ABC successfully lowered the bar for a national conversation. Is this really the level of debate they think their viewers want? Some of us really want our potential leaders to talk about ideas, solutions, & their vision for America. If I want a cat fight, I'll watch Big Brother. I'm appalled, depressed, & feel like taking a shower after last night's contrived gotcha fest. I'm going from being excited about the whole nomination process to tuning out until it's all over. Thanks alot, ABC, for contributing to the coarsening discourse. Hope it helped ratings to your satisfaction.

This is the central question for the mainstream media: why do good people provide such bad journalism from the perspective of the ideal electoral system?

This is the question that has plaugued me for years. Jake Tapper never would have distorted Clinton's quote, or played dumb about Pelosi's plane trip before he got absorbed by the MSM. Take a look at Swampland, and you can tell these people do want to do right -- and then read their columns in print. On the web, they've been allowed to drop the pretense a bit, but the old forces are still in play when it comes to the hard copy -- they CAN'T be sentient in print. But why?

All the explanations fail to explain it. One attraction of Obama to me was that he was the first Democrat DC was permitted not to hate. I thought it would be what would allow "liberals" like Dowd and Frank Rich to move beyond the rut of the 90s and break old habits, but clearly, painting any Democrat as elitist, no matter how meager their upbringing, is part of the job description. It's not laziness. Dowd has to work very, very hard to torture the language and logic to get a column like that. It takes real ingenuity twist the mental pretzels required to maintain tired old tropes so completely and unquestionably at odds with reality.

George Stephanopolous is just another of many, many "liberals" in the Chris Matthews tradition, who dutifully do the heavy lifting for the Republican machinery. "Moderate" in DC means a lock-step Republican with a Democratic resume. A "maverick" is a Republican who flip-flops to toe the line. Bias is drifting from the Republican script. "Objectivity" is reading that script from the teleprompter. (You see, it's objective because they read it even though they know it's complete crap -- so it's free of their personal prejudices against lying to us.)

Reed, the real question here is why the Democratic Party would allow the networks to control the content of the debates. This is a critical issue for tthe party. If they continue to ignore thios issue, it could loose them the election. As someone pointed out, where are the debates hosted by the League of Women voters? It's time for the participants to take the content of the debates out of the hands of the media.

It was so bad, they are even talking about it in Great Britain:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/niall_stanage/2008/04/the_dumbest_debate_in_america.html

let's get a list of advertisers and let THEM know how we feel about abc

otherwise, we're just a bunch of pajama wearing bullshit artists

Is it possible that Chuck and Goerge's performance was so transparent and ugly that people are going to start honestly talking about media bias? I can see this becoming part of Obama's stump speech: "I'm fighting against the stupid in American political discourse. If you thought it didn't exist, just watch this debate. I'm the candidate that'll make us all smarter." (of course, he'd say it better). Is it too optimistic to think that some good might come of the debate?

Since the ABC phone lines were jammed, I emailed this short little ditty to them. They only allowed 500 words so I had to be brief.

Shame on you George, and Charlie, and ABC!

That was *the worst* hosting of a debate I have ever seen. It was National Enquirer time, not ABC News.

*NO* Substance, mostly petty, gotcha' questions.

All of you, George, Charlie and ABC, gave the collective finger to us, the American public, regarding one of the most important presidential races in modern time.

Your questions were insulting, to the candidates and the American public.

Let ABC News know how you feel about last night's debate:

ABC News online feedback link
http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page?id=3271346&cat=ABC%20News%20Specials

It was not a debate. It was a debacle. Gibson apparently knows less about economics than does McCain. Last night's whining by Gibson about the effect of the capital gains tax on the average American's tax bill brings back the memory of his nonsenses at the St. Anslem's debate. There he thought that the average professor at a small college is making $100K/year, just like a policeman, teacher, or a firefighter during last night's debacle.

Americans need a way to prevent a repeat of this nonsense during the general election debates.

at least we can be sure that ABC will be grilling McCain as closely and as intensely over his role in the Savings and Loan scandal, his friendship with Hagee, his physical fight with congressman Renzi, his calling his wife a c*nt, his desire to privatize social security, his inability to distinguish Sunni from Shia, his desire for war with Iran and North Korea, his illegal abuse of public funding, his campaigns reliance on lobbyists, his endorsing a 100 year military role in Iraq, his refusal to sign onto Senator Webb's bill for returning veterans, his constant flip-flops...

For anyone who's witnessed how ABC/Disney put their racist slant on ESPN since the merger, this new clusterfuck is no surprise. Integrity is not a thing I would link to ABC.

Last night, I was among the first 4500 to send a note to ABC re their "debate." That was at 11:26 PM CDT. They are now, a little over 12 hours later, just shy of having 15,000 comments. One of the writers above uses the word McCarthyite, in line with my own thoughts. Please allow me to include here what I wrote to ABC.

I lived through the Joe McCarthy era and haven't missed it, but it seems ABC News decided to reintroduce it tonight. Bringing up the Weatherman was quite a move. Great work trying to tie Obama to a guy for crimes committed almost 40 years ago. I'm not sure even McCarthy ever went that far back in time. What is interesting is how did Clinton have so much information about the guy and that Obama and he had served on a board together. It would have been nice if someone could have told us what the Woods Foundation is. It seems to me that Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos must have tipped Hillary off that they were going to throw this question at Barack.I've been following Presidential debates starting with Kennedy and Nixon and I've never before witnessed a hatchet job such as you pulled tonight.I guess the only thing I'll watch on ABC from now on is Big Ten sports. Farewell to George's Sunday morning show.

CBS is discontuing its Nightly News report. None would be the worse if ABC followed this example, and got rid of Charlie Gibson's evening news show.
In fact, networks could eliminate their entire news divisions and spare us all from their right wing view of the world.

Though the gospel according to fox is the most rank and obvious abuser, all the socalled MSM networks are partisan propagandists, disinformation warriors, and slime miesters on the payroll of the fascists in the Bush government. The people are denied and deprived objective news and real investigative journalism, and force fed partisan propaganda slime, and sensationalist babel.

Two weeks ago, azmodeous - I mean cheney, when asked about the fact that the majority of the American people do not support the war, replied "So?". And Obama is elitist, condescending, and out of touch? Dear leader once referred to the Constitution as "just a goddamn piece of paper", and only a few weeks ago was pimping the partisan jibberish that "there is no recession, and the American economy is strong", and Obama is elitist, condescending, and out of touch.

The socalled MSM are complicit parrots on the payroll of, and sheepishly obedient to the fascists in the Bush government. The hypocrisy would be laughable were it not so repugnant.

The world is on fire, Iran won Iraq, America is wasting billions of dollars, oceans of blood, and our moral credibility occupying Iraq so the fascists in the Bush government can engorge thier offshore accounts and profiteer wantonly, - and underfunding, under resourcing, and largely ignoring America's true mortal enemies operating in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. There are several ecological and evironmental catastrophe' that could threaten the entire world, most notably lack of access to drinkable water, and food for large swaths of the worlds population. Our ecomony teeters on the brink of calamity. Recession is certain, stagflation a grave possibility, and even more dire economic consequences are highly possible unless we right our wayward economic course. The divides between thehaves and thehavenots is widening every minute, the the government robs from the poor and middle class Americans to feed the superrich. The fascists in the Bush government have raped, mangled, dismembered, and reengineered the Constitution, and the rule of law and have perverted and betrayed the peoples trust and the principles that formally defined America - and will all these crisis confronting America, with all these serious issue's at play - the cowards, idiots, and complicit parrots in the MSM waste the peoples time with babel about Obama's words, or his name, or Hillary's cackle.

A Pox on the house of the MSM.

"Deliver us from evil!"

Charles Gibson: "Senator Obama, its been made known that you don't wear an American Flag lapel pin; some in Pennsylvania say it shows a lack of patriotism. What do you say to these people?

Obama to Gibson: "Charlie, with all the horrible things that the American public is facing at home and abroad today; the cost of gasoline and heating fuel, Wall Street corruption, loss of jobs, healthcare, stagnant wages, extravagant Corporate Executive compensation packages, veteran's issues, a seemingly never ending war in Iraq and the growing number of dead and maimed for life, federal deficits and debt for as far as the eye can see, and a White House that is completely unresponsive to the suffering of those outside their social, class you ask me about FUCKING LAPEL PINS??? Are you insane?

That answer would have set the tone for the rest of the debate.

I guess I was aking because although Billy seems to be consistent with his persistence and right to believe that Hillary Clinton is the best Dem for the GE. But what issues facing America were discussed? I am worried about our financial markets, I am worried about our government sponsoring fincancial bailout for firms which took on risky debt! I am worried about putting food on the table for myself, not whether Obama's pastor is American enough. He served in the US Marines. He survived in this country prior to integration and was left feeling that he could offer his services to his community which is primarily defined in economic terms as poor and in racial terms as black. Are these things bad? Can we not imagine that many people of color, and I mean color whether it be Hispanic, Japanese, Chinese, African, Greek, Arab etc who lived through Segregation are not a little bit bitter about the past. I sure as hell know that my grandfather hates the Japanese because he and his brother served in WWII and his brother died. Of course this doesn't mean that he goes around trying to harm the Japanese in fact it means he is a regular church goer with issues, like the rest of us. I am sure that there are many blue collar American white workers who are little bit bitter because for years they have seen their jobs go away from their home towns, which was the identity of these towns from the previous generation, all because our high cost of manufactuiring aka health care, unionization, regulation make these products unprofitable here in the states. At about the peak of this transition form a blue-collar economy to a service economy we have the strengthening of affirmitive action policies. And rightly so but that does not change the fact that people saw there jobs going away and their rpospects of getting a job diminished by the supply of equal opportunity for which their skin color was the primary reason. They were not the ones whom affirmitive action was aimed at, it was the wealthy business owners who had been running unfair business pratices for years and now were going to have to be regulated to do the right thing.
IS this not how Billy sees things, I am sure that there may be some nuances that are differen than my summation of these topics and I am in no way an expert on any of these topics but I do read, I do listen and I do feel that these are some of the underpinnings of what the entire bitter, Rev, Wright, and before that the Reagan comments.
I apologize for my blatant naiveness at those posters who I know must see some of this as well.

Maybe someone can come up with a more intellectual answer, but whatever the case America has been losing slowly for a long time.

Democrats being interviewed by media types need to turn the tables on any host that answers irrelevant questions. The Democrat interviewee needs to chide the host for asking such a childish question, embarrass him/her for asking such a shallow question.

Obama or Hillary should have attacked Gibson for saying tax cuts increase government revenues (Gibson must have said it 4 or 5 times) as I've seen that Republican fairy tale discredited a number of times; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published a study by Richard Kogan for one, Paul Krugman for another

Is it possible that Chuck and Goerge's performance was so transparent and ugly that people are going to start honestly talking about media bias?

I grabbed Questioning the Media: A Critical Introduction off the shelf to remember how and what was taught to me in Broadcast Communications class.