Another YouTube Debate

I forgot how much I hate CNN's YouTube debate format. The Democratic debate was a disaster, filled with ridiculous videos that did nothing but cheapen the respectability of everyone on stage. The Republicans took a lot of heat for declining to participate in the debate when it was first proposed. Now that enough time has passed, apparently they thought it was okay to give it a try.

This time around, CNN and Anderson Cooper tried to class it up a bit by getting rid of many of the types of questions that made the first one flop. There weren't any snowmen or pets asking questions, just plain old Americans sitting in rooms with terrible, terrible lighting. The format is still hideous, the video quality of the questions is still unwatchable, and CNN still can't figure out how to properly format a debate with eight people on stage. And while the now infamous snowman was M.I.A., CNN still managed to make things awkward; this came with the idea of having some of the question contributors in the audience. So on occasion, Cooper would surprise everyone by saying "actually, [so-and-so] is here with us today! [So-and-so], did you get an answer to your question?" More often than not, they'd say no.

Things got particularly hairy when a retired soldier asked a question about gays in the military, and then proceeded to go into a long, elderly rant on the subject in the audience. Townhall.com and the Drudge Report found out that this veteran is actually a campaigner for Hillary Clinton. The vet is a "member of Hillary Clinton's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual Americans For Hillary Steering Committee... [and] also part of a film production crew trying overturn the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy." CNN, of course, claimed to have no knowledge of his involvement in this stuff — they had no qualms about letting the guy speak uninterrupted for longer than Tancredo and Hunter's speaking times combined.

The only good thing about tonight's debate is that it's over with. I hope we never see another YouTube debate again. Then again, a Green Party YouTube debate would be kind of amusing.