Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Re: Conflicts for thee   [Mark Steyn]

Jonah, it's worse than that. At least Dan Rather et al went through the motions of insisting on their super-mega-ultra-impartiality. This makes you wonder why any of them bother. Why didn't Dan just announce at the start of the 1988 presidential debates that he'd like to open with a number from his forthcoming show Dukakis The Musical?

Gwen Ifill is writing a book about one of the candidates. What, just a run-of-the-mill biography, no big deal, merely an unfortunate scheduling coincidence? No, it's a book on the profound historical significance of one of the two candidates, and it's due to be released on Inauguration Day. Anybody's Inauguration Day in particular?

Miss Ifill has an explicit commercial stake in an Obama victory. Even the time-serving squishes on the Debates Commission should had been able to do ten minutes of due diligence on this. Otherwise, what's the point of a Debates Commission? If you said to Kim Jong-Il, "Look, Jimmy Carter and the UN observers are flying in. How about we hold a debate just for appearances' sake? But don't worry, we'll get the author of Dear Leader, We Your Subjects Are Not Worthy Of Your Benificent Omniscience to moderate it", even ol' Kim might scoff that it doesn't pass the smell test.

10/01 06:42 PMShare