Pitiful performance, part 2
or: What the hell were they thinking??
posted 4-20-2008 - 5:15 pm

 
So I get home very late Wednesday night, well after midnight, and I turn on the TV to review what I've taped. Included in what's on the VCR is Wednesday night's debate between the presidential candidates, hosted by ABC. I've seen loads of debates before. Given that this one wasn't hosted by PBS, I wasn't expecting much but the usual tame stuff with maybe one or two legit 'gotchas' on accidentally pertinent subjects. After all, David Brinkley and Ted Koppel are gone, and I couldn't think of anyone at ABC who'd ask much in the way of incisive questions; but you never know. Perhaps one of their Washington-based correspondents would come up with a decent question or two.

Let's just say it right up front: egregiously bad. Terminally stupid questions. Unquestionably the worst debate since presidential debates were first televised. An embarrassment to journalists everywhere. I felt personally offended and insulted by the moderators' blithering inanity.

Pitiful performance: The failed potty-training of public officials
or How Eliot Spitzer Became a Bimbo
posted 3-12-2008 - 4:37 pm
amended 4-19-2008 2:55 pm; see addendum below

 
I don't envy New Yorkers right now. Two of their favorite offspring have just messed themselves in public, and the entire business smells like a soiled diaper. First Eliot Spitzer, now Geraldine Ferraro. Two politicians once above reproach, and now deep in manure because of their respective impulse control problems.

Spitzer's problem, like Bill Clinton's and so many other male politicians before him, was the inability to keep his plumbing to himself and his pants zipped while he was busy rooting out fraud and corruption, with a righteousness and rough arrogance that made voters proud but won him few friends among Republicans and Democrats alike. Ferraro's was, in the heat of a tight race, the inability to resist saying something controversial and find a less inflammatory way of making her point. And because of their intemperance and bad judgment, both Democrats had to resign their positions today; in so doing, they've damaged some of their party colleagues by proxy as well, and their Republican opponents must be thrilled.