Wondering on Wednesday 9/30/20

Ready... Set... Wonder!

Random wondering, in no particular order, from the so-called presidential debate.

• What the hell was that? I turned off the #CaterwaulinginCleveland before the end of the first segment last night - I didn't even make it ten minutes - but I did watch the entire thing this morning. I found myself alternately wanting to scratch my own eyes out, and wanting to stick lit firecrackers in my ears to make the noise stop. I just wanted it to stop.

• Chris Wallace is taking a lot of crap for not doing a better job moderating the debate. Anyone who's giving him crap should be forced to sit in the moderator's chair for two minutes and prove they can do better. Off the top of my head, I can only think of people who would have done worse, other than maybe Jim Lehrer and maybe Gwen Ifill, or maybe Peter Jennings... 

• In that same vein, can you imagine if it had been the team from NBC/MSNBC trying to wrangle that #CockfightinCleveland last night? Chuck Todd, Hallie Berry, Andrea Mitchell, Savannah Guthrie - who knows how many moderators the peacock network would have thrown at it?

• Joe Biden wasn't wearing a wire, Trump was wired, and never have I wanted a mic kill switch like I wanted one watching the video today. Or a Dick Brick. Probably 20 years ago, maybe more, a handful of  us  fun people, all now former smokers, came up with the idea of having a foam 'brick' we could throw at the television whenever Dick Vitale was broadcasting SU basketball games. We hated him, we did, and furiously threw ideas around, how we'd market it and all that... Alas, our dreams were big, but our smoke breaks were short; by the time we really gave it some thought, someone had beaten us to it, absent the Vitale reference. 

• Is it too late to create a #MAGAMA brick, I wonder? I mean, it's not too late to cram through a SCOTUS nomination, right? 

• Speaking of sports references, there was a long-time sportscaster here, local guy named Joel Mareiniss, who had a kind of funny way with words. I thought of him, and of my dad, while watching the #ChaosinCleveland, when it occurred to me that if my dad were alive today, he'd be spinning in his grave. That's how confused I was...

• My confusion pales in comparison to that of Portland-area sheriff Mike Reese, who learned watching the #CatfightinCleveland that he was a Trump supporter. Except, of course, he's not one. Fun times for him, right? 

• How on earth, "for the love of all the corn," as a friend of mine says, does the president of the United States of American not immediately seize on the opportunity to condemn white supremacy? Seriously - for all the kernels on all the ears of corn on all the corn plants in all the cornfields on all the farms in all the states in all of the entire country, why didn't he just say "yes" to that question? Instead, he gives marching orders to the Proud Boys? #whattheactualhell

• Again, but we can use all the peas in all the pods on all the plants on all the farms and in all the gardens in all the backyards in all the states in the entire country, isn't the very first thing a Republican does, when hearing that their Fearless Leader didn't say "yes" to that question, is IMMEDIATELY go out on social media, call their local radio station, show up at their local TV station in their Donald John Trump footed pajamas  with the presidential seal on the fanny and declare their wholehearted and unequivocal condemnation of white supremacy? And why is it that so few of them did that, and why are so many of them simply saying "what he said" in reference to your comments, Sen. Tim Scott? Any ideas? 

• I saw a tweet last night suggesting that Latinos watching the debate on Telemundo thought that Trump won the debate. And that got me wondering what it must have been like being the translators and closed-captioners for the #CacophonyinCleveland - I picture it looking something like this: fkjg;h$(*Y lkjaoia4[ #$(*&#P$( )$5385-#$$^%(^(@*#pao48yp983y4t  -- and I hope I've not offended anyone with that effort. For all I know, I've typed a top secret Qanon password or something, and my fervent hope is that's not the case.

• Should there be another debate, you may be wondering? Yeah, you and everyone else in the world, after the #CarriedawayinCleveland debacle last night. At least so far, the next one, a Town Hall catering to undecided voters in Florida (don't even get me started on that), is still on the schedule. The Commission on Presidential Debates has said they're looking for ways to add more structure to the process, because "more orderly discussion is needed." That's gonna be fun for them, don't you think?  

• And I wonder, what you would do to help drive "more orderly discussion" the next time out? Muzzle the candidates?  Take away time for interruptions and talking out of turn? Trump's mic would have been turned off with about ten minutes left, and Biden's not all that much later, if that had been in place last night. Although, to his um, 'credit,' Biden made more quick hits (telling Trump to shut up, calling him a clown, saying he was the worst president ever, and so on) compared to Trump's more rambling, long-winded  interruptions. Either way, I'm not looking forward much to the next round. 

• Overall, I had very low expectations for what became the #ClamorinCleveland - Trump's a bully, for sure - everyone knows that - but he exceeded my expectations by behaving even way more worser than usual. I was not sure how Biden would handle it, whether he'd "stand back and stand by." as it were, or if he'd go to the center of the ring to engage. There was more of the latter than I thought, but I don't know that it helped all that much. 

I  came away from the #CagefightinCleveland with full comfort knowing that my opinion of Trump was, and is, the correct one. As Biden said to Trump about the pandemic, "it is what it is, because you are who you are." 

And who is he? A man completely undeserving of the honor of being called the president of the United States.  About that, I have no doubts.

What are you wondering about?