mentality?
I cannot even walk the dog without passing the Romney/Ryan and other Republican campaign signs in a neighbor's yard. I am well acquainted with this neighbor, who is an otherwise intelligent and successful man. How can he support the delusional policies of the Republicans whose signs he displays?
Part of it, I think, has to do with the distorted American definition of "success." Whether an American is deemed "successful" depends entirely on how much money he or she has made and kept.
Bishop Willard Romney was born to wealth and used his money to acquire still more money. In the process, he outsourced far more American jobs than he ever created.
But he is a "successful" man.
So was Attila the Hun.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Should Sport Drop Those Doping Bans?
A blogger in the United Kingdom, commenting on the Lance Armstrong case, recently suggested that sport should lift all rules banning performance enhancing substances.
He argues that even the most stringent penalties have not halted the practice; that these are, after all, adults capable of making their own decisions about health, diet, training regimens etc.; and that with such huge amounts of money at stake, it is only human nature to seek an "edge" on the competition.
He has a strong case, in my opinion, where cycling is concerned. I want to believe that Armstrong really is clean despite the testimony of 26 people, mostly former teammates, to the contrary. Miguel Indurain of Spain, who along with four other riders has won five Tours de France untainted by doping allegations, told a Madrid radio station this week that he believes in Armstrong's innocence. He said the entire case was ``bizarre'' since Armstong never tested positive for doping. "It is strange they take away his tours because of the testimonies of some teammates,'' Indurain said.
Someone with inside knowledge of cycling, and no ax to grind, told me that "all three podium places in the Tour for at least ten years have gone to cyclists who either tested positive or otherwise were known to have used banned substances." If that's so, where's the edge?
This would include Floyd Landis of the United States, first and foremost of the Armstrong ex-teammates to point the finger, who was stripped of his own Tour de France title after testing positive.
Track and field is another sport in which it could be argued that eliminating substance bans would save a lot of time and money and not really compromise the competition. It's been 25 years since Ben Johnson of Canada tested positive after breaking the world record for 100 meters by a full tenth of a second. World records at this distance usually are matters of hundredths of a second.
Johnson's punishments appear not to have diminished the practice in track and field. Marion Jones, the great American track and field athlete, was jailed for lying about substance abuse. Even Florence Griffith-Joyner, the memorable "Flo Jo," has been subject to allegations of doping. She dominated women's track and field in the manner that Armstrong dominated cycling with his seven Tour de France victories. Flo Jo, who died in 1998 after an epileptic seizure, set records in the 100 and 200 meter sprints that have never been seriously challenged in the 24 years since she set them. She never tested positive for any banned substance, but, as was the case when Armstrong was competing, clean blood tests didn't stop tongues from wagging.
And baseball! How many asterisks would it take to print a record book of achievements by steroid users and other performance enhancing drug users? Why not allow any players who's willing to take the health risk go ahead and use them, to make the playing fields level? Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in one season, and 711 in his career, boosted only by booze and hot dogs. Yet his home run records have all been taken by suspect sluggers like Barry Bonds and Mark Maguire. The hero of one of this year's World Series team's has served a suspension for banned substances. Why not let all the players choose to use or not use?
The case weakens, in my view, for football players. Allowing the use of steroids and other chemicals that artificially increase the size and strength of football players is life threatening for other football players. I was acquainted with the young Alex Karras, the fun - loving Detroit Lion who became a fair comic actor, and it saddens me deeply that he suffered dementia for so long before dying of his accumulation of football injuries. There is, of course, knowledge aforethought of the risks entailed in playing football for a livelihood -- as there is, say, for boxing as well -- and if an unimpaired adult chooses to take that risk, so be it.
As one who has always enjoyed sports as a participant and an observer, I'd like to think that wonderful performances like Flo Jo's and Lance Armstrong's -- or Roger Federer's, for that matter -- are the result of natural ability and good training, not chemical enhancers. But that is, of course, naive.
Speaking of Federer, his sport of tennis has never had a major doping scandal. Perhaps nobody has yet come up with a performance-enhancing drug that is specific to the sport. I almost wish they would. I still play the game even though I'm too old and physically spent to play it well. But if they came up with a pill . . . . .
He argues that even the most stringent penalties have not halted the practice; that these are, after all, adults capable of making their own decisions about health, diet, training regimens etc.; and that with such huge amounts of money at stake, it is only human nature to seek an "edge" on the competition.
He has a strong case, in my opinion, where cycling is concerned. I want to believe that Armstrong really is clean despite the testimony of 26 people, mostly former teammates, to the contrary. Miguel Indurain of Spain, who along with four other riders has won five Tours de France untainted by doping allegations, told a Madrid radio station this week that he believes in Armstrong's innocence. He said the entire case was ``bizarre'' since Armstong never tested positive for doping. "It is strange they take away his tours because of the testimonies of some teammates,'' Indurain said.
Someone with inside knowledge of cycling, and no ax to grind, told me that "all three podium places in the Tour for at least ten years have gone to cyclists who either tested positive or otherwise were known to have used banned substances." If that's so, where's the edge?
This would include Floyd Landis of the United States, first and foremost of the Armstrong ex-teammates to point the finger, who was stripped of his own Tour de France title after testing positive.
Track and field is another sport in which it could be argued that eliminating substance bans would save a lot of time and money and not really compromise the competition. It's been 25 years since Ben Johnson of Canada tested positive after breaking the world record for 100 meters by a full tenth of a second. World records at this distance usually are matters of hundredths of a second.
Johnson's punishments appear not to have diminished the practice in track and field. Marion Jones, the great American track and field athlete, was jailed for lying about substance abuse. Even Florence Griffith-Joyner, the memorable "Flo Jo," has been subject to allegations of doping. She dominated women's track and field in the manner that Armstrong dominated cycling with his seven Tour de France victories. Flo Jo, who died in 1998 after an epileptic seizure, set records in the 100 and 200 meter sprints that have never been seriously challenged in the 24 years since she set them. She never tested positive for any banned substance, but, as was the case when Armstrong was competing, clean blood tests didn't stop tongues from wagging.
And baseball! How many asterisks would it take to print a record book of achievements by steroid users and other performance enhancing drug users? Why not allow any players who's willing to take the health risk go ahead and use them, to make the playing fields level? Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in one season, and 711 in his career, boosted only by booze and hot dogs. Yet his home run records have all been taken by suspect sluggers like Barry Bonds and Mark Maguire. The hero of one of this year's World Series team's has served a suspension for banned substances. Why not let all the players choose to use or not use?
The case weakens, in my view, for football players. Allowing the use of steroids and other chemicals that artificially increase the size and strength of football players is life threatening for other football players. I was acquainted with the young Alex Karras, the fun - loving Detroit Lion who became a fair comic actor, and it saddens me deeply that he suffered dementia for so long before dying of his accumulation of football injuries. There is, of course, knowledge aforethought of the risks entailed in playing football for a livelihood -- as there is, say, for boxing as well -- and if an unimpaired adult chooses to take that risk, so be it.
As one who has always enjoyed sports as a participant and an observer, I'd like to think that wonderful performances like Flo Jo's and Lance Armstrong's -- or Roger Federer's, for that matter -- are the result of natural ability and good training, not chemical enhancers. But that is, of course, naive.
Speaking of Federer, his sport of tennis has never had a major doping scandal. Perhaps nobody has yet come up with a performance-enhancing drug that is specific to the sport. I almost wish they would. I still play the game even though I'm too old and physically spent to play it well. But if they came up with a pill . . . . .
Monday, October 22, 2012
Reflections on George McGovern -- and Voting
The best -- well, most effective -- people on the other side of the Great Corporate American War and Greed Machine are cynical pragmatists. People like the late George McGovern, who proudly called himself a liberal, and who spoke what he believed, not what he thought his audience wanted to hear, had no chance in the dogfight pit of American politics.
Thus his obituaries all stressed that he was on the wrong side of the greatest landslide in presidential election history. With the exception of the piece by my dear friend, the late David Rosenbaum, in the New York Times, the obit writers largely ignored the probability that Sen. McGoven was absolutely right on all the great issues of his political era.
George McGovern was a good man. That will never be written about Richard Nixon, the man who won that landslide, then left the White House in disgrace to avoid impeachment.
As the brilliant social critic Chris Hedges wrote the other day, George McGovern never sold his soul.
Today, alas, our only real electoral choice is between two men who have sold their souls.
In its remarkable endorsement of Barack Obama to retain his presidency, the Salt Lake Tribune, largest newspaper in Mormon Utah, laments this very fact about Mitt Romney, whom it once idolized. "Romney. . . is shameless, lavishing vastly diverse audiences with words, any words, they would trade their votes to hear," the Tribune wrote.
Every true liberal left in the land laments the sell-out by Mr. Obama, who is now owned by Wall Street, the Military-Industrial Complex, Big Oil, Big Coal and every other Big Nasty in our part of the universe.
Sen. McGovern, as recently as three years ago, held out the hope that Mr. Obama would be a good, possibly even a great, president. This came at a Nation Institute symposium during which, in his role as a historian, McGovern discussed the humanity, wisdom and moral standing of former Presidents Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Adams and others.
Among the others was Lyndon Johnson, who, Sen. McGovern pointed out, "hated" the Vietnam war but could not figure out how to end our involvement in it. Johnson, McGovern recalled, once consulted Georgia Sen. Dick Russell about the question, and all they could come up with was a Machiavellian scheme to finance an assassination and coup that would establish a new regime that would invite us to leave. It never occurred to them that we could simply withdraw, on the ground that we were doing no good there. That, McGovern mused, would have been politically suicidal, as the opposite strategy of staying the course ultimately proved also to be.
Sen. McGovern implied that Iraq and Afghanistan are Obama's Vietnam, and advocated withdrawal on the ground that we are doing no good there. "Most people around the world don’t look like you and me, they look like him," McGovern said. "And I think that our standing worldwide is much better, all across Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America." This was still true three years ago, but has changed now, because Obama's worst moral sell-out has been the wars, overt and covert, that are the core of his foreign policy. The people his drones are slaying willy-nilly do not look like George McGovern and me, they look like him.
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to end the Vietnam war that Lyndon Johnson could not bring himself to end, declared the other day that, with no illusions of better government to result, he was urging voters in swing states to support Obama because a sold-out Obama is still less bad than a sold-out Mitt Romney. The Salt Lake Tribune's cogent editorial reached essentially the same conclusion from a completely different starting point.
I have long argued that the only morally defensible position for me is to support Jill Stein, the Green Party's candidate, whose positions on the important issues of our time are closest to mine (and Sen. McGovern's). Now, mulling the meaning of George McGovern's life and beliefs, I'm less certain.
Tomorrow I will vote early. I hope the nation will re-elect Barack Obama, and somehow survive another four years of his morally bankrupt reign. I hope in the meantime some new leader arises from among the people, a leader whose soul cannot be bought, a leader who can win the presidency in another four years and begin the nearly impossible task of rebuilding the American Dream.
I will mark my ballot for Mr. Obama. With self-loathing for selling my own soul. Begging but not deserving the forgiveness of the families of young Americans slain in illegal wars; of the tortured, the imprisoned and the damned in our black holes around the world; of the elderly and the sick who will suffer and die because they still cannot afford proper medical care in the richest nation in the world; of those Americans who live in abject poverty and whose numbers are growing by the day; of the millions of jobless who have no hope of ever finding employment again, even though they are educated, capable and desperate for work; of the women whose most sacred privacy is violated by obscene government laws and regulations; of the women who are lucky enough still to have jobs, but for which they are paid less than men in comparable work; of the students who thought they were climbing the American ladder of success but now languish deep in debt to usurers; of the civilian men, women and children called "collateral damage" who have been slain, maimed and shamed by our endless wars; of the foreclosed, the homeless, the broken paupers who once were part of an American middle class; of those Americans who look more like Barack Obama than like me, but who bleed, sweat and weep with equal opportunity in an America rigged against them; of the land itself, and the planet, for the orgy of crimes against the very envelope of life that sustains us.
I will mark my ballot, and go off alone into the desert, and weep in shame for myself and my country.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Oh, to Have Had Ed Dale on the Case!
Edwin L. Dale Jr. was one of those New York Times reporters who knew as much as, and in some cases more than, the experts in his field, which was economics.
For example, Ed was credited by economists with being one of the first to establish that the roots of inflation lay as much in the service sector as in the pricing of goods. He came to this insight in the 1950's and helped bring it to public awareness.
When Ed died in 1999, Joseph Laitin, a spokesman for Government agencies including the Treasury Department, said, ''One budget director commented to me after an interview that this man Dale was qualified to be budget director.''
Ed was famously good at digging out the real meaning of regular periodic government reports, like unemployment, gross national product, etc., and never accepting the official spin at face value. These reports were widely available before the release date, which gave Ed plenty of time to report and evaluate the deeper meaning behind the numbers.
Occasionally a reporter, usually a wire service rookie, would rush to publish the numbers in advance of the release date. "Statistics scooping," Ed would sneer. "One of the lower forms of journalistic sin."
A couple of recent news stories reminded me of Ed, and how I wish his likes were still reporting from Washington.
One, just before the presidential "debate," was from a statistics scooper who wanted to appear wise. I'm willing to bet he had a copy of the new employment report in hand when he wrote that the forthcoming data would be bad news for President Obama because the economy had only added 114,000 new jobs in the preceding month, which meant that the unemployment rate would be 8.2 per cent.
Then Willard Romney wiped the floor with Dr. Kidglove in the so-called debate.
Then the actual report came out. The new jobs number was the same. But magically, it had driven the unemployment rate down to 7.8 per cent, the lowest it had been since January of 2009. Calloo, callay and hip-hip hooray for Kidglove and the Gutless Democrats of Oz.
"I wonder what Ed Dale would have done with this one," I thought.
Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric and something of a hero in many economic circles, smelled the same rat. "Unbelievable," he tweeted, setting off a wave of skepticism about the numbers, which the Administration promptly defended as being beyond finagling, even if someone wanted to finagle them.
I'm betting that Ed Dale would not only have smelled this rat, he'd have captured it, measured its tail, counted its whiskers and dumped it in the trash can with all the other recent government deceptions.
Oh, for the good old days.
For example, Ed was credited by economists with being one of the first to establish that the roots of inflation lay as much in the service sector as in the pricing of goods. He came to this insight in the 1950's and helped bring it to public awareness.
When Ed died in 1999, Joseph Laitin, a spokesman for Government agencies including the Treasury Department, said, ''One budget director commented to me after an interview that this man Dale was qualified to be budget director.''
Ed was famously good at digging out the real meaning of regular periodic government reports, like unemployment, gross national product, etc., and never accepting the official spin at face value. These reports were widely available before the release date, which gave Ed plenty of time to report and evaluate the deeper meaning behind the numbers.
Occasionally a reporter, usually a wire service rookie, would rush to publish the numbers in advance of the release date. "Statistics scooping," Ed would sneer. "One of the lower forms of journalistic sin."
A couple of recent news stories reminded me of Ed, and how I wish his likes were still reporting from Washington.
One, just before the presidential "debate," was from a statistics scooper who wanted to appear wise. I'm willing to bet he had a copy of the new employment report in hand when he wrote that the forthcoming data would be bad news for President Obama because the economy had only added 114,000 new jobs in the preceding month, which meant that the unemployment rate would be 8.2 per cent.
Then Willard Romney wiped the floor with Dr. Kidglove in the so-called debate.
Then the actual report came out. The new jobs number was the same. But magically, it had driven the unemployment rate down to 7.8 per cent, the lowest it had been since January of 2009. Calloo, callay and hip-hip hooray for Kidglove and the Gutless Democrats of Oz.
"I wonder what Ed Dale would have done with this one," I thought.
Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric and something of a hero in many economic circles, smelled the same rat. "Unbelievable," he tweeted, setting off a wave of skepticism about the numbers, which the Administration promptly defended as being beyond finagling, even if someone wanted to finagle them.
I'm betting that Ed Dale would not only have smelled this rat, he'd have captured it, measured its tail, counted its whiskers and dumped it in the trash can with all the other recent government deceptions.
Oh, for the good old days.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Great Journalism Leavened with Humor
I had the privilege to commit journalism in the tents of two of America's greatest newspaper publishers -- John S. Knight and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger.
When "Punch" Sulzberger died last week at 86, the obituary writers unanimously declared his greatest moment as publisher of the New York Times to have been the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which he personally approved. The documentation of lies and deceit at the highest levels of government and the military during the Vietnam War took place while I was an editor at the Washington Bureau of The Times.
Parenthetically, when publication was temporarily enjoined while the case was argued before the Supreme Court, journalists at the bureau conducted a wagering pool; entrants had to predict the decision, the vote, the justices on each side and, as a tie-breaker, the day and time the decision would be announced. I won the pool with a nearly perfect score, missing only by about four minutes on the exact time of the announcement that The Times had won the historic case.
On Punch's next visit to the Bureau, he sought out the editor who had "called the shot" on the Pentagon Papers court battle. Given this rare opportunity to impress the Boss of Bosses, I began to pontificate about Potter Stewart's historic role on the court and blah, blah, blah. When I paused for breath, Punch smiled indulgently and said, "In other words, blind luck."
Clyde Haberman's excellent obituary in last Sunday's Times rightly made much of Sulzberger's sense of humor, a trait he shared with Knight, whose chain of fine papers was a magnet for great editors and reporters
Both men were not averse to making themselves the butt of their jokes. "Jack" Knight attended a meeting with his Detroit Free Press editors not long after he had been the subject of a flattering cover story in Time magazine. When this was mentioned, Knight said, with just the right hint of a wry smile, "The piece called me 'crusty,' which I think means hard on the outside -- and empty on the inside."
Both men filled their newsrooms with outstanding editors and reporters, then let them do what they did best unfettered by concerns about what the publisher did or did not want. Both men believed that the news columns belonged, not to the man who owned the presses, but to the readers.
Under their leadership, The Times, The Chicago Daily News, the Detroit Free Press, the Miami Herald, the Akron Beacon Journal and other fine papers practiced a kind of journalism that has all but vanished from these United States, leaving democracy the poorer.
I think probably it helped that the editors of those newspapers knew the top boss had a sense of humor.
When "Punch" Sulzberger died last week at 86, the obituary writers unanimously declared his greatest moment as publisher of the New York Times to have been the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which he personally approved. The documentation of lies and deceit at the highest levels of government and the military during the Vietnam War took place while I was an editor at the Washington Bureau of The Times.
Parenthetically, when publication was temporarily enjoined while the case was argued before the Supreme Court, journalists at the bureau conducted a wagering pool; entrants had to predict the decision, the vote, the justices on each side and, as a tie-breaker, the day and time the decision would be announced. I won the pool with a nearly perfect score, missing only by about four minutes on the exact time of the announcement that The Times had won the historic case.
On Punch's next visit to the Bureau, he sought out the editor who had "called the shot" on the Pentagon Papers court battle. Given this rare opportunity to impress the Boss of Bosses, I began to pontificate about Potter Stewart's historic role on the court and blah, blah, blah. When I paused for breath, Punch smiled indulgently and said, "In other words, blind luck."
Clyde Haberman's excellent obituary in last Sunday's Times rightly made much of Sulzberger's sense of humor, a trait he shared with Knight, whose chain of fine papers was a magnet for great editors and reporters
Both men were not averse to making themselves the butt of their jokes. "Jack" Knight attended a meeting with his Detroit Free Press editors not long after he had been the subject of a flattering cover story in Time magazine. When this was mentioned, Knight said, with just the right hint of a wry smile, "The piece called me 'crusty,' which I think means hard on the outside -- and empty on the inside."
Both men filled their newsrooms with outstanding editors and reporters, then let them do what they did best unfettered by concerns about what the publisher did or did not want. Both men believed that the news columns belonged, not to the man who owned the presses, but to the readers.
Under their leadership, The Times, The Chicago Daily News, the Detroit Free Press, the Miami Herald, the Akron Beacon Journal and other fine papers practiced a kind of journalism that has all but vanished from these United States, leaving democracy the poorer.
I think probably it helped that the editors of those newspapers knew the top boss had a sense of humor.
Monday, October 1, 2012
How to Characterize Wednesday's Show
Millions of Americans will commit a political act Wednesday night by turning on their TV sets. They'll watch something called a "debate" between the presidential candidates. In fact it's just another TV show, a piece of political theater, and if there's a "winner," he should receive an Emmy, not four years' occupancy of the Oval Office.
Oh well, it will probably provide a wee bit more intellectual stimulus than the entertainments whose screen time it pre-empts. There are good scripts and bad scripts and this is likely to fall somewhere in between.
Roughly four in five of the Americans expected to watch Wednesday's performances had not even been born when these things we call debates began. The Democrat was John F. Kennedy, a young senator best known outside of Washington for being a son of one of America's richest men. The Republican was the incumbent vice president, a tough veteran of the political wars, Richard M. Nixon. Nixon, it was thought, would make mincemeat of the inexperienced Kennedy.
Those "debates" undoubtedly had an important effect on the outcome of the election. Even then there wasn't a lot of substance to them. Image -- Nixon's "five o'clock shadow," Kennedy's "youthful vigor" -- swayed more voters than anything that was said. But it was a lesson for political handlers. These pieces of theater could be powerful tools in the right hands. And so the curtain rose on Camelot while, backstage, the era of spinmeisters, damage control and sound bytes emerged from behind the drums of pancake make-up.
The debates have evolved into showcases for the theater arts of so-called journalists as well as candidates. Jim Lehrer of PBS, the moderator for Wednesday's show, is a widely-imitated master of The Serious Look, the mandatory mien for asking banal questions that the candidates know are coming. Performers for ABC, CNN and CBS will moderate subsequent debate shows.
All of this stuff is orchestrated by a Commission on Presidential Debates, created in 1987 "to ensure that debates, as a permanent part of every general election, provide the best possible information to viewers and listeners." The commission members are a typical cross section of the white Christian male plutocracy that runs the country, with a token woman (Dorothy Ridings, a former newspaper publisher) and a token Hispanic (Antonia Hernandez, who is also a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and a director of the American Constitution Society and the American Automobile Association0.
The commission sets the dates for the theatricals, names the moderators and generally assures that the voting public will get an entertaining show. The commission even has its own set designer, f'gawdsakes, who makes sure that the lighting us up to snuff. That assures that nobody will be done in again by "five o'clock shadow" although, truth to tell, there's nothing to be done about the Republican ticket's pronounced "good hair" advantage this time around.
It's all good fun and a cheap way to fill hours and hours of broadcast time without forcing anyone to actually think. You might say it's just another one of those "reality shows" that TV executives love to death these days. Occasionally in the past these things have given us flashes of soap opera drama, as well. The Talking Heads will assure us that the shows make news.
They are some kind of made-for-TV animal. But they aren't debates.
Oh well, it will probably provide a wee bit more intellectual stimulus than the entertainments whose screen time it pre-empts. There are good scripts and bad scripts and this is likely to fall somewhere in between.
Roughly four in five of the Americans expected to watch Wednesday's performances had not even been born when these things we call debates began. The Democrat was John F. Kennedy, a young senator best known outside of Washington for being a son of one of America's richest men. The Republican was the incumbent vice president, a tough veteran of the political wars, Richard M. Nixon. Nixon, it was thought, would make mincemeat of the inexperienced Kennedy.
Those "debates" undoubtedly had an important effect on the outcome of the election. Even then there wasn't a lot of substance to them. Image -- Nixon's "five o'clock shadow," Kennedy's "youthful vigor" -- swayed more voters than anything that was said. But it was a lesson for political handlers. These pieces of theater could be powerful tools in the right hands. And so the curtain rose on Camelot while, backstage, the era of spinmeisters, damage control and sound bytes emerged from behind the drums of pancake make-up.
The debates have evolved into showcases for the theater arts of so-called journalists as well as candidates. Jim Lehrer of PBS, the moderator for Wednesday's show, is a widely-imitated master of The Serious Look, the mandatory mien for asking banal questions that the candidates know are coming. Performers for ABC, CNN and CBS will moderate subsequent debate shows.
All of this stuff is orchestrated by a Commission on Presidential Debates, created in 1987 "to ensure that debates, as a permanent part of every general election, provide the best possible information to viewers and listeners." The commission members are a typical cross section of the white Christian male plutocracy that runs the country, with a token woman (Dorothy Ridings, a former newspaper publisher) and a token Hispanic (Antonia Hernandez, who is also a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and a director of the American Constitution Society and the American Automobile Association0.
The commission sets the dates for the theatricals, names the moderators and generally assures that the voting public will get an entertaining show. The commission even has its own set designer, f'gawdsakes, who makes sure that the lighting us up to snuff. That assures that nobody will be done in again by "five o'clock shadow" although, truth to tell, there's nothing to be done about the Republican ticket's pronounced "good hair" advantage this time around.
It's all good fun and a cheap way to fill hours and hours of broadcast time without forcing anyone to actually think. You might say it's just another one of those "reality shows" that TV executives love to death these days. Occasionally in the past these things have given us flashes of soap opera drama, as well. The Talking Heads will assure us that the shows make news.
They are some kind of made-for-TV animal. But they aren't debates.
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