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Dancing With the Stars--The Presidential Debates
for release 10-23-07
Washington DC
by Lightning Rod
I would like to tell you that The Poet's Eye hasn't been commenting on the ongoing and interminable presidential debates because I am 'above the fray.' But that wouldn't be true. I have suspended comment on this subject because it's such a crashing bore.
Dancing with the Stars is much better reality TV than watching the presidential debates where a dozen suits stand behind podiums to answer inane questions and deliver what they hope will turn into sound bites. It's pathetic, really, that our political process has been reduced to this.
The Lincoln-Douglas debates held in 1858 were the prototype of public political debates in this country.
Contrasted to the Lincoln-Douglas debate, the cable news version of a political debate is almost laughable. No, it IS laughable. In our modern debates, each contender has a few minutes at most to present not only him/her self, but also to present their political ideas.
In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, this was the format: one candidate spoke for an hour, then the other candidate spoke for an hour and a half, and then the first candidate was allowed a half hour rejoinder. The candidates alternated speaking first. People brought picnic lunches to listen to these debates. It was an all day affair to listen to a potential leader expressing his ideas. But we live in the age of sound bites, not sound ideas.
Last election I proposed that the American Idol model would be a better way to handle our elections. It would neutralize all of that hanging chad and voting machine fraud nonsense. Let the people vote by text message as many times as they are willing to pay. Eliminate one candidate per week.
But I think that the Dancing With the Stars model would be much more apropos to this election. We have progressed culturally and politically in four years. The reality shows are better. The political Special Forces units like Swift Boat and MoveOn have gotten more sophisticated. It's a different world in politics and reality TV.
The concept of Dancing With the Stars is brilliant. We should write it into the Constitution. You pair one professional dancer (like someone who actually knows what they are doing) with a billionaire or an aging actress or a country singer or a model who is already famous or rich. Why hasn't the tired world of politics snapped to this politically provocative format?
The Poet's Eye can just see it now. First you get an inconsequential but bombastic host like Tucker Carlson or Glenn Beck. Then you pair the famous faces with the real political pros like lobbyists and call girls and Karl Rove.
I can see Karl Rove dancing cheek to cheek with John McCain, or Heidi Fleiss doing a Rhumba with Mike Huckabee. We're talking real entertainment here, folks.
Of course Hilliary already has her partner who is such a pro that he can talk his way out of an Oval Office blow job and still be standing in line behind Al Gore for a Nobel Prize. Now, that's dancing!
Can we picture Ann Coulter doing the Tango with Fred Thompson? How about Arianna Huffington cutting the rug with Mitt Romney? Oprah hip-hopping with Obama? I'll bet Valerie Plame could make Jonathan Edwards look good. How much more entertaining would that be than the stiffs behind lecterns that we are having to endure?
If the ordeal of these debates and the subsequent primaries followed by the (yawn) conventions, is to go on for months, it might as well be entertaining. I say, 'Let's Dance.'
You can dance around the issues, give 'em the old song and dance or do the chicken dance. You can do the square dance or the party line dance. But it's all a dance.
The Poet's Eye envisions guest performances. Like one by Sen. Craig and Alberto Gonzales. It's a tap dance. Or you could call it an entrapment dance. The set consists of two toilet stalls. They do the old soft shoe tapping each other under the stall to the tune of Tea For Two. The finale is two toilets flushing and the handcuffs snapping on.
If the political processes which address the real questions that we face in our lives, such as peace and healthcare and survival are to be melded with the world of entertainment, then let's do it right. Let's Dance!
I want my arms about you
That (those) charm(s) about you
Will carry me through...
(right up) to heaven, I’m in heaven
And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak
And I seem to find the happiness I seek
When we’re out together dancing, out together dancing (swinging)
Out together dancing cheek to cheek
--Ella Fitzgerald version
