Watching the political debates, what little I could stomach, anyway, made me think about what I knew was coming:
-- Everyone who already supported him was going to say he won.
-- Everyone who already supported her would say she won.
-- Almost no minds would be changed.
-- The media would spin it the way they were going to spin it no matter what happened within the debate itself.
It's interesting to be a Tuesday morning reader of this stuff, especially to read comments or headlines like, "Trump unquestionably won" or "Clinton the undeniable victor" ... sometimes on the same front page of the same newspaper (do they still print those) or web site.
Not like sports.
We may argue that the referee blew the call and the ball was definitely in the air before the buzzer, or that the umpire should have called that ball a homerun, but the outcome is what it is. This team won and that team lost.
In the real sports, I mean, not those genned-up, fake ones, like pro wrestling or the NFL.
Somewhere, there is probably someone who has created a metric that tells who won a debate, but it hasn't caught on, and probably won't. Our debates aren't even debates. Whoever you thought won the most recent presidential debate (and I'm thinking it was probably Jill Stein, for getting kicked off campus before it even started), neither one of the participants would have even qualified for a high F in a debate class.
It's theatre. It's Show. It's a chance to pretend that the candidates are knowledgeable, acceptable potential leaders of the country. It's a chance for the media to act like they care about both sides of the issue(s).
It is, in this most recent case, anyway, a ratings bonanza.
No comments:
Post a Comment