God help me, I watched all of the debate tonight. I'm not sure why, but I did, and I'll say something about it in an overall sense tomorrow. It occurs to me, though, that one moment after the debate sums up everything that has gone wrong with this country over the last N years.
I watched on PBS, so as to get the minimum possible amount of wanker punditry, but the amount was not zero, and they had Mark Shields and David Brooks commenting on the debate immediately afterward. One of them-- I don't recall which-- said (approximately) of the overall tone:
These two acted like they were having a real debate, and talked about issues the whole time
And he said it like that was a bad thing.
On PBS, for God's sake.
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I also watched PBS, for the same reason, and saw the comment you mention, but I took it differently. I thought it was more a comment about the format of the debate in that this one was more interactive between the two candidates which was quite different from previous presidential debates and as such didn't lend itself to the "zinger" moment that the mainstream media loves.
What struck me more was the fact that McCain wouldn't look at Obama...that was creepy.
I didn't see the debate, or the line you mention, but what made you think it was said like it was a bad thing?
Paul, I think that was Chad's point: that everything has become structures for things like "zinger moments." Personally, I found it incredibly refreshing to see an honest to goodness real debate about issues for once... made me realize how sadly lacking this is throughout our culture these days...
Though it was far, far better than debates that have occurred in the past, yet still it really didn't have much depth. That, to me, is still quite depressing.
I watched it on CSPAN. They don't have any extraneous crap.