Prickly Pear Wine

Since my beloved sent ABC an expletive laden email this morning, yours truly decided to offset his profane and righteous furor with something moderately cleaner.

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(email sent to enough ABC.com addresses to label me a spammer)

To Whom it Should Concern:

Lapel pins. Lapel pins?

Are you kidding? Inane prattle about the patriotic merits of lapel pins and tabloid-style insinuations about the candidate’s childhood acquaintances are Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos’s *very best* debate questions?

Perhaps these two men have been living in a cave with Osama Bin Laden. Perhaps neither is aware that 4,000 of our brave servicemen and women have died in Iraq? (Or that hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens have died as “collateral damage,” sacrifices to Bush’s war on “terra.”)

Perhaps they failed to notice that gas prices are skyrocketing and the economy is in shambles? No doubt, they are also unaware that some 40 million Americans are without access to adequate health care. Or that the current Administration has said it’s okie-dokie to torture people and is cheerfully dismantling the Constitution (the former reported by ABC; does Gibson not watch his own network?).

Perhaps Gibson and Stephanopoulos suffered some mysterious malady, striking both deaf, dumb and blind for the past seven years, until, lo and behold, they were miraculously cured five minutes before the debate.

Otherwise there is no excuse for the debacle last night. Stephanopoulos seemed to be channeling right wing hack Sean Hannity, while Chucky Gibson developed a peculiar version of Tourette’s Syndrome that impelled him to interrupt Barack Obama, and only Barack Obama, every time he spoke. And the ABC camera person had a perverse obsession with Chelsea Clinton, who got almost as much screen time as the two candidates.

What I saw last night wasn’t even “info-tainment,” as it was neither informative nor entertaining.

Given the current state of network TV, I haven’t been watching that much anyway. I can assure you, however, that I won’t be watching any of your programming anytime soon.

P.K.
New Mexico

P.S. I think Charles Gibson needs a medical checkup. He seems to be suffering from dementia and has forgotten most of his basic journalism school training, notably “fact checking.” Specifically regarding his assumption that middle America makes 200K+ a year. Here’s a quarter Chucky (all I can spare); go buy yourself a clue.

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