Obama Pummelled in Debate?

(From the comments -- I don't know if it's true or not but it made me laugh):

RR wrote:

He was way, way cooler than that. He mixed a Jay-Z dirt-off-the-shoulder reference with a Rolling Stones scrape-the-****-right-off-your-shoes Sweet Virginia reference immediately afterward. Talk about a two-toned dog whistle!

The comments also seem to be indicating that it was a b-ball thing before it was a Jay-Z thing.

Anyway. Amusing. :-)

I dunno, I think it's interesting.

As for the article, definitely a tragic story. I don't see any evil conspiracy (was an evil conspiracy ever an accusation)? [..]

It does seem to suggest a certain element of gotcha-ness -- not a conspiracy or anything, just "let's get those ratings up." Nothing new there, just an added element of "ew."

I agree with that. I don't have a problem with the seeking out a hostile questioner part, and I agree that part of Josh's argument is iffy.

Also agree that the question itself was crap, and that's where I think the seeking was interesting -- why didn't the moderators ask that one, why'd they seek out that person? [..] There was shaping that I find interesting -- reading an article, tracking down the person in it to ask the question.

As for the article, definitely a tragic story. [..] I do see someone who is anti-Obama and doesn't seem to have a clear reason for it. She doesn't say "I think Hillary would be better at reforming health care," which I'd get. But no, it's:

Quote:

What?

I wonder what McCabe would have thought of John Edwards ...

sozobe wrote:

I dunno, I think it's interesting.

As for the article, definitely a tragic story. I don't see any evil conspiracy (was an evil conspiracy ever an accusation)? [..]

It does seem to suggest a certain element of gotcha-ness -- not a conspiracy or anything, just "let's get those ratings up." Nothing new there, just an added element of "ew."

OK, perhaps "conspiracy" wasnt the right word.. let me try again articulating what bothers me about Marshall's reasoning here, which you forwarded. I actually dropped them an email about it just now. Here's what I said:

Like many readers I was pretty disgusted with the moderation of the Democratic debate the other night. I also wholly agree with reader JA's observation regarding Nash McCabe's flag pin question that: "the producers put the producers' question into the mouth of a voter, because it made the question seem more authentic, as if people care in large numbers about the flag pin question. That is, the woman was used to legitimize the traditional media's focus on these frankly trivial and, yes, distracting issues." Nevertheless, I'm a little disturbed by your own reasoning about McCabe. You wrote, "I think there's something wrong with it. And part of it is that you usually assume that these citizen questions come from people who are at least partly conflicted about their support if not undecided". You concluded that the fact that ABC tracked down McCabe to ask this question "does reinforce my sense that the disgraceful nature of the debate wasn't just something that came together wrong, [..] but was basically engineered to be crap from the ground up". This seems problematic to me. First off, why assume that the questions must come from conflicted or undecided voters? I always just sort of assume that the questioners constitute a cross-slice of the electorate - or in the case of primary debates, the Democratic or Republican electorate. Or at least that that's how it should be. Consider the implications. Would you consider it a problem if an Obama supporter had gotten the chance to ask a critical question from Clinton? How would you react to, say, news that an Obama supporter was [i]barred [/i]from asking a critical question of Clinton at a debate, because he already was an Obama supporter? Isn't the problem here just that the question itself was inane, not that a supporter of one of the two candidates was tracked down to ask one? The problematic part of this reasoning perhaps shows more clearly if you follow it through to the general elections debates. An overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans will already have a preference for one of the two candidates. So according to this logic, should only Independents be allowed to ask questions in those debates? Wouldn't that guarantee that entire perspectives would be precluded, for example significantly decreasing the chance that specifically progressive concerns are raised? Now I don't like Hillary, and I don't like the corporate media. But I don't like this argument either. In short, ABC tracked down a critical citizen who seemed representative of a typical slice of Pennsylvania voters - to represent it so to say. A slice that has been a priori sceptical about Obama, and constitutes a significant share of the Democratic electorate in the state, which will likely mark the outcome of the elections. Sure, the question itself was crap -- surely they could have found someone from the same background, with the same reluctance about Obama, with a more substantive beef. And sure, they should give both candidates an equal share of critical questions. But the choice itself to track down someone they'd noticed asking a critical question earlier, so as to confront Obama with the kind of suspicion that a significant share of the PA electorate feels of him, is not indicative that the debate "was basically engineered to be crap from the ground up". The opposite. Hostile questioning has a valid place in the democratic debate. As long as the questioner is representative of a significant share of the constituency at hand (in this case Democratic primary voters), and has a question that reflects significant concerns in that constituency, it's even an obligation, I think, of journalists to give it space. In this case, the second criterion was obviously not met, but IMO there was little wrong in seeking out a hostile questioner in the first place.

The post on Nash McCabe reminded me of a couple earlier debates, the MoveOn Town Hall events, where citizen questions were alternated with questions from Eli Pariser, all on one topic that had been selected by member vote. The second was the YKos debate, which also featured citizen questions.

In both cases, citizens asked questions that weren't obvious or oriented toward sound bytes. They were the kinds of questions that would not, for whatever reason, be asked by these tv moderators. Moreover, these were their questions. In this case, the producers put the producers' question into the mouth of a voter, because it made the question seem more authentic, as if people care in large numbers about the flag pin question. That is, the woman was used to legitimize the traditional media's focus on these frankly trivial and, yes, distracting issues.

So it's not just bad that they sought out someone to ask the question, but that they did it in order to avoid asking the question themselves because, you know, it's sort of embarrassing. It's not about content; it's about TV content and TV optics. There's no way for Gibson to ask that without looking petty and stupid. So they used this woman.

I think McCabe would have found Edwards' hair suspect.

Nimh, this reader's reply to JM lays my opinion out well.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Nimh, this reader's reply to JM lays my opinion out well.

Yes, I quoted that reply in my very first para, as you can see. I agree with it as well. But it doesnt deal with the part of Marshall's post that I was disagreeing with.

He's got another good post on this topic at the top right now.

Redundant

I was mulling over the ABC debate this morning and the moderators' claim that knocking Obama with a more or less uninterrupted stream of Swift Boat gotchas was justified by focusing the debate on 'electability'. And it occurred to me that we have now crossed an important threshold where the Republican operative cadre has sufficiently disciplined and trained the press (and more than a few Democrats) that their own role may simply be redundant.

Think about it. Organized campaigns of falsehoods, distortions and smears used to be something most people thought of as a bad thing, if not something that's ever been too far removed from American politics. Now, however, members of the prestige press appear to see it not as a matter of guilty slumming but rather a positive journalistic obligation to engage in their own organized campaign of falsehood, distortion and smear on the reasoning that it anticipates the eventual one to be mounted by Republicans. In other words, we've gotten past the debatable rationale that journalists have no choice but to cover smears and distortions once they're floated into the mainstream debate to thinking that journalists need to seek out and air smears and distortions on the grounds of electability, as though the mid-summer GOP Swiftboating was another de facto part of the election process like primaries, conventions and debates.

It's an expansive rationale under which Gibson and Stephanopoulos may have failed their civic responsibility by not pressing the point of whether Obama is a hereditary Muslim or his mother had a predilection for dark-skinned socialists.

As I've noted it's pretty nauseating and disillusioning that Sen. Clinton has now also convinced herself that she's providing a service by mounting her own Swift Boat campaign. But she is after all running a campaign.

In any case, at this stage it's not even clear the GOP slimesters ever have to come on the field. Journalists recognize their obligation to seek out potential Swift Boat tactics and do the job for them.

--Josh Marshall

An Admission

17 Apr 2008 04:19 pm

I don't wear a flag pin on my lapel. Never have. And while I won't rule out the possibility of doing so in the future, I probably won't. And, yes, this is because I hate my country. But not as much as Jeremiah Wright hates it.

We, the undersigned, deplore the conduct of ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson at the Democratic Presidential debate on April 16. The debate was a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the world. This is not the first Democratic or Republican presidential debate to emphasize gotcha questions over real discussion. However, it is, so far, the worst.

For 53 minutes, we heard no question about public policy from either moderator. ABC seemed less interested in provoking serious discussion than in trying to generate cheap shot sound-bites for later rebroadcast. The questions asked by Mr. Stephanopoulos and Mr. Gibson were a disgrace, and the subsequent attempts to justify them by claiming that they reflect citizens' interest are an insult to the intelligence of those citizens and ABC's viewers. Many thousands of those viewers have already written to ABC to express their outrage.

The moderators' occasional later forays into substance were nearly as bad. Mr. Gibson's claim that the government can raise revenues by cutting capital gains tax is grossly at odds with what taxation experts believe. Both candidates tried, repeatedly, to bring debate back to the real problems faced by ordinary Americans. Neither moderator allowed them to do this.

We're at a crucial moment in our country's history, facing war, a terrorism threat, recession, and a range of big domestic challenges. Large majorities of our fellow Americans tell pollsters they're deeply worried about the country's direction. In such a context, journalists moderating a debate--who are, after all, entrusted with free public airwaves--have a particular responsibility to push and engage the candidates in serious debate about these matters. Tough, probing questions on these issues clearly serve the public interest. Demands that candidates make pledges about a future no one can predict or excessive emphasis on tangential "character" issues do not. This applies to candidates of both parties.

Neither Mr. Gibson nor Mr. Stephanopoulos lived up to these responsibilities. In the words of Tom Shales of the Washington Post, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Stephanopoulos turned in "shoddy, despicable performances." As Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher describes it, the debate was a "travesty." We hope that the public uproar over ABC's miserable showing will encourage a return to serious journalism in debates between the Democratic and Republican nominees this fall. Anything less would be a betrayal of the basic responsibilities that journalists owe to their public.

Spencer Ackerman, The Washington Independent
Eric Alterman, City University of New York
Dean Baker, The American Prospect Online
Steven Benen, The Carpetbagger Report
Julie Bergman Sender, Balcony Films
Ari Berman, The Nation
Brian Beutler, The Media Consortium
Michael Berube, Crooked Timber, the University of Pennsylvania
Joel Bleifuss, In These Times
Sam Boyd, The American Prospect
Lakshmi Chaudry, In These Times
Joe Conason, Journalist and Author
Brad DeLong, Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal and UC Berkeley
Kevin Drum, The Washington Monthly
Henry Farrell, Crooked Timber, George Washington University
James Galbraith, University of Texas at Austin
Todd Gitlin, Columbia University, TPM Cafe
Merrill Goozner (formerly Chicago Tribune)
Ilan Goldenberg, The National Security Network
Robert Greenwald, Brave New Films
Christopher Hayes, The Nation
Don Hazen, Alternet
Michael Kazin, Georgetown University
Ed Kilgore, The Democratic Strategist
Richard Kim, The Nation
Ezra Klein, The American Prospect
Mark Kleiman, UCLA/The Reality Based Community
Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed
Ari Melber, The Nation
Rick Perlstein, Campaign for America's Future
Katha Pollitt, The Nation
David Roberts, Grist
Thomas Schaller, Columnist, The Baltimore Sun
Mark Schmitt, The New America Foundation
Adele Stan, The Media Consortium
Jonathan Stein, Mother Jones Magazine
Mark Thoma, The Economist's View
Michael Tomasky, The Guardian
Cenk Uygur, The Young Turks
Tracy Van Slyke, The Media Consortium
Kai Wright, The Root