Not to dwell overly on that Republican presidential debate, but there was an ominously tell-tale reference made before the official 9:00 starting time by Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly. She feigned looking at her watch and gave a heads-up to pre-debate viewers that “the show” would begin in less than a minute right after a commercial break.
Whether it was brutal honesty or the TV version of Freudian slippage, it proved true. That wasn’t a debate. That was a casting call. That was speed-dating. That was, indeed, show time. Pointed questions and references to actual issues prompted lip-service responses and pivots to prepared agenda points. Fox, under the guise of some leading, adversarial questions, helped make sure Donald Trump, an actual TV celebrity and Exhibit A for narcissistic personality disorder, was not spotlight challenged. He merely played his assigned, carnival-barker-cartoon role.
It was, in part, entertaining. Also frustrating. And, in part, self-revealing and embarrassing. Aren’t we, the country ostensibly seeking to regain “greatness,” better than a reality TV show masquerading as presidential-campaign stop? Or is this a presidential campaign masquerading as a reality show?