...just where are the other Presidential candidates?
Blah blah Kerry, blah blah Bush. We tally up our scorecards like this is a boxing match. We glue ourselves to the television screen, and we make crucial mental judgements on the future of our nation, as if the debate depended on it. And doing so we become an official mark for the media. I'm going to demonstrate to you how this debate, on Television, is desensitizing you to your values and original thought...
Ladies and Gentlemen, I hate to break this to you, but you have been shammed. Shammed by 'tag-lines', catch-phrases, and statistics generated by number crunchers with an agenda. And what you saw was a debate between two candidates. In case you didn't catch that, let me rephrase: TWO CANDIDATES. There are more than two, but you got the media's version - and you are dumber for it. And let me stop you before you start declaring me a tree-hugging liberal, or something along those lines. In fact, I'm a man with environmentalist, economical, educational, and healthcare agendas on my mind, and I am not a label or a liberal. I am here, however, to inform you that you have only witnessed part of the potential debate (albeit one on T.V. turf). And the thesis behind this statement, is that you are being culturally stripped by being given limited options.
What is to lose from listening to multi-sourced platforms? Money, if you're big business, and media control if you're a major network. Not only are we getting whitewashed news from these corporate giants, we are getting false information (see: public apology on false documents), spinned agenda, and biased baloney . And now, in the race for one of the most important and influential positions in the world, we OMIT candidates for the President of the United States of America simply because of corporate wrangling?
I'm not even saying I'm voting for another candidate. What I'm trying to tell you is "You are blind." Several key platform issues would have been addressed in a new perspective for you had we had the likes of Cobb and Nader on the stage at Washington University in St. Louis tonight. They may be the 'Jeopardy' candidates that have $500 when the other contestants have $10,000, but they can still make a valid question seem all the more intense and real, given their education and background. But the media, in its eternal demand to have quick one-liners, shocking coverage, and gut-wrenching commentary, is determined to streamline your thoughts for you, in a 90-minute, easy-to-digest debate between the top two runners, who have extreme practice in satisfying the T.V. requirements of easy-to-edit sound bites, white smiles, and cute phraseology.
In the lucidity following the debates, we can make scorecards to our heart's content, but we are not on a gameshow, and these debates are only a scratch on a surface of mile-thick titanium. The best hope is to turn the T.V. off, and open a book, do some research, and get an education. You might realize that BOTH debate participants tonight were at the mercy of the media, and they were under pressure to meet the demand of the Church of ABC.
I'll close in this way - if our lives were mirrors of the debate, those who have fought and died in the Iraqi War are, "Patriotic symbols of our determination and willpower to destroy terrorism." Otherwise we can call them "DEAD". Those poor who are having their jobs outsourced to sweatshops around the globe are, "proud Americans who need national healthcare and tax breaks". Otherwise we can call them "UNEMPLOYED". Those children who attend schools that are underfunded, whose teachers are underpaid, and who have a lack of an education are "overcoming the strains of a recession, and will be given more opportunities in the future." What they are is "UNEDUCATED". Environmental issues have "works in motion; things that will give us cleaner air, cleaner seas, and new initiatives". The educated amongst us, who do our homework, know that we are passing the "POINT OF NO RETURN".
We are subjects to the media, not liberated souls. Nothing is a catchy saying in real life - not your mother or father, or spouse, or children - not your friends, your business, your ethics, or who you worship. These things are real, and not to be warped. And to even begin to have a real debate on Television, is to have the full playing field of candidates, with legitimate speaking times, and without marketable phraseology. We are in danger of becoming the land of convenience, at the risk of making everybody else subject to not only inconvenience, but upwards of stricken grief.
There are other voices out there, only the media won't carry them.