For crying out loud, the exaggeration of this nonsense simply will not stop. CBS News has elevated them to having won the national title in this article. Reporter Steve Hartman says, "They just clinched the national title - ahead of Harvard, even." No, no, a thousand times no. They haven't won any national title, they never have and I'd venture to guess that they never will. They are a mediocre college debate team that only manages to pile up a lot of points by going to novice and JV tournaments that most top schools don't bother to go to.
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A friend sent me a link to this article in Newsweek about Jerry Falwell's Liberty University being the #1 debate team in the nation, knowing that I know the debate world pretty well and would find it interesting. My response to the article is: uh, no. Not even close. I'd love to know how this…
You know, for all of Jerry Falwell's complaining about the "liberal media", he's getting an astonishing amount of credulous and fawning coverage over the completely meaningless fact of the Liberty debate team being ranked #1 in the nation according to a point(less) system. The latest is a long…
Brett O'Donnell, the coach of the Liberty University debate team, was on the Colbert Report last night on Comedy Central. He actually talked about how great it was to beat Harvard and with all the talk of how Liberty is "better" than Harvard and Dartmouth and Northwestern, etc, not once did he even…
As a follow up to all the Liberty University nonsense, I thought I'd mention that this weekend is the NDT championships. They're being held at Northwestern. Tonight is the opening ceremonies, where they give away the Copeland Award to the top team during the regular season. This award is voted on…
Why is this at all surprising? They're doing what authoritarian bullies of all stripes do: beat up on the little guys and pretend they're big.
Ed writes:
Ed, I could find this quote nowhere in the linked article. The closest I could find was, "Hartman was the entire reception committee when the Liberty University debate team returned to campus in Lynchburg, Va., after winning their national title." Didn't say at what level that title was, and I could find no mention of Harvard period.
Oh course, since the Nationals apparently haven't been held yet this year, one has to wonder just what National title he's talking about.
Dave S wrote:
The article is not an exact transcription of what aired, but you can watch the video on the right side of the page. It shows the reporter cheering for the team as they arrive home from a tournament and what I quoted is what he said on the air verbatim.
Raging Bee wrote:
Well, not really in this case. It's not that they're beating up on the little guys. When they go to a novice or JV tournament, they compete against other novice and JV debaters so it's an even playing field. It's just that most of the top teams don't even bother to send anyone in those divisions. At a good debate school, everyone comes in having had 4 years of debate in high school, many of them are highly recruited, and they all debate varsity from day one. They'll throw their freshmen in to the varsity division right away rather than having them compete against inferior competition at novice or JV because that's the way they're going to get better.
I think Liberty actually deserves credit for giving opportunities to a lot of kids who weren't hotshot debaters coming out of high school, teaching them how to debate and giving them the chance to compete. That's not my complaint with them at all. My complaint is that they use the points they compile by competing against inferior competition to claim that they're the best debate team in the country (and especially that they make such a big deal out of being "higher ranked than Harvard"). It's highly misleading and they know it, but they still do it. They know damn well that the audience hears "Liberty is the #1 debate team in college, ahead of Harvard" and they take that to mean that Liberty beats Harvard at debate. And that simply isn't true. Head to head, Liberty is a mediocre team at best and is not a threat to the top teams in the country.
As I've said many times, when the top team from Michigan State or Emory or Northwestern looks at a schedule and sees that they have to debate Liberty's top team in the next round, they don't think, "Oh my god, we have to debate the #1 ranked team in the nation". They think, "Yum yum."
Ed says:
Ah, I see it now. Didn't play the video first time. I wonder if the reporter came up with the Harvard reference himself or was it first suggested by someone at Liberty and he simply aped it as a good sound bite? If I were a betting man, I'd say the latter.
I think CBS got "freeped." Clicking about from the Liberty story, I found this:
I'm still looking for a contact e-mail address for Hartman, although I'm tempted to send a complaint to scams@cbsnews.com.
Pieter B. writes:
Interesting. I've already e-mailed the CBS evening news on this. Will report back here if I receive any substantive reply.
" It's highly misleading and they know it, but they still do it."
A debate team manipulating rhetoric? Unbelievable!
The montage of Porky-Pig-on-crank competition clips was disheartening; is this really what forensics has become? Quantity of points raised rather than quality of argument? If so, it's obvious where the style of some of the more annoying conservative talking heads has come from; Tucker Carlson, for example, has the habit of putting up to half a dozen lies into his opening sentence, before he even gets to his main point, and he's not alone. [gigasigh]
Reporters will report the news they are given. When Liberty can currently claim to be the #1 debate team, even if its a sneaky, underhanded claim -- which is supported by the debate assocation -- then reporters will report it. Espcially in "human interest" stories, they don't go digging for lies.
The solution of course is to change the ranking system to accurately reflect real rankings.
Pieter B wrote:
My reaction was that they were actually speaking relatively slowly compared to most debates at that level. What seems fast to an outsider is actually not fast at all to someone who is used to it. So yes, that's what it has become and it's even worse than you might think. However, I would point out that quantity does not necessarily have to diminish quality. There are teams that go very fast and make bad arguments, and there are teams that go very fast and make good arguments.
That whining sound you hear is my high-school forensics coach doing 25,000 RPM in his grave.
Pieter-
My top debater when I coached could reach about 360 words a minute and still be clear and understandable, at least to someone who was accustomed to fast talking. Speed has been part of debate for a long time now, it's nothing new.
dogscratcher | March 22, 2006 12:36 PM
A debate team manipulating rhetoric? Unbelievable!
It's more like the sponsor of the debate team manipulating rhetoric.
In this case, since the sponsor is an "establishment of (christian) religion," one might also call it lying for Jesus.