This Is What A Debate Is Supposed To Look Like

On Tuesday night, CBS rolled out its latest Reality TV Show.

The Great Debate!

It had all the hallmarks of a CBS Entertainment Production. The opening music, carefully scored to sound just like the opening music to that other CBS hit show- The Amazing Race.

The contestants (as Mike Bloomberg so honestly referred to them), walked out on stage waving to the music. The camera cuts and moves were also the same as used on the open to The Amazing Race, and then, the cheering live audience.

What could to wrong?

The Amazing Race, after all, has been one of CBS’s most successful shows — now it it’s 20th years, it has racked up zillions in ad revenue. And, since The Great Debate was selling commercial time, including one to one of the contestants!!! — why not learn from the best.

We have turned politics into entertainment.

Well, why not? We are a culture that is entirely, 100% driven by entertainment. It is not by accident that the host and Executive Producer of The Apprentice, an NBC hit show, is now the President of the United States. Trump may be many things, but one thing no one can deny is that he is a great entertainer. He wows them at his rallies and he wows them on TV.

He defeated Hillary Clinton, who, though vastly smarter, better qualified, better educated, better trained and so on was also what we might call living death on TV. No one wanted to watch The Hillary Clinton Show for four minutes let along four years.

That is who we are. We vote for the most entertaining ‘contestant’. Bernie Sanders is great TV. He reminds us of Larry David. Mike Bloomberg, vastly better equipped, more intelligent, better trained and better prepared to lead the nation reminds us of a life insurance salesman who might have appeared on a Seinfeld episode- very briefly.

Political debate in this country was not always treated as a Reality TV show, where contestants are limited to one minute fifteen seconds to give answer to complex questions that take longer than that to ask. Once, they were really debates.

Between August 21, 1858 and October 15, 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas engaged in a series of public debates as they both ran for the US Senate.

Instead of tossing out pre-scripted zingers, the debates lasted for a full 8 hours. The candidates laid out their ideas and proposals fully. They were then subjected to cross questioning, not from Gayle King but from each other, and given time to fully answer each question.

American audiences sat in rapt attention at these events, taking a break for dinner and then returning for more debate and then closing remarks.

That was political debate.

Today, no American audience would have the patience to sit through 8 hours of real debate with real issues.

We have become too jaded, too corrupted, too addicted to being endlessly entertained.

The average American today spends an astonishing 8 hours a day, every day, watching TV or videos or Netflix or Instagram or Facebook. We love to be entertained.

So now, we can only imagine voting for the most entertaining candidates.

Not the most competent, the most intelligent, the most capable.

That’s Entertainment!

That’s America.

If you found this interesting, you can can read a lot more about this in my new book: Don’t Watch This! How The Media Are Destroying Your Life.