I've been sort of chewing on these Moderate Voice articles since I saw them -- Joe Gandelman's "Hillary Clinton and John Edwards Trying To Cut Some Rivals Out Of Debates?" and Nick Rivera's followup, "Caught on Tape: Hillary Clinton and John Edwards Discuss Purging Democratic Rivals from Presidential Debates".
Now, historically speaking, I've voted for no-chance candidates in primaries, because even if they can't get the nomination, I want to put forth the existence of basic support for some of their message. And because I get frustrated by the whole Media-and-Party-Appointed-Talking-Head thing. The whole ... meet the new boss, same as the old boss ... of American politics feel is intensely discouraging.
And I have no idea what to do about this. No idea how to express this sense that the narrowing of the discourse alarms me. And it doesn't really matter if it's, as most of the commenters suggest, about strongarming the non-media-appointed candidates out of things (as most people there figured), or saying, "You know, you have no chance, why don't you give some time to the real candidates?", because there is the principle of bringing forward ideas involved in some cases -- does anyone seriously think Kucinich is going to win a damn thing this time any more than he did any of the last ones? I'm pretty sure he's running to get things like universal health care, marijuana decriminalisation, and an end to foreign interventionism actually into the debates as possibilities -- and it's not in my best interests to see people not asking the questions that relate to that sort of stuff.
Meanwhile: "Did YouTube Upstage Democrats At Dems Debate?" (again at TMV) and Time's "Will the G.O.P. Say No to YouTube?" The folks I know who watched the Democratic one of these said that the ordinary people asking questions were asking harder, more interesting questions than can be gotten out of the media. Only John McCain and Ron Paul have agreed to participate in the Republican version.
Fancy, actual people asking things that they care about, rather than depending on the Appointed Media Representatives to do it for them. We can't be having with that.
28 July, 2007
Getting Fooled Again
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"Dw3t-Hthr" (Duat-Hether) is a title of various female temple officials in ancient Egypt. It means "Worshipper of Hathor" or "Adorer of Hathor".
1 comment:
These people are not interested in we the people at all, never have been. They are neo-cons, not republicans and their only interest is corporate interests, period. If anyone aside from Hunter or Paul get nominated, the republican party WILL CEASE TO EXIST. I am also extremly fearful of the dems, I think every single one of them would break this country, they are all big money sell-outs. Democrats like to control people by using the carrot and stick. They claim to be doing all of these things for the people but what they are really doing is trapping the people and taking their freedoms away.
The real republican has no interest in controlling people or removing their rights, remember, it was the southern democrats that owned the slaves and started the KKK, these same people are now the NEO-CONS. Be afraid, we have very few choices to save this country for our children.
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